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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
5. καλὸν γευσαμένους θεοῦ ῥῆμα. “That the word of God is good.” The verb “taste,” which in the previous verse is constructed with the genitive (as in the classical Greek), is here followed by an accusative, as is more common in Hellenistic Greek. It is difficult to establish any difference in meaning between the constructions, though the latter may imply something which is more habitual—“feeding on.” But possibly the accusative is only used to avoid any entanglement with the genitive “of God” which follows it. There is however no excuse for the attempt of Calvin and others, in the interests of their dogmatic bias, to make “taste of” mean only “have an inkling of” without any deep or real participation; and to make the beauty (καλόν) of the “utterance of God” in this place only imply its contrast to the rigour of the Mosaic Law. The metaphor means “to partake of,” and “enjoy,” as in Philo, who speaks of one “who has quaffed much pure wine of God’s benevolent power, and banqueted upon sacred words and doctrines” (De proem. et poen. Opp. I. 428). Philo also speaks of the utterance (ῥῆμα) of God, and of its nourishing the soul like manna (Opp. I. 120, 564). The references to Philo are always to Mangey’s edition. The names of the special tracts and chapters may be found in my Early Days of Christianity, II. 541–543, and passim.
δυνάμεις τε μέλλοντος αἰῶνος. Here again it is not easy to see what is exactly intended by “the powers of the Future Age.” If the Future Age be the Olam habba of the Jews, i.e. the Messianic age, then its “powers” may be as St Chrysostom said, “the earnest of the Spirit,” or the powers mentioned in Heb 2:4; Gal 3:5. If on the other hand it mean “the world to come” its “powers” bring the foretaste of its glorious fruition.
It will, then, be seen that we cannot attach a definitely certain or exact meaning to the separate expressions; on the other hand nothing can be clearer than the fact that, but for dogmatic prepossessions, no one would have dreamed of explaining them to mean anything less than full conversion.