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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comVincent Word Studies - Colossians 4:13 - 4:13
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Zeal (ζῆλον)
Read πόνον labor, which occurs elsewhere only in Rev 16:10, Rev 16:11; Rev 21:4, in the sense of pain. Πονος labor is from the root of πένομαι to work for one's daily bread, and thence to be poor. Πόνος toil, πένης one who works for his daily bread, and πονηρός wicked, have a common root. See on wickedness, Mar 7:22. In their original conceptions, κόπος labor (1Co 15:58; 2Co 6:5) emphasizes the fatigue of labor: μόχθος hard labor (2Co 11:27; 1Th 2:9), the hardship: πόνος the effort, but πόνος has passed, in the New Testament, in every instance but this, into the meaning of pain.
Hierapolis
The cities are named in geographical order. Laodicaea and Hierapolis faced each other on the north and south sides of the Lycus valley, about six miles apart. Colossae was ten or twelve miles farther up the stream. Hierapolis owed its celebrity to its warm mineral springs, its baths, and its trade in dyed wools. It was a center of the worship of the Phrygian goddess Cybele, whose rites were administered by mutilated priests known as Galli, and of other rites representing different oriental cults. Hence the name Hierapolis or sacred city.