Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Acts 8:23 - 8:23
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
23. εἰς γὰρ χολὴν πικρίας. The preposition εἰς = into is not easy to explain here. Some have thought that εἰς, like ἐν, is used as representing בְּ. By others the construction has been compared with that of the Hebrew preposition ל = for, after the verb ‘to be’ in passages such as Eze 37:22 ‘I will make them one nation,’ literally ‘unto one nation.’ But instances of this construction are not common enough in the O.T. for an imitation of it in the N.T. to be probable. It seems better therefore not to take ‘gall of bitterness’ and ‘bond of iniquity’ as thus in apposition with the subject of the sentence, but rather to regard the preposition as used with the sense of motion towards a place or state and subsequent rest there. So it is found in Luk 11:7, ‘my children are with me in (εἰς) bed,’ where the meaning is, ‘they have come into, and are remaining in, bed.’ So that the sense here would be ‘thou hast advanced towards, and art involved in, the gall of bitterness,’ &c. The expression χολὴ πικρίας is a modification of words which are found more than once in the LXX. Cf. Deu 29:18 ῥίζα ἄνω φύουσα ἐν χολῇ καὶ πικρίᾳ. Similarly Deu 32:32 σταφυλὴ χολῆς, βότρυς πικρίας. See also Lament. Act 3:15.
σύνδεσμον ἀδικίας, the bond of iniquity. The expression is found in the LXX. (Isa 58:6). The whole sentence thus implies that Simon had gone from one evil to another till he had reached and was remaining in a stage which deserved the reprobation spoken against idolatry in the O.T., and that he had allowed evil to make him its prisoner.