CHAPTER V.
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.
Ver. 1. Times and seasons.—The one is the even, continuous flow of the river, the other is the cataract. Seasons we may represent as epochs. Our Lord in the same words refused to gratify the curiosity of His followers (Acts i. 7).
Ver. 2. For yourselves know perfectly.—The adverb here is the same as in Eph. v. 15 (A.V. “circumspectly,” R.V. “carefully”). It is used five times only in the New Testament. The translations are interesting—Matt. ii. 8: A.V. “diligently,” R.V. “carefully.” Luke i. 3: R.V. “accurately.” Acts xviii. 25 (like Matt. ii. 8). Perhaps the Thessalonians had asked for precise information. “The apostle replies, with a touch of gentle irony, ‘You already know precisely that nothing precise on the subject can be known’—that the great day will steal upon the world like a thief in the night.” (Findlay).
Ver. 3. For when they shall say.—R.V. “when they are saying.” No matter at what hour they say, “Peace and security,” like the voice of the watchman crying, “All’s well.” Then sudden destruction.—The word for “sudden” is only found again at Luke xxi. 34 in the New Testament. It is really unforeseen. As travail.—In the simile there is the suggestion that the day cannot be far off though not exactly known.
Ver. 5. Children of light.—Quite an Oriental expression. The kings of Egypt called themselves “children of the sun.” So these of a better sun.
Ver. 6. Let us watch and be sober.—Ever on the alert as men who live in hourly expectation of their Lord’s arrival. It is precisely they who maintain the preparedness of spirit who are calm when the midnight cry rings out, “The bridegroom cometh.”
Ver. 7. They that be drunken are drunken in the night.—The explanation is given in our Lord’s words—“because their deeds are evil”: as though darkness could veil the loss of self-respect.
Ver. 9. For God hath not appointed us to wrath.—The inevitable sequence of a life of sensual gratification. The very severest forms of expression for wrath fell from the gentlest lips concerning the servant who falls to gluttony and drunkenness because his lord does not appear at the expected hour (Luke xii. 45, 46).
Ver. 12. Them which labour among you and are over you in the Lord.—“A clear testimony, from this earlier New Testament writing, to the existence in the Church at the beginning of a ministerial order—a clergy as distinguished from the laity—charged with specific duties and authority. But there is nothing in grammar nor in the nature of the duties specified which would warrant us in distributing these functions amongst distinct orders of Church office” (Ibid.).