What then makes those who give us this translation, prefer it to the phrase in the authorized version, ‘about my Father’s business’?

One or other of two causes—­most likely both together:  an ecclesiastical fancy, and the mere fact that he was found in the temple.  A mind ecclesiastical will presume the temple the fittest, therefore most likely place, for the Son of God to betake himself to, but such a mind would not be the first to reflect that the temple was a place where the Father was worshipped neither in spirit nor in truth—­a place built by one of the vilest rulers of this world, less fit than many another spot for the special presence of him of whom the prophet bears witness:  ’Thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.’  Jesus himself, with the same breath in which once he called it his father’s house, called it a den of thieves.  His expulsion from it of the buyers and sellers, was the first waft of the fan with which he was come to purge his father’s dominions.  Nothing could ever cleanse that house; his fanning rose to a tempest, and swept it out of his father’s world.

For the second possible cause of the change from business to temple—­the mere fact that he was found in the temple, can hardly be a reason for his expecting his parents to know that he was there; and if it witnessed to some way of thought or habit of his with which they were acquainted, it is, I repeat, difficult to see why the parents should fail to perceive what the interpreters have found so easily.  But the parents looked for a larger meaning in the words of such a son—­whose meaning at the same time was too large for them to find.

When, according to the Greek, the Lord, on the occasion already alluded to, says ‘my father’s house,’ he says it plainly; he uses the word house:  here he does not.

Let us see what lies in the Greek to guide us to the thought in the mind of the Lord when he thus reasoned with the apprehensions of his father and mother.  The Greek, taken literally, says, ’Wist ye not that I must be in the——­of my father?’ The authorized version supplies business; the revised, house.  There is no noun in the Greek, and the article ‘the’ is in the plural.  To translate it as literally as it can be translated, making of it an English sentence, the saying stands, ’Wist ye not that I must be in the things of my father?’ The plural article implies the English things; and the question is then, What things does he mean?  The word might mean affairs or business; but why the plural article should be contracted to mean house, I do not know.  In a great wide sense, no doubt, the word house might be used, as I am about to show, but surely not as meaning the temple.