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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comVincent Word Studies - 1 John 2:7 - 2:7
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Brethren (ἀδελφοὶ)
The correct reading is ἀγαπηοί beloved. The first occurrence of this title, which is suggested by the previous words concerning the relation of love.
No new commandment (οὐκ ἐντολὴν καινὴν)
The Rev., properly, places these words first in the sentence as emphatic, the point of the verse lying in the antithesis between the new and the old. On new, see on Mat 26:29.
Old (παλαιὰν)
Four words are used in the New Testament for old or elder. Of these γέρων and πρεσβύτερος refer merely to the age of men, or, the latter, to official position based primarily upon age. Hence the official term elder. Between the two others, ἀρχαῖος and παλαιός, the distinction is not sharply maintained. Ἁρχαῖος emphasizes the reaching back to a beginning (ἀρχή) Thus Satan is “that old (ἀρχαῖος) serpent,” whose evil work was coeval with the beginning of time (Rev 7:9; Rev 20:2). The world before the flood is “the old (ἀρχαῖος) world” (2Pe 2:5). Mnason was “an old (ἀρχαῖος) disciple;” not aged, but having been a disciple from the beginning (Act 21:16). Sophocles, in “Trachiniae,” 555, gives both words. “I had an old (παλαιὸν) gift,” i.e., received long ago, “from the old (ἀρχαίου) Centaur.” The Centaur is conceived as an old-world creature, belonging to a state of things which has passed away. It carries, therefore, the idea of old fashioned: peculiar to an obsolete state of things.
Παλαιός carries the sense of worn out by time, injury, sorrow, or other causes. Thus the old garment (Mat 9:16) is παλαιόν. So the old wine-skins (Mat 9:17). The old men of a living generation compared with the young of the same generation are παλαιοί. In παλαιός the simple conception of time dominates. In ἀρχαῖος there is often a suggestion of a character answering to the remote age.
The commandment is here called old because it belonged to the first stage of the Christian church. Believers had had it from the beginning of their Christian faith.
Commandment
The commandment of love. Compare Joh 13:34. This commandment is fulfilled in walking as Christ walked. Compare Eph 5:1, Eph 5:2.