Matthew 16:2-3: red sky at night, doubtful in the morning
The red-sky sayings in Matthew 16:2-3 have a disputed place in the text: the shorter reading omits the weather lesson, while the longer reading includes it. Early witnesses omit it; several editions retain it.
The APB text at this verse
The manuscripts, editions, and versions
The committee record at this verse
The APB is translated by a committee of language models that works blind. The translators are never told they are translating the Bible, never given a book name or a verse number, and never shown the witnesses listed above. Where the manuscripts disagree, the choice between readings is made before translation by the same kind of translator working the same way: it sees the competing readings and the witnesses by age and class, but never a reference or a manuscript name. There are 14,877 such places. For APB 4.0 every one was decided again in October 2026. GPT-6.1 Sol decided every one first. Claude Fable 5.1, from another model family, decided 2,483 of them second, including every place where the first translator left the base text. A departure from the base text needs both translators to agree and the first to be at least 0.8 confident. There is no third translator, so the base text stands when the two disagree. APB 4.0 is translated over those decisions. Whatever was done at this verse was done on the language and the evidence alone, and the record is public.
“The base text reads Ὀψίας γενομένης … οὐ δύνασθε. The copies also carry the omission [greek majuscule; early greek manuscript tradition]; the committee kept the base text. The two readers disagreed: the first chose the other wording and the second kept the base text. A departure needs both, so the base text stands. The weather saying is missing from several weighty copies and may be a later addition. The committee keeps it as the default but with real doubt, and it deserves a note.”
“The base text reads τὸ. The copies also carry Ὑποκριταί τὸ [later majority tradition]; the committee kept the base text. The earlier shorter wording explains the later expansion and supports the default.”
The committee kept the weather sayings as the base text for APB 4.0. Its note states: "The committee keeps it as the default but with real doubt, and it deserves a note." The first translator, GPT-6.1 Sol (OpenAI), chose the omission. The second translator, Claude Fable 5.1 (Anthropic), kept the base text. Their disagreement left the base text in place. The committee's printed text includes both the evening prediction of fair weather and the morning prediction of a storm, followed by the challenge about discerning the signs of the times.
The argument for each reading
If the proverb drifted in
Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and several early versions do not have the weather sayings. Their omission gives the shorter reading its strongest support: the oldest witnesses named for this passage move through the exchange without the weather lesson. Westcott-Hort double-brackets the passage, marking doubt about its place in the text.
If the proverb entered the passage later, the shorter reading preserves the exchange in which Jesus refuses the sign without first discussing the sky. The omission changes the shape of his response. It removes the comparison between interpreting the weather and discerning the signs of the times.
If Matthew wrote it
Tregelles, NA28, and the Byzantine text retain the weather sayings. Their inclusion gives the longer reading support across the named editions and textual tradition. The passage also makes a connected comparison: Jesus describes judgments about evening and morning skies, then challenges his hearers over their inability to discern the signs of the times.
If Matthew wrote the proverb, this comparison belongs to the response itself. The weather lesson gives the challenge a concrete example drawn from ordinary observation. Its coherence explains its role in the longer reading, though coherence alone cannot settle the question raised by the early omissions.
The uncertainty concerns whether the weather lesson belongs in Matthew's account. Early omission and retention in the named editions pull in different directions, and the committee's decision preserves that uncertainty in its note. The variant changes the presence of the weather comparison. The surrounding encounter still concerns a demand for a sign, and no doctrine needs to be decided by this wording alone.
Related entries
Witness readings for critical editions are quoted from the SBLGNT apparatus (CC BY 4.0); Hebrew text from the Westminster Leningrad Codex (Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible). Readings of ancient manuscripts and versions are cited from the sources linked above.