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Mar_13:28-32. See on Mat_24:32-36. Comp. Luk_21:29-33.
αὐτῆς ] prefixed with emphasis (see the critical remarks) as the subject that serves for the comparison: When of it the branch shall have already become tender, so that thus its development has already so far advanced. The singular ὁ κλάδος , the shoot, belongs to the concrete representation.
τὸ θέρος ] is an image of the Messianic period also in the Test. XII. Patr. p. 725.
Mar_13:30. ἡ γενεὰ αὔτη ] i.e. the present generation, which γενεά with αὕτη means throughout in the N. T., Mat_11:16; Mat_12:41-42; Mat_12:45; Mat_23:36; Mar_8:12-13; Luk_7:31; Luk_11:29-32; Luk_11:50-51. Comp. Heb_3:10 (Lachmann). Nevertheless, and although Jesus has just (Mar_13:29) presupposed of the disciples in general, that they would live to see the Parousia—an assumption which, moreover, underlies the exhortations of Mar_13:33 ff.—although, too, the context does not present the slightest trace of a reference to the Jewish people, there has been an endeavour very recently to uphold this reference; see especially Dorner, p. 75 ff. The word never means people,[157] but may in the signification race, progenies, receive possibly by virtue of the connection the approximate sense of people, which, however, is not the case here. See, moreover, on Mat_24:34.
οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός ] Observe the climax: the angels, the Son, the Father. Jesus thus confesses in the most unequivocal words that the day and hour of His Parousia are unknown[158] to Himself, to Him the Son of God (see subsequently ὁ πατήρ ),—a confession of non-omniscience, which cannot surprise us (comp. Act_1:7) when we consider the human limitation (comp. Luk_2:52) into which the Son of God had entered (comp. on Mar_10:18),—a confession, nevertheless, which has elicited from the antipathy to Arianism some strange devices to evade it, as when Athanasius and other Fathers (in Suicer, Thes. II. p. 163 f.) gave it as their judgment that Jesus meant the not-knowing of His human nature only (Gregor. Epist. 8:42: “in natura quidem humanitatis novit diem et horam, non ex natura humanitatis novit”); while Augustine, de Genesi c. Manich. 22, de Trinit. i. 12, and others were of opinion that He did not know it for His disciples, in so far as He had not been commissioned by God to reveal it unto them. See in later times, especially Wetstein. Similarly Victor Antiochenus also and Theophylact suggest that He desired, as a wise Teacher, to keep it concealed from the disciples, although He was aware of it. Lange, L. J. II. 3, p. 1280, invents the view that He willed not to know it (in contrast with the sinful wish to know on the part of the disciples), for there was no call in the horizon of His life for His reflecting on that day. So, in his view, it was likewise with the angels in heaven. The Lutheran orthodoxy asserts that κατὰ κτῆσιν He was omniscient, but that ΚΑΤᾺ ΧΡῆΣΙΝ He had not everything in promptu.[159] See Calovius. Ambrosius, de fide, v. 8, cut the knot, and declared that οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός was an interpolation of the Arians. Nevertheless it is contained implicite also in the εἰ μὴ ὁ πατὴρ μόνος of Matthew, even although it may not have stood originally in the collection of Logia, but rather is to be attributed to the love of details in Mark, whose dependence not on our Matthew (Baur, Markusev. p. 102, comp. his neut. Theol. p. 102), but on the apostle’s collection of Logia, may be recognised in this more precise explanation.
[157] The signification “people” is rightly not given either by Spitzner on Homer, Il. Exc. ix. 2, or in Stephani Thes., ed. Hase, II. p. 559 f.; in the latter there are specified—(1) genus, progenies; (2) generatio, genitura; (3) aetas, seculum. Comp. Becker, Anecd. p. 231, 11; also Ellendt, Lex. Soph. I. p. 353.
[158] Matthew has not οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός ; according to Köstlin, Holtzmann, and others, he is held to have omitted it on account of its dogmatic difficulty. But this is to carry back the scruples of later prepossession into the apostolic age. Zeller (in Hilgenfeld’s Zeitschr. 1865, p. 308 ff.) finds in the words, because they attribute to Christ a nature exalted above the angels, an indication that our Mark was not written until the first half of the second century; but his view is founded on erroneous assumptions with respect to the origin of the Epistles to the Colossians, Ephesians, and Philippians, and of the fourth Gospel. Moreover, Paul places Christ above the angels in other passages (Rom_8:38; 2Th_1:7), and even as early as in the history of the temptation they minister to Him. Zeller believes that he gathers the like conclusion in respect of the date of the composition of our Gospel (and of that of Luke also), but under analogous incorrect combinations, from the fact that Mark (and Luke) attaches so studious importance to the narratives of the expulsion of demons.
[159] See, on the other hand, Thomasius, Chr. Pers. u. Werk. II. p. 156 f.