Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - 1 Corinthians 7:29 - 7:29
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
But this I say (touto de phēmi. Note phēmi here rather than legō (1Co 7:8, 1Co 7:12). A new turn is here given to the argument about the present necessity.
The time is shortened (ho kairos sunestalmenos estin). Perfect periphrastic passive indicative of sustellō, old verb to place together, to draw together. Only twice in the N.T., here and Act 5:6 which see. Found in the papyri for curtailing expenses. Calvin takes it for the shortness of human life, but apparently Paul pictures the foreshortening of time (opportunity) because of the possible nearness of and hope for the second coming. But in Philippians Paul faces death as his fate (Phi 1:21-26), though still looking for the coming of Christ (1Co 3:20).
That henceforth (to loipon hina). Proleptic position of to loipon before hina and in the accusative of general reference and hina has the notion of result rather than purpose (Robertson, Grammar, p. 997).
As though they had none (hōs mē echontes). This use of hōs with the participle for an assumed condition is regular and mē in the Koiné[28928]š is the normal negative of the participle. So the idiom runs on through 1Co 7:31.