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The word here used, and translated profited, may be interpreted either of his own personal proficiency, and going on in the Jewish religion, or of his propagating of it, and making that to go on, which seemeth to be the sense of the same word, 2Ti_2:16. And it is observed, that active verbs in the Greek in imitation of the Heb. con. Pihil., sometimes signify to do an action oneself, sometimes to make others do it; and Paul’s wasting the Christian church had a rational tendency to uphold and propagate Judaism, the propagation of which was the end designed by it; this he saith he did above others of his countrymen, that were his equals in years. By this also he lets them know, that his persecuting the Christian church was not a passionate act, or for a gain to himself, but from an erroneous judgment, he verily thought that he ought to do what he against Jesus of Nazareth, and his disciples. He that he was
more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of the fathers; by which he understands not only the rites of the ceremonial law, but the whole body of their constitutions, which the rulers of that church had made, under the notion of sepimenta legis, hedges or fences to the laws of God, to keep men at a distance from the violation of them; and other constitutions also, of which they had innumerable. Paul was a Pharisee, (the son of a Pharisee, Act_23:6), bred up at the feet of Gamaliel (one of the doctors of their law); this was the strictest sect (for ceremonies) of their religion: and this his zeal for traditions, is that which he calleth a progress, or profiting in the Jewish religion, and was a cause of the propagation of that religion.