Matthew 24:37-39 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

But as the days of Noe, &c.— The days of Noah signify the days in which he preached to the old world that righteousness which they ought to have practised, and denounced the judgments of God to fall on them, if they did not repent of their wickedness. By parity of reason, the days of the Son of Man signify the days in which Christ and his Apostles preached to the Jewish nation, whose behaviour here is said to have been the same with that of the old world, and of the Sodomites, under the preaching of Noah and Lot. See Luke 17:28. They went on secure, and wholly intent upon their worldly affairs, without being in the least moved by the repeated warnings of the divine judgments, which Jesus and his Apostles gave them; for which cause these judgments fell on them, and destroyed them. Dr. Woodward, in his Theory of the Earth, thinks, that the phrases eating and drinking, &c. were modest expressions to signify their giving themselves up to all the extravagances of riot and lust. And Wolfius upon the place has fully proved, that γαμιζθαι, is often used in a very criminal sense: but how great reason soever there may be to believe, that the antediluvian sinners did so, the words may be intended to express no more than the security and gaiety with which they pursued the usual employments and amusements of life, when they were on the very brink of utter destruction. See Doddridge.