Passage

Mark 13.32

Book: Mark · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV (ASV)

"30. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, until all these things be accomplished. 31. Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away."

"32. But of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father."

"33. Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is. 34. It is as when a man, sojourning in another country, having left his house, and given authority to his servants, to each one his work, commanded also the porter to watch." (Mark 13:30-34, ASV)

WEB (WEB)

"30. Most certainly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things happen. 31. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away."

"32. But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

"33. Watch, keep alert, and pray; for you don’t know when the time is. 34. “It is like a man, traveling to another country, having left his house, and given authority to his servants, and to each one his work, and also commanded the doorkeeper to keep watch." (Mark 13:30-34, WEB)

KJV (KJV)

"30. Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done. 31. Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away."

"32. But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father."

"33. Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is. 34. For the Son of man is as a man taking a far journey, who left his house, and gave authority to his servants, and to every man his work, and commanded the porter to watch." (Mark 13:30-34, KJV)

YLT (YLT)

"30. Verily I say to you, that this generation may not pass away till all these things may come to pass; 31. the heaven and the earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away."

"32. 'And concerning that day and the hour no one hath known, not even the messengers who are in the heaven, not even the Son, except the Father."

"33. Take heed, watch and pray, for ye have not known when the time is; 34. as a man who is gone abroad, having left his house, and given to his servants the authority, and to each one his work, did command also the porter that he may watch;" (Mark 13:30-34, YLT)

Setting

Speaker: Mark / John Mark (traditionally, on Peter's preaching) / narrator + Jesus's direct teaching
Audience: Gentile-Roman Christian audience (heavy explanation of Jewish customs)
Location: first-century Palestine (events); Rome (likely composition)
Time period: events c. 4 BC, AD 30/33; composed c. AD 55-70

Theological reading

Mark 13:32 is the single most-deployed verse in the popular debate circuit against the deity of Christ. Atheists (Bart Ehrman, the New Atheist tradition), Unitarians, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Muslim polemicists all read the verse as a self-defeating admission by Jesus that He is not omniscient and therefore not God. The historic Church has read the verse very differently for sixteen centuries, with three converging exegetical moves that operate on (1) the Greek verb at issue, (2) the grammar of the incarnation, and (3) the pedagogical structure of the discourse. The full defeater treatment lives at Jesus Didnt Know the Hour Objection Defeater; what follows is the passage-level exegesis.

The Greek verb (oiden)

The verb is οἶδεν (oiden), the third-person singular of [[G1492 - oida|oida]] (G1492). Oida is the perfect-active of an unused present εἴδω, functioning as a present-tense verb in NT Greek; it names settled, intuitive, possessed knowing, the state of having known, by contrast with [[G1097 - ginosko|ginōskō]] (G1097), which names progressive, learned, relational knowing through encounter or instruction. (Compare John 21:17, where Peter uses both verbs in adjacent clauses: "Lord, You know (oidas) all things; You know (ginōskeis) that I love You.")

The verb's semantic range, attested in BDAG, Thayer, and the patristic exegetical tradition, includes a declarative-disclosure sense: "to make known," "to disclose," "to acknowledge" (see G1492 - oida §"Semantic range" sense 4). This sense is what runs in the idiomatic ouk oida of Matt 25:12 (the bridegroom, "I do not know you", = covenant-disavowal), Matt 26:72-74 (Peter's denial, = "I do not acknowledge"), John 9:25 (the blind man, "whether He is a sinner I do not know", = "it is not mine to declare"), and 2 Cor 12:2-3 (Paul on the third-heaven vision, "whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows", = disavowal of the disclosure-role).

On the declarative-disclosure reading, "of that day or hour no one knows (oiden)" names who has the disclosure-role for the timing, not who has cognitive grasp of it. The verse partitions the disclosure-economy: not the angels, not the Son (in His earthly teaching role), but the Father. This reading is internally cued by the verse itself, which explicitly excludes the Father from the disclaimer; if no one knows meant no party has the information, the Father would not know either. The verse's own structure ("no one... but the Father alone") requires reading knowing as partitioned across the disclosure-economy.

The two-natures grammar (Chalcedon, communicatio idiomatum)

The historic Church holds that Christ is one Person in two natures, fully divine and fully human, the two natures united in the one Person without confusion, change, division, or separation (the Chalcedonian Definition, AD 451; see Hypostatic Union). The grammatical rule that follows is the communicatio idiomatum: what is true of one nature can be predicated of the Person via communication-of-properties. We say truly that "God died on the cross" (true of the Person according to His human nature, in which He genuinely died) without affirming that the divine nature died (which would be Patripassianism). We say truly that "the Son created the world" (true of the Person according to His divine nature, in which He is the eternal Logos) without affirming the human nature pre-existed the incarnation.

Mark 13:32 follows the same grammar. "The Son does not know" is true of the Person Christ according to His humanity; the divine nature, which is the Logos through whom all things were made (John 1:3) and who knows the Father as the Father knows Him (Matt 11:27), retains omniscience without contradiction. The same Person, holding the same office (Son), can be said to know (of His divinity) and to not know (of His humanity, considered in itself, or in His earthly teaching role), because the predicates distribute across the two natures.

The patristic-Christological development of this reading runs from Athanasius (Orationes contra Arianos 3.42-50, against the Arian deployment of Mark 13:32: "as Word He knew; as man He was ignorant; for it belongs to flesh to be ignorant") through Gregory of Nazianzus (Oration 30.15-16, treating the verse explicitly), Cyril of Alexandria (Thesaurus §22; Quod unus sit Christus, formalizing the communicatio grammar), and John of Damascus (De Fide Orthodoxa 3.21-22, consolidating: "the Son knows according to His divinity; the Son's humanity, considered in itself, did not have all knowledge intuitively, though it had the fullness of knowledge available through the hypostatic union").

The pedagogical-economy reading

A third patristic track reads the verse as pedagogical-economic: Christ's "I do not know" functions to redirect the disciples from speculation about timing toward readiness, in line with the watchfulness conclusion of the same discourse (Mk 13:33-37) and the parallel at Acts 1:7. John Chrysostom (Homilies on Matthew 77.1, on Matt 24:36): "He withheld the knowledge from them as a Father from his little children; not because He did not know, but because it was not expedient that they should know." Gregory the Great (Homilies on Ezekiel 1.8.31) extends the move ecclesially: the Son qua head of the Body does not yet make known the day because the Body does not yet need to know. John Calvin (Commentaries on Matthew on 24:36): Christ "did not, on his own account, know the day, but as it was not necessary that he should know it."

The pedagogical-economic reading is internally confirmed by Acts 1:7, where the resurrected (post-incarnation-limitation) Christ still delivers the not yours to know answer: "It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority." The structural point is not kenotic limitation but disclosure-economy: timing is the Father's prerogative; the disciples' task is faithful witness, not date-calculation.

The common-colloquial parallel

The patristic declarative-idiom reading is not exotic; it is how "I don't know" commonly functions in ordinary speech across cultures and eras. A parent to children asking when they will arrive at the destination says "I don't know" as a redirect, not as a cognitive report. A judge facing the press says "I don't know what the verdict will be" as disclosure-disavowal, not memory failure. A friend asked about a third party's secret says "I don't know" as a not-mine-to-say move. A first-century Jewish steward speaking for the master's plans says "the master has not made it known": the steward speaks for the master's disclosure-economy, not for the master's intellect.

The Semitic-cultural register specifically deploys knowing as acknowledging, declaring, publishing, avowing across the OT (Amos 3:2, "you only have I known of all the families of the earth", = covenant-election; Ps 1:6, "the Lord knows the way of the righteous", = covenantal acknowledgment; Matt 7:23, "I never knew you", = covenant-disavowal). A first-century Jewish audience would have heard "the Son does not know" in this register much more naturally than a 21st-century post-Enlightenment audience does.

The canonical Christology check

Read in isolation, Mark 13:32 might appear to license the strict cognitive-blank reading. Read in canonical context, that reading generates contradictions with the rest of the NT's depiction of Christ's knowledge. Christ knows the thoughts of His opponents (Matt 9:4; Luke 6:8; John 2:24-25); knows what is in man (John 2:25); predicts His own passion in detail (Mk 8:31; 9:31; 10:33-34); predicts Peter's denial down to the rooster's crow (Mk 14:30); predicts the Temple's destruction with siege-detail precision (Mk 13:1-2; Luke 19:43-44); is acknowledged by Peter as "You know all things" (John 21:17, oida) and accepts the attribution. Mark itself, the Gospel that contains 13:32, depicts Christ's supernatural knowledge in 2:8; 5:30; 8:17; 12:15; 14:13-15. The patristic distinctions (the oida range, the two-natures grammar, the pedagogical economy) are what make Mark 13:32 coherent with the rest of the canonical Christology, not a contrivance to evade it.

Kenotic Christology (a contested modern alternative)

Nineteenth-century kenotic Christology (Gottfried Thomasius, Charles Gore) proposed a fourth move: the Son voluntarily emptied Himself (ekenōsen heauton, Phil 2:7) of certain relative divine attributes (omniscience, omnipotence) in the incarnation, while retaining the essential divine attributes. On a kenotic reading, the Son's "I do not know" is literal: the Son set aside operative-omniscience in the economy of the incarnation. Critics (Charles Hodge; Berkhof; classical Reformed dogmatics) hold that kenoticism compromises divine immutability and simplicity and that the patristic two-natures grammar accomplishes the same explanatory work without the metaphysical cost. The defeater treatment at Jesus Didnt Know the Hour Objection Defeater holds the two-natures answer as primary; kenoticism appears as a contested alternative that some modern (especially Lutheran and Anglican) theologians deploy. (See also Hypostatic Union §"Kenotic Christologies" for the broader doctrinal landscape.)

Application

The verse's payoff is what the next four verses develop: "Take heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is..." (Mk 13:33-37). The disposition the verse demands is watchfulness, not date-calculation. The atheist deployment of Mark 13:32 against Christ's deity inverts the verse's purpose: the verse was given to redirect us from speculation toward readiness; treating it as a doctrinal-epistemic-status report on Christ's intellect is to extract the discourse-move from the discourse it lives in. The patristic, Reformed, and classical-Christian reading lets Mark 13:32 do what Christ said it would do: make us watch.

Key words

G3962 - pater, pater (Strong's G3962). Also appears in: Matthew 5.48, Matthew 6.25-26, Matthew 6.25-34.
G5207 - huios, huios (Strong's G5207). Also appears in: Matthew 1.1, Matthew 1.20, Matthew 1.21.
G1492 - oida, oiden (3rd-person perfect of oida, Strong's G1492). The load-bearing verb of this verse. Patristic exegesis turns on the verb's declarative-disclosure sense alongside its settled-intuitive sense. Compare uses at John 7:29; 8:55; 21:17 (Christ's settled knowledge of the Father / Peter's "You know all things"); and the negative-declarative idiom at Matt 25:12; 26:72; John 9:25; 2 Cor 12:2-3.

Quoted in

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.