¹ sn The contrast between hate and love here is rhetorical. The point is that one will choose the favorite if a choice has to be made.

² tn Or “and treat [the other] with contempt.”

³ tn Grk “God and mammon.”

sn The term money is used to translate mammon, the Aramaic term for wealth or possessions. The point is not that money is inherently evil, but that it is often misused so that it is a means of evil; see 1 Tim 6:6-10, 17-19. God must be first, not money or possessions.

⁴ tn Grk “sons of the wedding hall,” an idiom referring to wedding guests, or more specifically friends of the bridegroom present at the wedding celebration (L&N 11.7).

⁵ sn The expression while the bridegroom is with them is an allusion to messianic times (John 3:29; Isa 54:5-6; 62:4-5; 4 Ezra 2:15, 38).

⁶ tn Grk “days.”

⁷ sn The statement the bridegroom will be taken from them is a veiled allusion by Jesus to his death, which he did not make explicit until the incident at Caesarea Philippi in 16:13ff.

⁸ tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated.

⁹ sn Judaism had a similar exhortation in 4 Macc 13:14-15.

¹⁰ sn See the note on the word hell in 5:22.

¹¹ tn Or “red and gloomy” (L&N 14.56).

¹² tn Grk “The face of the sky you know how to discern.”