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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comVincent Word Studies - Revelation 2:14 - 2:14
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Doctrine (διδαχὴν)
Rev., better, teaching.
Balaam
See Num 25:1-9; Num 31:15, Num 31:16. Compare 2Pe 2:15; Jud 1:11.
A stumbling-block (σκάνδαλον)
See on offend, Mat 5:29, and see on offense, Mat 16:23.
Before (ἐνώπιον)
Lit., in the sight of. See on Luk 24:11.
Things sacrificed to idols (εἰδωλόθυτα)
In the A.V. the word is rendered in four different ways: meats offered to idols (Act 15:29): things offered to idols (Act 21:25): things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols (1Co 8:4); and as here Rev., uniformly, things sacrificed to idols.
The eating of idol meats, which was no temptation to the Jewish Christian, was quite otherwise to the Gentile. The act of sacrifice, among all ancient nations, was a social no less than a religious act. Commonly only a part of the victim was consumed as an offering, and the rest became the portion of the priests, was given to the poor, or was sold again in the markets. Hence sacrifice and feast were identified. The word originally used for killing in sacrifice (θύειν) obtained the general sense of killing (Act 10:13). Among the Greeks this identification was carried to the highest pitch. Thucydides enumerates sacrifices among popular entertainments. “We have not forgotten,” he says, “to provide for our weary spirits many relaxations from toil. We have regular games and sacrifices throughout the year” (ii., 38). So Aristotle: “And some fellowships seem to be for the sake of pleasure; those of the followers of Love, and those of club-diners; for these are for the sake of sacrifice and social intercourse” (“Ethics,” viii., 9, 5). Suetonius relates of Claudius, the Roman Emperor, that, on one occasion, while in the Forum of Augustus, smelling the odor of the banquet which was being prepared for the priests in the neighboring temple of Mars, he left the tribunal and placed himself at the table with the priests (“Claudius,” 33). Also how Vitellius would snatch from the altar-fire the entrails of victims and the corn, and consume them (“Vitellius,” 13). Thus, for the Gentile, “refusal to partake of the idol-meats involved absence from public and private festivity, a withdrawal, in great part, from the social life of his time.” The subject is discussed by Paul in Romans 14:2-21, and 1 Corinthians 8:1-11:1. The council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) forbade the eating of meat offered to idols, not as esteeming it forbidden by the Mosaic law, but as becoming a possible occasion of sin to weak Christians. In his letter to the Corinthians, among whom the Jewish and more scrupulous party was the weaker, Paul, in arguing with the stronger and more independent party, never alludes to the decree of the Jerusalem council, but discusses the matter from the stand-point of the rights of conscience. While he admits the possibility of a blameless participation in a banquet, even in the idol-temple, he dissuades from it on the ground of its dangerous consequences to weak consciences, and as involving a formal recognition of the false worship which they had renounced at their baptism. “In the Epistle to the Romans we see the excess to which the scruples of the weaker brethren were carried, even to the pitch of abstaining altogether from animal food; as, ill the Nicolaitans of the Apocalyptic churches, we see the excess of the indifferentist party, who plunged without restraint into all the pollutions, moral as well as ceremonial, with which the heathen rites were accompanied” (Stanley, “On Corinthians”). “It may be noted as accounting for the stronger and more vehement language of the Apocalypse, considered even as a simply Human book, that the conditions of the case had altered. Christians and heathen were no longer dwelling together, as at Corinth, with comparatively slight interruption to their social intercourse, but were divided by a sharp line of demarcation. The eating of things sacrificed to idols was more and more a crucial test, involving a cowardly shrinking from the open confession of a Christian's faith. Disciples who sat at meat in the idol's temple were making merry with those whose hands were red with the blood of their fellow-worshippers, and whose lips had uttered blaspheming scoffs against the Holy Name” (Plumptre).
In times of persecution, tasting the wine of the libations or eating meat offered to idols, was understood to signify recantation of Christianity.