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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - Colossians 2:1 - 2:1
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
How greatly I strive (hēlikon agōna echō). Literally, “how great a contest I am having.” The old adjectival relative hēlikos (like Latin quantus) is used for age or size in N.T. only here and Jam 3:5 (twice, how great, how small). It is an inward contest of anxiety like the merimna for all the churches (2Co 11:28). Agōna carries on the metaphor of agōnizomenos in Col 1:29.
For them at Laodicea (tōn en Laodikiāi).
Supply huper as with huper humōn. Paul’s concern extended beyond Colossae to Laodicea (Col 4:16) and to Hierapolis (Col 4:13), the three great cities in the Lycus Valley where Gnosticism was beginning to do harm. Laodicea is the church described as lukewarm in Rev 3:14.
For as many as have not seen my face (hosoi ouch heorakan to prosōpon mou). The phrase undoubtedly includes Hierapolis (Col 4:13), and a few late MSS. actually insert it here. Lightfoot suggests that Hierapolis had not yet been harmed by the Gnostics as much as Colossae and Laodicea. Perhaps so, but the language includes all in that whole region who have not seen Paul’s face in the flesh (that is, in person, and not in picture). How precious a real picture of Paul would be to us today. The antecedent to hosoi is not expressed and it would be toutōn after huper. The form heorakan (perfect active indicative of horaō instead of the usual heōrakasin has two peculiarities o in Paul’s Epistles (1Co 9:1) instead of ō (see note on Joh 1:18 for heōraken) and ̇an by analogy in place of ̇asin, which short form is common in the papyri. See note on Luk 9:36 heōrakan.