Testimony of Macknight.
By F. H. Burbank
"It may seem strange that the Son, . . . who in prophecy had been pointing out the various signs by which the disciples might foresee his approach, should not have known the day and the hour, or the particular time of his coming. This difficulty some endeavor to obviate by supposing that our Lord spake of himself here only as a man. But the Father following that of the Son, shews that he spake of himself as the Son of God, and not as the son of man. Besides, the gradation in the sentence seems to forbid this solution. For the Son being mentioned after the angels, and immediately before the Father, is thereby declared to be more excellent than they, which he is not in respect of his human nature; and therefore he cannot be supposed to speak of himself in that nature. "The proper translation of the passage, I think, affords a better solution. The word eiden here seems to have the force of the Hebrew conjugation hiphil, which, in verbs denoting action, makes that action, whatever it is, pass to another. Wherefore eiden, which properly signifies I know, used in the sense of the conjugation hiphil, signifies, I make another to know; I declare. The word has this meaning without dispute, in 1 Cor. ii, 2: 'I determined to know (eidenai) nothing among you but Jesus Christ, and him crucified;' i. e., I determined to make known, to preach nothing among you but Jesus Christ. So likewise in the text, 'But of that day and that hour,' none maketh you to know, none hath power to make you to know it; just as the phrase, Matt. xx, 23, 'is not mine to give,' signifies 'it is not in my power to give;'—'no, not the angels, neither the Son, but the Father.' Neither man nor angel, nor even the Son himself, can reveal the day and hour, . . . because the Father hath determined that it should not be revealed." Note.—Dr. James Macknight was one of the first in Scotland that obtained the "degree" of "Doctor of Divinity." The first edition of his "Harmony of the Gospels" was published 1756. The comment on Mark xiii. 32 is taken from the fourth edition, published 1809, in the second volume, sec. 123, page 659.—F. H. Burbank, in World's Crisis.