Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comVincent Word Studies - Romans 9:21 - 9:21
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Power (ἐξουσίαν)
Or right. See on Mar 2:10; see on Joh 1:12.
Lump (φυράματος)
From φυράω to mix so as to make into dough. Hence any substance mixed with water and kneaded. Philo uses it of the human frame as compounded. By the lump is here meant human nature with its moral possibilities, “but not yet conceived of in its definite, individual, moral stamp” (Meyer). The figure of man as clay molded by God carries us back to the earliest traditions of the creation of man (Gen 2:7). According to primitive ideas man is regarded as issuing from the earth. The traditions of Libya made the first human being spring from the plains heated by the sun. The Egyptians declared that the Nile mud, exposed to the heat of the sun, brought forth germs which sprang up as the bodies of men. A subsequent divine operation endowed these bodies with soul and intellect, and the divine fashioner appears upon some monuments molding clay, wherewith to form man, upon a potter's wheel. The Peruvians called the first man “animated earth;” and the Mandans of North America related that the Great Spirit molded two figures of clay, which he dried and animated with the breath of his mouth, one receiving the name of First Man, the other that of Companion. The Babylonian account, translated by Berosus, represents man as made of clay after the manner of a statue. See Francois Lenormant, “Beginnings of History.”
To make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor (ποιῆσαι ὃ μεν εἰς τιμὴν σκεῦος, ὃ δὲ εἰς ἀτιμίαν)
Rev., more correctly, to make one part a vessel unto honor, and another part, etc. For vessel, see on 1Pe 3:7; compare Mat 12:29; Act 9:15. The vessel here is the one which has just come from the potter's hand. Those in Rom 9:22 have been in household use.