Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comVincent Word Studies - Romans 1:27 - 1:27
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Burned (ἐξεκαύθησαν)
The terms are terrible in their intensity. Lit., burned out. The preposition indicates the rage of the lust.
Lust (ὀρέξει)
Only here in the New Testament. It is a reaching out after something with the purpose of appropriating it. In later classical Greek it is the most general term for every kind of desire, as the appetite for food. The peculiar expressiveness of the word here is sufficiently evident from the context.
That which is unseemly (τὴν ἀσχημοσύνην)
Primarily, want of form, disfigurement. Plato contrasts it with εὐσχημοσύνη gracefulness (“Symposium,” 196).
Which was meet (ἔδει)
Rev., was due, which is better, though the word expresses a necessity in the nature of the case - that which must needs be as the consequence of violating the divine law.
The prevalence of this horrible vice is abundantly illustrated in the classics. See Aristophanes, “Lysistrata,” 110; Plato, “Symposium,” 191; Lucian, “Amores,” 18; “Dialogi Meretricii,” v., 2; Juvenal, vi., 311; Martial, i., 91; vii., 67. See also Becker's “Charicles;” Forsyth's “Life of Cicero,” pp. 289, 336; and Dollinger's “Heathen and Jew,” ii., 273 sqq. Dollinger remarks that in the whole of the literature of the ante-Christian period, hardly a writer has decisively condemned it. In the Doric states, Crete and Sparta, the practice was favored as a means of education, and was acknowledged by law. Even Socrates could not forbear feeling like a Greek on this point (see Plato's “Charmides”). In Rome, in the earlier centuries of the republic, it was of rare occurrence; but at the close of the sixth century it had become general. Even the best of the emperors, Antoninus and Trajan, were guilty.
On the Apostle's description Bengel remarks that “in stigmatizing we must often call a spade a spade. The unchaste usually demand from others an absurd modesty.” Yet Paul's reserve is in strong contrast with the freedom of pagan writers (see Eph 5:12). Meyer notes that Paul delineates the female dishonor in less concrete traits than the male.