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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comVincent Word Studies - Romans 16:1 - 16:1
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
I commend (συνίστημι)
See on Rom 3:5.
Phoebe
The bearer of the epistle. The word means bright. In classical Greek an epithet of Artemis (Diana) the sister of Phoebus Apollo.
Servant (διάκονον)
The word may be either masculine or feminine. Commonly explained as deaconess. The term διακόνισσα deaconess is found only in ecclesiastical Greek. The “Apostolical Constitutions” distinguish deaconesses from widows and virgins, prescribe their duties, and a form for their ordination. Pliny the younger, about a.d. 104, appears to refer to them in his letter to Trajan, in which he speaks of the torture of two maids who were called minestrae (female ministers). The office seems to have been confined mainly to widows, though virgins were not absolutely excluded. Their duties were to take care of the sick and poor, to minister to martyrs and confessors in prison, to instruct catechumens, to assist at the baptism of women, and to exercise a general supervision over the female church-members. Tryphaena, Tryphosa, and Persis (Rom 16:12) may have belonged to this class. See on 1Ti 5:3-16. Conybeare (“Life and Epistles of St. Paul”) assumes that Phoebe was a widow, on the ground that she could not, according to Greek manners, have been mentioned as acting in the independent manner described, either if her husband had been living or she had been unmarried. Renan says: “Phoebe carried under the folds of her robe the whole future of Christian theology.”
Cenchrea
More correctly, Cenchreae. Compare Act 18:18 Corinth, from which the epistle was sent, was situated on an isthmus, and had three ports, Cenchreae on the east side, and Lechaeum on the west of the isthmus, with Schoenus, a smaller port, also on the eastern side, at the narrowest point of the isthmus. Cenchreae was nine miles from Corinth. It was a thriving town, commanding a large trade with Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, Thessalonica, and the other cities of the Aegean. It contained temples of Venus, Aesculapius, and Isis. The church there was perhaps a branch of that at Corinth.