2 Sc. =•••? on the day that.— (I. 15.)
occurs in Gen. ii. 17 ; in the day on which thou shah eat thereof, it will come to pass that thou shalt die the death ; see also Gno mon on ch. xxvi. 64, and Luke i. 48. The expression may also be referred to the mode of speech, so as to mean after that afflic tion (which the plan of this discourse, and the point of view from which this time is regarded, permit to be subjoined immediately, provided it be indicated that the other things will intervene) the sun shall be darkened, etc. It frequently occurs that adverbs, as in this passage, sudswg, immediately, do not qualify the thing itself, but the language in which it is expressed. Thus, in Mark vii. 9, the adverb xaXug, well, and the verb atiiriTrs, ye abolish [Engl. Vers., ye reject], are joined with [a part of] the verb to say [viz. it may be said that], understood : thus, too, in Heb. i. 6, the adverb craX/v, again, is joined with the verb Xeys/, He saith. In fine, St Luke (xxi. 24, 25) separates the signs in the sun, etc. [from that tribulation] by a greater interval. Some explain e-j^Bus as denoting, not the shortness of the interval, but the suddenness of the event after long intervening periods. We must, however, keep to our first interpretation, so indeed that the particle ivd'su; be understood to comprehend the whole space between the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus and the end of the world. On such passages there rests, as St Antony used to term it, a prophetical cloudlet. It was not yet the fit time for revealing the whole series of events from the destruction of Jerusalem down to the end of the world. The following is a paraphrase of our Lord's words, " Concerning those things which will happen after the tribulation of those days of the de struction of Jerusalem, THE NEAREST EVENT which at present it suits My condition to mention, and your capacity to ex pect, is this, that the sun will be darkened," etc. Furthermore, it does not follow from this that the expression, /x£ra raCra, after these things, should be understood loosely in Rev. iv. 1. Where quickness is presupposed from Rev. i. 1. Such formulas are to be understood according to the analogy of the passages where they occur. — 6 jjX/o? axorisQrtatTai, the sun shall be darkened) This must be taken literally, of a calamity different from those which have been described before. In the Old Testament, such ex pressions are used metaphorically, the figure being derived from that which will literally happen at the end of the world. —