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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Acts 14:22 - 14:22
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
22. ἐπιστηρίζοντες τὰς ψυχὰς τῶν μαθητῶν, confirming the souls of the disciples. The strengthening indicated by ἐπιστηρίζειν is of that kind which St Peter was charged to afford to his fellow disciples. ‘When thou art converted strengthen (στήρισον) thy brethren,’ i.e. by warnings and exhortations drawn from thy own trials and thy deliverance from them. We see that this was the purport of St Paul’s charge to the Churches.
τῇ πίστει, in the faith. This expression seems to point to the existence of a definite creed. ἡ πίστις is certainly so used in later books of the N.T. Cf. Col 1:23; 1Pe 5:9, &c.
καὶ ὅτι διὰ πολλῶν θλίψεων δεῖ ἡμᾶς κ.τ.λ., and that we must through many tribulations enter into the kingdom of God. From the use of the pronoun ‘we’ in this sentence some have thought that, although unmentioned, the writer of the Acts was present with Paul and Barnabas in this first missionary journey as well as in the others. St Luke only indicates his presence at Troas and elsewhere in the same manner (Act 16:10-12, &c.), though in those passages the mention is more conclusive than in the verse before us.