Mat 24:48 But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delays is coming;
Mat 24:49 And begins to smite [his] fellowservants, and to eat and drink with the drunken;

Alternative: But if one, an evil servant, says in his heart, "My master is taking his time coming." And begins to beat fellow servants and to eat and drink among the stupified.

While Christ is predicting the end of the temple, the end of our lives, and perhaps in some sense the end of the world, the point is that we don't know when that time is coming. There will be false prophets who claim to know, but they don't know.

Like God Himself, the time of our deaths is hidden for a reason. God is hidden so that we can be free. His "taking his time coming" is one aspect of God being hidden. We cannot know when our death comes so that we have time to prepare ourselves beforehand.

As we discussed in the last post about the problem of evil, to be free, people must have a choice on how to act and their actions must have consequences. These consequences harm others and, in the pursuit of pleasure, people also harm themselves. Here that harm is illustrated by beating others and drinking until stupified.

Symbolically, Christ uses wine to symbolize the mental realm because it take knowledge to create wine from grapes. Here is one aspect of that symbolism: the fact that an excess of wine leads to stupidity.

"Evil" is from kakos, which "bad," "ugly," "mean," "craven," "base," "wrothless," and "evil." This is the Greek adjective meaning "evil," not poneros, meaning "worthless," whiich is the most common word translated as "evil" in the NT. In Matthew, Christ only uses it here and in Mat 21:41 describing those who took over the vineyard they were renting.

"Delay" is from chronizô (chronizo), which means "to spend time," "continues," "to take time," and "to linger."

"Begins" is from archomai, which is a form of archô, which means "to be first," "to begin," "to make a beginning," "to rule," "to govern," and "to command."

"Smite" is from tuptô (tupto), which means "to beat," "to strike," and "to smite."

"Drunken" is from methuô (methuo), which means "to be drunken with wine," "drunkeness," and "to be intoxicated." It is a metaphor used to mean "to be stunned" and "to be stupified."