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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - Acts 17:26 - 17:26
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
And he made of one (epoiēsen te exō henos). The word haimatos (blood) is absent from Aleph A B and is a later explanatory addition. What Paul affirms is the unity of the human race with a common origin and with God as the Creator. This view runs counter to Greek exclusiveness which treated other races as barbarians and to Jewish pride which treated other nations as heathen or pagan (the Jews were laos, the Gentiles ethnē). The cosmopolitanism of Paul here rises above Jew and Greek and claims the one God as the Creator of the one race of men. The Athenians themselves claimed to be antochthonous (indigenous) and a special creation. Zeno and Seneca did teach a kind of cosmopolitanism (really pantheism) far different from the personal God of Paul. It was Rome, not Greece, that carried out the moral ideas of Zeno. Man is part of the universe (Act 17:24) and God created (epoiēsen) man as he created (poiēsas) the all.
For to dwell (katoikein). Infinitive (present active) of purpose, so as to dwell.
Having determined (horisas). First aorist active participle of horizō, old verb to make a horizon as already in ActsAct 10:42 which see. Paul here touches God’s Providence. God has revealed himself in history as in creation. His hand appears in the history of all men as well as in that of the Chosen People of Israel.
Appointed seasons (prostetagmenous kairous). Not the weather as in Act 14:17, but “the times of the Gentiles” (kairoi ethnōn) of which Jesus spoke (Luk 21:24). The perfect passive participle of prostassō, old verb to enjoin, emphasizes God’s control of human history without any denial of human free agency as was involved in the Stoic Fate (Heirmarmenē).
Bounds (horothesias). Limits? Same idea in Job 12:23. Nations rise and fall, but it is not blind chance or hard fate. Thus there is an interplay between God’s will and man’s activities, difficult as it is for us to see with our shortened vision.