1 Timothy 6:15

καιροῖς ἰδίοις : See note on 1 Timothy 2:6. In due season may refer primarily either to the appropriateness of the occasion of the ἐπιφάνεια or to the supreme will of the δυνάστης. The wording of the discouragement given by Jesus, in Acts 1:7, to those who would pry into the future makes it natural to suppose that this latter notion chiefly was in St. Paul's mind here (καιροὺς οὓς ὁ πατὴρ ἔθετο ἐν τῇ ἰδίᾳ ἐξουσίᾳ). We may perhaps put it thus: A devout mind recognises the providential ordering of past events as having taken place at the time best fitted for them, and shrinks from the presumption of guessing the appropriate time for future events. Thus there is no presumption in saying “When the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his Son”; and when the time is ripe, He will send Him again (Acts 3:20).

δείξει : Ell. well explains the force of this verb from John 2:18, τί σημεῖον δεικνύεις ἡμῖν; The last ἐπιφάνεια will be the final proof offered by God to the human race.

The terms of this magnificent characterisation of God are an expansion of the epithets in the doxology in 1 Timothy 1:17 q.v.

μακάριος : See on 1 Timothy 1:11. Philo (de Sacrific. Abelis et Caini, p. 147) has the remarkable parallel, περὶ θεοῦ τοῦ ἀγεννήτου, καὶ ἀφθάρτου, καὶ ἀτρέπτου, καὶ ἁγίου, καὶ μόνου μακαρίου.

δυνάστης is found as a title of God in the Apocrypha. See reff., esp. 2Ma 3:24, ὁ … δυνάστης ἐπιφανίαν μεγάλην ἐποίησεν. It occurs in the ordinary sense, Luke 1:52; Acts 8:27. The choice of the phrase μόνος δυν. here was perhaps suggested by the thought of His absolute and irresponsible power in arranging the times and seasons for the affairs of men. It is unnecessary to seek any special polemical object in μόνος, as exclusive of dualism. As has been already suggested (on 1 Timothy 1:17), the predications of glory to God that occur in these epistles are probably repeated from eucharistic prayers uttered by St. Paul in the discharge of his prophetic liturgical functions.

ὁ βασιλεύς, κ. τ. λ.: The Vulg. renders rather inconsistently, Rex regum et Dominus dominantium. So also in Revelation 19:16. It is not quite obvious why the phrase is varied from the usual βασιλεὺς βασιλέων (2Ma 13:4; Revelation 17:14; Revelation 19:16) and Κύριος [τῶν] Κυρίων (Deuteronomy 10:17; Psalms 136:3; Enoch ix. 4). Perhaps the participle gives new vigour to a phrase that had lost its freshness.