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The Day No One Knows

Week 5 of 6 in The Olivet Discourse, Week by Week · next: One Taken, One Left

✝️ Mark 13:32 (ESV) 32 "But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

Of everything Jesus says about His own return, this is the sentence most likely to be quoted carelessly in either direction. Read one way it appears to deny that the Son is God. Read the way a popular explanation takes it, it says nothing about knowledge at all, because Jesus is supposedly quoting a wedding idiom. Neither reading survives contact with the text: the verse is about whose the date is to give, not about what the Son is capable of knowing, and it says that without any help from a reconstructed custom.

What the saying does in the Olivet Discourse (the ground of "stay awake") belongs to The Olivet Discourse and the parables that close it.

Key Takeaways

(This section follows the Key Takeaways format — see that page for what each part is for.)

Types & Prophecy

Zechariah says the same of the day itself: "there shall be a unique day, which is known to the LORD" (14:7, ESV). The timing of the end has always been held by the LORD alone.

Lessons about Jesus

Two truths have to be held at once, and the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451) fixed the language for holding them. Scripture says Jesus grew, was weary, thirsty, hungry, and was crucified, none of which is true of the divine nature; and it says He "knew all people" and needed no one to tell Him what was in a man (John 2:24-25). The verse speaks in terms of His human nature, and its emphasis falls on the Father's prerogative.

Memory verses

✝️ Acts 1:7 (ESV)

7 He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority."

Be Transformed

  • Think. The date is the Father's to give, and He has not given it (Mark 13:32). Every scheme for working it out spends effort against the grain of the text. What Scripture leaves you instead is readiness, and the parables that follow define that as being answerable.
  • Attitude. Hold the posture of the servant who is blessed simply for being found doing the job he was given (Matthew 24:46). Readiness looks like faithfulness in the meantime.
  • Do. "Each of us will give an account of himself to God" (Romans 14:12, ESV). Ask today what that account would say, and let the nations' test in Matthew 25:40 ("as you did it to one of the least of these") name one concrete thing to do about it before this day is out.

Prayer

Father, the day is yours and you have not told us. Keep us from pretending otherwise, and from living as though a date we cannot know were the thing that mattered. Make us ready today. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Some manuscripts omit "nor the Son" in Matthew, and the CSB and NLT both flag it in their footnotes; the two critical Greek texts in this repo's own database, SBLGNT and Tischendorf, both print οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός, and the phrase is undisputed in Mark 13:32. A scribe softening a hard saying about Christ is a far likelier change than a scribe inventing one, so the harder reading stands.

What the sentence is doing

The verse is not a statement that the Son is ignorant. That reading collides with John's Gospel, where Jesus "knew all people" and "needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man" (John 2:24-25, ESV), and with Peter's "Lord, you know everything" (John 21:17, ESV). Two things are going on instead, and the second is the emphasis.

The incarnation is real. The ESV Study Bible takes the classic line: "In his incarnate life, Jesus learned things as other human beings learn them (cf. Luke 2:52; Heb. 5:8). On the other hand, Jesus was also fully God, and, as God, he had infinite knowledge (cf. John 2:25; 16:30; 21:17). Here he is apparently speaking in terms of his human nature" (note on Matthew 24:36). Scripture speaks the same way when it says He grew, was weary, was thirsty, was hungry, and was crucified, none of which is true of the divine nature. Paul describes the arrangement as self-emptying: He "emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant" (Philippians 2:7, ESV). The Council of Chalcedon in AD 451 fixed the language for holding both together.

The date belongs to the Father. The NLT Life Application Study Bible puts it this way: "the emphasis of this verse is not on Jesus' lack of knowledge but rather on the fact that no one but God has this knowledge. This is God the Father's secret to be revealed when he wills" (note on Mark 13:32).

Jesus is asked the same question a second time, after the resurrection, when no question of incarnational limitation is in view. He answers it the same way, and names the reason:

✝️ Acts 1:7 (ESV) 7 He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority."

Authority (ἐξουσία, exousia), not information. The day is the Father's to set and the Father's to disclose, and He has not disclosed it. Zechariah says the same of the day itself: "there shall be a unique day, which is known to the LORD" (14:7, ESV). The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible cites it at this point (note on Matthew 24:36).

That note also supplies the setting Jesus is speaking into: "Jewish teachers disagreed among themselves as to whether God had immutably fixed the day of redemption or whether it would depend on human cooperation. Some tried to calculate dates; others regarded such calculations as impossible." Jesus lands on the second side. He made the same move with the birth-pangs checklist at the start of the discourse (Matthew 24:6-8).

The Jewish wedding explanation, weighed

A widely taught explanation runs like this: in the betrothal custom the groom leaves to build an addition onto his father's house, the father alone judges when it is finished, and a groom asked when the wedding will be answers that only his father knows. On that reading Jesus is quoting a stock saying every listener would recognise, and disclaiming nothing at all.

The conclusion is right, and it is the conclusion Acts 1:7 reaches on firmer ground. The custom itself is the problem, on three counts:

  • The sourcing is devotional. The claim circulates through Messianic and dispensational teaching materials, and those materials cite each other. No Mishnah, Talmud or Josephus passage is produced for a father-approval gate on the groom's departure, and one source making the case concedes the idiom is "not categorically proven."
  • The scholarly cultural commentary explains the delay differently. On the ten virgins, the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible attributes the unpredictable timing to "the many preparations (and the bride's relatives haggling over the value of the gifts given them)" (note on Matthew 25:1), with the ceremony held at the groom's parents' home (note on 25:10). The father-approval gate does not appear.
  • The "idiom" mirrors the verse too closely. It is usually quoted as "I don't know, the angels don't know, only my father knows", which reproduces Matthew 24:36's own three-part structure of no one, nor the angels, nor the Son, but the Father. A saying that tracks a verse that closely is more likely to have been shaped by the verse than the verse by it.

A related suggestion fares slightly better and still falls short. Rosh Hashanah began on a new moon whose sighting had to be confirmed by witnesses before the court, and the Mishnah records that procedure in some detail. The pairs of witnesses were brought in separately and cross-questioned on where the moon stood and which way it leaned (m. Rosh Hashanah 2:6). Then came the declaration: "The head of the court says, 'Sanctified,' and all the people answer after him, 'Sanctified, sanctified'" (2:7, trans. Kulp). That much is documented. What is not documented is the step the argument needs: that "no one knows the day or hour" was a recognised idiom meaning Rosh Hashanah. And Jesus says day or hour, where the new-moon uncertainty concerns only the day.

The Rapture of the Church applies the same caution to the wedding pattern as a whole: the biblical use of betrothal language for Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:25-27; Revelation 19:7-9) is solid ground; a custom-by-custom reconstruction of first-century practice is not, and should not be asked to carry an argument on its own.