Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - 1 Timothy 6:8 - 6:8
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
1Ti_6:8. Ἔχοντες δέ ] De Wette thinks that for δέ we should have had οὖν . This is certainly right; still the bearing of this verse on the previous one would have been different from what it is now. The apostle used δέ because he had in mind the contrast to those striving after earthly gain.
διατροφὰς καὶ σκεπάσματα ] The same collocation in Sextus Empiricus, Book ix. 1; the two expressions only occur here in the N. T. ( διατροφή , 1Ma_6:49). Σκέπασμα , the covering, hence both clothing and dwelling. Here it is to be taken in the former sense; de Wette, Wiesinger, van Oosterzee, and others include both senses in it; but it is more than improbable that one word should be used to denote two different objects. Chrysostom: τοιαῦτα ἀμφιέννυσθαι , ἃ σκεπάσαι μόνον ἡμᾶς ὀφείλει καὶ περιστεῖλαι τὴν γύμνωσιν . In food and clothing the necessary wants of life are also elsewhere summed up; comp. Mat_6:25; Jam_2:15; Gen_28:20.
τούτοις ἀρκεσθησόμεθα ] “we will be content with them.” Hofmann’s explanation is wrong: “so will we have enough of them.” The passive ἀρκεῖσθαι occurs as a personal verb only in the sense of “be content with;” comp. Luk_3:14; Heb_13:5; 3Jn_1:10; 2Ma_5:16; 4Ma_6:22; so, too, continually in profane writers; comp, Pape, s.v.
The future is here taken imperatively by several expositors. It is well known that the imperative is often expressed by the future, but there is no passage which exactly corresponds with this (comp. Buttmann, p. 221). It is better, therefore, to take the future here in the sense of sure expectation (so de Wette, Wiesinger, van Oosterzee, Plitt; comp. Winer, p. 296 [E. T. p. 396]).