And pray ye that your flight be not in the winter.
And pray ye that it be not in the winter.
and pray ye that your flight may not be in winter,
And pray that it may not be in winter time;
Mark — The Gospel of the servant in motion. The narrative hinges at Peter's confession (8:27). Before: the Servant revealed. After: the Servant suffers.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread — the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
Voices3
Hippolytus otherwise interprets that which is said in the Gospel, When indeed ye shall see the pollution of desolation : for he says that it is not concerning the Jews, and the laying waste of Jerusalem, that these things are said, but concerning the end of Antichrist. The elect he speaks of are the Christians who are in this conflict. And He says, Pray that ye fly not on the Sabbath or in winter : i. e.
Hippolytus of Rome· AGAINST GAIUS 5, 235patristic
And pray ye that your flight be not in winter. When days are short, roads bad, the weather inclement; and when to lodge in mountains, is very incommodious, and uncomfortable. The Persic version adds, "neither on the sabbath day"; See Gill on Mat 24:20.
John Gill· Exposition of the New Testament (1746-1748)reformed
If there be no remedy but that trouble must come, yet we may desire and pray that, if it be God's will, the circumstances of it may be so ordered as to be a mitigation of the trouble; and when things are bad, we ought to consider they might have been worse. It is bad to be forced to flee, but it would have been worse if it had been in the winter.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710puritan
