Matthew 16:2,3 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

He—said unto them, &c.— Our Saviour's reply may be thus paraphrased: "It is most apparent that you ask this out of a desire to cavil, rather than to learn the divine will: for, in other cases you take up with degrees of evidence, far short of those which you here reject. As for instance, you readily say in an evening, It will be fair weather to-morrow; because the sky is, this evening, of a bright and fiery red: And in the morning,—It will be tempestuous weather to-day, for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, you know how to distinguish the face of the heavens, and to form thence probable conjectures concerning the weather, and can you not distinguish the signs of the present times? and see, by the various miracles which are daily performed among you, by the prophetic and various other tokens which attend my appearance, that this is indeed the period which you profess to desire with so much eagerness, and which you might discern with much less sagacity." Dr. Lightfoot has observed, that the Jews used to value themselves highly on their skill in prognosticating the weather; and Grotius, in his note on this place, has shewn what a variety of signs marked out that time for the arrival of the Messiah. The Syriac version, instead of the times, reads very well the time, Καιρον. See Doddridge, Lightfoot, and Grotius.