(2) When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather.--It is remarkable that some of the best MSS., including the Vatican and Sinaitic, omit the whole of these suggestive words. We can hardly think of them, however, looking to their singular originality of form, as interpolated by a later transcriber, and have therefore to ask how we can explain the omission. They are not found in St. Mark, and this in itself shows that there were some reports of our Lord's answer to the Pharisees in which they did not appear. Possibly the transcriber in this case was unable to read their meaning, and the same feeling, or the wish to bring the reports in the two Gospels into closer agreement with each other, may have influenced the writers of the two MSS. in question. Turning (1) to the words as they stand in the received text, we note, as to their form, that the insertion of the words in italics somewhat mars the colloquial abruptness of the original, "Fair weather, for the sky is red"; and (2) that the use of "sky," instead of "heaven," hides the point of the answer. "You watch the heaven," He in substance answers, "and are weather-wise as to coming storm or sunshine. If your eyes were open to watch the signs of the spiritual firmament, you would find tokens enough of the coming sunshine of God's truth, the rising of the day-spring from on high--tokens enough, also, of the darkness of the coming storm, the 'foul weather' of God's judgments." Even the fact that the redness of the sky is the same in both cases is not without its significance. The flush, the glow, the excitement that pervaded men's minds, was at once the prognostic of a brighter day following on that which was now closing, and the presage of the storm and tempest in which that day should end.

It is a singular instance of the way in which the habit of minute criticism stunts or even kills the power of discernment which depends on imagination, that Strauss should have looked on words so full of profound and suggestive meaning as "absolutely unintelligible" (Leben Jesu, II. viii. p. 85).

In the outward framework of the parable the weather-signs of Palestine seem to have been the same as those of England. The clear red evening sky is a prophecy of a bright morning. The morning red--not "red" simply, but with the indescribable threatening aspect implied in "lowering," the frown of the sky, as it were (comp. Mark 10:22, where the same word is rendered "grieved")--makes men look for storms.

Verse 2. - The paragraph consisting of this and ver. 3 is omitted by many good manuscripts, probably owing to its similarity to the passage in Matthew 12:38. These verses are most probably genuine; and they certainly could not have been foisted into the text from Luke 12:54-56. The circumstances are too different, and the variations too marked, to make such interpolation probable. When it is evening. The Pharisees had demanded a sign from heaven; Jesus points to the western glow in the sky, and taunts them with being ready enough to read the signs of the weather, but slow to interpret proofs of more important circumstances. He does not, in the case of these mixed cavillers, argue from Scripture, but from the natural world, and he points out that, had they eyes to see and a mind to discern, they might mark tokens in historical events, in the moral and spiritual world, which attested his Messiahship as clearly as any specially given sign from heaven. Ye say, It will be fair weather (εὐδία). Probably an exclamation, Ye say, Fair weather! Rabbinical schools made a point of teaching weather lore; prognostications on this subject were greatly in vogue, and the rains of the coming year were annually foretold. On such meteorological observations, we may refer to Virgil, 'Georg,' 1:425, etc.; and Pliny, 'Nat. Hist.,' 18:35 and 78.

16:1-4 The Pharisees and Sadducees were opposed to each other in principles and in conduct; yet they joined against Christ. But they desired a sign of their own choosing: they despised those signs which relieved the necessity of the sick and sorrowful, and called for something else which would gratify the curiosity of the proud. It is great hypocrisy, when we slight the signs of God's ordaining, to seek for signs of our own devising.He answered and said unto them,.... Knowing full well their views, and having wrought sufficient miracles to confirm his Messiahship, he thought fit to give them no other answer than this:

when it is evening, ye say, it will be fair weather, for the sky is red; when the sun is setting, it is a common thing for you to say, looking up to the heavens, and observing the face and colour of them, that it is like to be fair weather; no rain, that night, nor perhaps the next day, for the sky is red like fire, through the rays of the sun; which show the clouds to be very thin, and so will soon waste away, and consequently fine weather must follow.