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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comVincent Word Studies - Acts 17:24 - 17:24
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God
With the article: “the God.”
The world (τὸν κόσμον)
Originally, order, and hence the order of the world; the ordered universe. So in classical Greek. In the Septuagint, never the world, but the ordered total of the heavenly bodies; the host of heaven (Deuteronomy 4:19; 17:3; Isaiah 24:21; 40:26). Compare, also, Pro 17:6, and see note on Jam 3:6. In the apocryphal books, of the universe, and mainly in the relation between God and it arising out of the creation. Thus, the king of the world (2 Maccabees 7:9); the creator or founder of the world (2 Maccabees 7:23); the great potentate of the world (2 Maccabees 12:15). In the New Testament: 1. In the classical and physical sense, the universe (Joh 17:5; Joh 21:25.; Rom 1:20; Eph 1:4, etc.). 2. As the order of things of which man is the centre (Mat 13:38; Mar 16:15; Luk 9:25; Joh 16:21; Eph 2:12; 1Ti 6:7). 3. Humanity as it manifests itself in and through this order (Mat 18:7; 2Pe 2:5; 2Pe 3:6; Rom 3:19). Then, as sin has entered and disturbed the order of things, and made a breach between the heavenly and the earthly order, which are one in the divine ideal - 4. The order of things which is alienated from God, as manifested in and by the human race: humanity as alienated from God, and acting in opposition to him (Joh 1:10; Joh 12:31; Joh 15:18, Joh 15:19; 1Co 1:21; 1Jo 2:15, etc.). The word is used here in the classical sense of the visible creation, which would appeal to the Athenians. Stanley, speaking of the name by which the Deity is known in the patriarchal age, the plural Elohim, notes that Abraham, in perceiving that all the Elohim worshipped by the numerous clans of his race meant one God, anticipated the declaration of Paul in this passage (“Jewish Church,” i., 25). Paul's statement strikes at the belief of the Epicureans, that the world was made by “a fortuitous concourse of atoms,” and of the Stoics, who denied the creation of the world by God, holding either that God animated the world, or that the world itself was God.
Made with hands (χιεροποιήτοις)
Probably pointing to the magnificent temples above and around him. Paul's epistles abound in architectural metaphors. He here employs the very words of Stephen, in his address to the Sanhedrim, which he very probably heard. See Act 7:48.