Knew not. They would not comprehend the signs of the coming judgment, or, at any rate, refused to profit by them, preferring their own carnal pleasures to the care of their souls and the amendment of their lives.
The Lord assures us that similar recklessness and unbelief will be found at his coming. Doubtless anguish and fear will fill many hearts, but the general feeling will be incredulity, and a false security which refuses to take warning.
Sadler compares it to Belshazzar's feast at the very moment of danger, and the Athenians' insensibility at the time of the great plague, when the people seemed to be exemplifying the maxim, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die" (Isaiah 22:18).
"For like as when the ark was making, they believed not; but while it was set in the midst of them, proclaiming beforehand the evils that are to come, they, when they saw it, lived in pleasure … so also now, antichrist, indeed, shall appear, after whom is the end, and the punishments at the end, and vengeance intolerable; but they that are held by the intoxication of wickedness [comp.
Wis. 4:12] shall not so much as perceive the dreadful nature of the things that are on the point of being done. Wherefore also Paul saith, 'as travail upon a woman with child' [1 Thessalonians 5:8], even so shall those fearful and incurable evils come upon them" (Chrysostom, 'Hom.
,' in loc.). Morisen considers that Christ is not blaming the antediluvians, but simply referring to the fact that up to the last moment they were ignorant of the impending catastrophe. But this seems inadequate.