Acts 17

Ac 17:1-15.

AT

THESSALONICA THE

SUCCESS OF

PAUL'S

PREACHING

ENDANGERING

HIS

LIFE,

HE

IS

DESPATCHED BY

NIGHT TO

BEREA,

WHERE

HIS

MESSAGE

MEETS WITH

ENLIGHTENED

ACCEPTANCE--A HOSTILE

MOVEMENT FROM

THESSALONICA

OCCASIONS

HIS

SUDDEN

DEPARTURE FROM

BEREA--HE

ARRIVES AT

ATHENS.

1. when they had passed through Amphipolis--thirty-three miles

southwest of Philippi, on the river Strymon, and at the head of the gulf

of that name, on the northern coast of the Ægean Sea.

and Apollonia--about thirty miles southwest of Amphipolis; but the

exact site is not known.

they came to Thessalonica--about thirty-seven miles due west from

Apollonia, at the head of the Thermaic (or Thessalonian) Gulf, at the

northwestern extremity of the Ægean Sea; the principal and most

populous city in Macedonia. "We see at once how appropriate a place it

was for one of the starting-points of the Gospel in Europe, and can

appreciate the force of what Paul said to the Thessalonians within a few

months of his departure from them: "From you, the word of the Lord

sounded forth like a trumpet, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in

every place,""

(1Th 1:8)

[HOWSON].

where was a synagogue of the Jews--implying that (as at Philippi)

there was none at Amphipolis and Apollonia.

2-4. Paul, as his manner was--always to begin with the Jews.

went in unto them--In writing to the converts but a few months after

this, he reminds them of the courage and superiority to indignity, for

the Gospel's sake, which this required after the shameful treatment he

had so lately experienced at Philippi

(1Th 2:2).

3. Opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered, &c.--His

preaching, it seems, was chiefly expository, and designed to establish

from the Old Testament Scriptures (1) that the predicted Messiah was to

be a suffering and dying, and therefore a rising, Messiah; (2) that this

Messiah was none other than Jesus of Nazareth.

4. consorted--cast in their lot.

with Paul and Silas--Compare

2Co 8:5.

of the chief women--female proselytes of distinction. From the First

Epistle to the Thessalonians it appears that the converts were nearly

all Gentiles; not only such as had before been proselytes, who would be

gained in the synagogue, but such as up to that time had been idolaters

(1Th 1:9, 10).

During his stay, while Paul supported himself by his own labor

(1Th 2:9;

2Th 3:7-9),

he received supplies once and again from the Philippians, of which he

makes honorable acknowledgment

(Php 4:15, 16).

5-9. the Jews . . . moved with envy--seeing their influence undermined

lewd fellows of the baser sort--better, perhaps, "worthless market

people," that is, idle loungers about the market-place, of indifferent

character.

gathered a company--rather, "having raised a mob."

assaulted the house of Jason--with whom Paul and Silas abode

(Ac 17:7),

one of Paul's kinsmen, apparently

(Ro 16:21),

and from his name, which was sometimes used as a Greek form of

the word Joshua [GROTIUS], probably a

Hellenistic Jew.

sought to bring them--Jason's lodgers.

6. And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren

unto the rulers--literally, "the politarchs"; the very name given to

the magistrates of Thessalonica in an inscription on a still remaining

arch of the city--so minute is the accuracy of this history.

crying, These that have turned the world upside down--(See on

Ac 16:20).

7. all do contrary to the decrees of Cæsar, &c.--meaning, probably,

nothing but what is specified in the next words.

saying . . . there is another king, one

Jesus--(See on

Joh 19:12).

9. And when they had taken security of Jason and of the other--"the

others"--probably making them deposit a money pledge that the preachers

should not again endanger the public peace.

10-12. the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night--for

it would have been as useless as rash to attempt any further preaching

at that time, and the conviction of this probably made his friends the

more willing to pledge themselves against any present continuance of

missionary effort.

unto Berea--fifty or sixty miles southwest of Thessalonica; a town

even still of considerable population and importance.

11. These were more noble than those in Thessalonica--The

comparison is between the Jews of the two places; for the

triumphs of the Gospel at Thessalonica were mostly among the Gentiles.

See on

Ac 17:2-4.

in that they received the word with all readiness of mind--heard it

not only without prejudice, but with eager interest, "in an honest and

good heart"

(Lu 8:17),

with sincere desire to be taught aright (see

Joh 7:17).

Mark the "nobility" ascribed to this state of mind.

searched the scriptures daily whether those things were so--whether

the Christian interpretation which the apostle put upon the Old

Testament Scriptures was the true one.

12. Therefore many of them believed--convinced that Jesus of Nazareth

whom Paul preached was indeed the great Promise and Burden of the Old

Testament. From this it is undeniable, (1) that the people, no

less than the ministers of the Church,

are entitled and bound to search the Scriptures; (2) that

they are entitled and bound to judge, on their own responsibility, whether

the teaching they receive from the ministers of the Church is

according to the word of God; (3) that

no faith but such as results from personal conviction ought to be demanded,

or is of any avail.

of honourable women which were Greeks, and of men--which were Greeks.

not a few--"The upper classes in these European-Greek and Romanized

towns were probably better educated than those of Asia Minor"

[WEBSTER and

WILKINSON].

13. the Jews of Thessalonica . . . came thither

also--"like hunters upon their prey, as they had done before from

Iconium to Lystra" [HOWSON].

14. immediately the brethren--the converts gathered at Berea.

sent away Paul--as before from Jerusalem

(Ac 9:30),

and from Thessalonica

(Ac 17:10).

How long he stayed at Berea we know not; but as we know that he longed

and expected soon to return to the Thessalonians

(1Th 2:17),

it is probable he remained some weeks at least, and only abandoned his

intention of revisiting Thessalonica at that time when the virulence of

his enemies there, stimulated by his success at Berea, brought them

down thither to counterwork him.

to go as it were to the sea--rather, perhaps, "in the direction of

the sea." Probably he delayed fixing his next destination till he should

reach the coast, and the providence of God should guide him to a vessel

bound for the destined spot. Accordingly, it was only on arriving at

Athens, that the convoy of Berean brethren, who had gone thus far with

him, were sent back to bid Silas and Timothy follow him thither.

Silas and Timotheus abode there still--"to build it up in its

holy faith, to be a comfort and support in its trials and persecutions,

and to give it such organization as might be necessary" [HOWSON]. Connecting this with the apostle's leaving

Timothy and Luke at Philippi on his own departure (see on

Ac 16:40),

we may conclude that this was his fixed plan for cherishing the first

beginning of the Gospel in European localities, and organizing the

converts. Timotheus must have soon followed the apostle to

Thessalonica, the bearer, probably, of one of the Philippian

"contributions to his necessity"

(Php 4:15, 16),

and from thence he would with Silas accompany him to Berea.

15. Silas and Timotheus to come to him with all speed--He probably

wished their company and aid in addressing himself to so new and great a

sphere as Athens. Accordingly it is added that he "waited for them"

there, as if unwilling to do anything till they came. That they did

come, there is no good reason to doubt (as some excellent critics do).

For though Paul himself says to the Thessalonians that he "thought it

good to be left at Athens alone"

(1Th 3:1),

he immediately adds that he "sent Timotheus to establish and comfort

them"

(Ac 17:2);

meaning, surely, that he despatched him from Athens back to

Thessalonica. He had indeed sent for him to Athens; but, probably, when

it appeared that little fruit was to be reaped there, while

Thessalonica was in too interesting a state to be left uncherished, he

seems to have thought it better to send him back again. (The other

explanations which have been suggested seem less satisfactory).

Timotheus rejoined the apostle at Corinth

(Ac 18:5).

Ac 17:16-34.

PAUL AT

ATHENS.

16, 17. wholly given to idolatry--"covered with idols"; meaning the

city, not the inhabitants. Petronius, a contemporary writer at Nero's

court, says satirically that it was easier to find a god at Athens than

a man. This "stirred the spirit" of the apostle. "The first impression

which the masterpieces of man's taste for art left on the mind of St.

Paul was a revolting one, since all this majesty and beauty had placed

itself between man and his Creator, and bound him the faster to his

gods, who were not God. Upon the first contact, therefore, which the

Spirit of Christ came into with the sublimest creations of human art,

the judgment of the Holy Ghost--through which they have all to pass--is

set up as "the strait gate," and this must remain the correct standard

for ever" [BAUMGARTEN].

17. Therefore disputed--or, discussed.

he in the synagogue with the Jews--The sense is not, "Therefore went

he to the Jews," because the Gentile Athenians were steeped in idolatry;

but, "Therefore set he himself to lift up his voice to the idol city,

but, as his manner was, he began with the Jews."

and with the devout persons--Gentile proselytes. After that,

in the market--the Agora, or place of public concourse.

daily with them that met with him--or "came in his way."

18-21. certain . . . of the Epicureans--a well-known school of

atheistic materialists, who taught that pleasure was the chief end

of human existence; a principle which the more rational interpreted in a

refined sense, while the sensual explained it in its coarser meaning.

and of the Stoics--a celebrated school of

severe and lofty pantheists, whose principle was that the universe

was under the law of an iron necessity, the spirit of which was what is

called the Deity: and that a passionless conformity of the human will to

this law, unmoved by all external circumstances and changes, is the

perfection of virtue. While therefore the Stoical was in itself

superior to the Epicurean system, both were alike hostile to the Gospel.

"The two enemies it has ever had to contend with are the two ruling

principles of the Epicureans and Stoics--Pleasure and Pride"

[HOWSON].

What will this babbler say?--The word, which means "a picker-up of

seeds," bird-like, is applied to a gatherer and retailer of scraps of

knowledge, a prater; a general term of contempt for any pretended

teacher.

a setter forth of strange gods--"demons," but in the Greek (not

Jewish) sense of "objects of worship."

because he preached Jesus and the resurrection--Not as if they thought

he made these to be two divinities: the strange gods were Jehovah and

the Risen Saviour, ordained to judge the world.

19. they took him, and brought him to Areopagus--"the hill where the

most awful court of judicature had sat from time immemorial to pass

sentence on the greatest criminals, and to decide on the most solemn

questions connected with religion. No place in Athens was so suitable

for a discourse on the mysteries of religion"

[HOWSON]. The apostle,

however, was not here on his trial, but to expound more fully what

he had thrown out in broken conversations in the Agora.

21. all the Athenians . . . spent their time in nothing else but to

tell or hear some new thing--literally, "newer thing," as if what was

new becoming presently stale, they craved something still more new

[BENGEL]. This lively description of the Athenian character is

abundantly attested by their own writers.

22. Then Paul stood . . . and said--more graphically, "standing in

the midst of Mars' hill, said." This prefatory allusion to the position

he occupied shows the writer's wish to bring the situation vividly

before us [BAUMGARTEN].

I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious--rather (with

most modern interpreters and the ancient Greek ones), "in all respects

extremely reverential" or "much given to religious worship," a

conciliatory and commendatory introduction, founded on his own

observation of the symbols of devotion with which their city was

covered, and from which all Greek writers, as well as the apostle,

inferred the exemplary religiousness of the Athenians. (The authorized

translation would imply that only too much superstition was wrong,

and represents the apostle as repelling his hearers in the very first

sentence; whereas the whole discourse is studiously courteous).

23. as I passed by and beheld your devotions--rather, "the objects

of your devotion," referring, as is plain from the next words, to their

works of art consecrated to religion.

I found an altar . . . To the--or, "an"

unknown god--erected, probably, to commemorate some divine

interposition, which they were unable to ascribe to any known deity.

That there were such altars, Greek writers attest; and on this the

apostle skilfully fastens at the outset, as the text of his discourse,

taking it as evidence of that dimness of religious conception which, in

virtue of his better light, he was prepared to dissipate.

Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship--rather, "Whom, therefore,

knowing Him not, ye worship," alluding to "The Unknown God."

him declare--announce.

I unto you--This is like none of his previous discourses, save that

to the idolaters of Lycaonia

(Ac 14:15-17).

His subject is not, as in the synagogues, the Messiahship of Jesus, but

THE

LIVING

GOD,

in opposition to the materialistic and pantheistic polytheism of

Greece, which subverted all true religion. Nor does he come with

speculation on this profound subject--of which they had

had enough from others--but an authoritative "announcement" of Him

after whom they were groping not giving Him any name, however, nor even

naming the Saviour Himself but unfolding the true character of both as

they were able to receive it.

24, 25. God that made the world and all . . . therein--The most

profound philosophers of Greece were unable to conceive any real

distinction between God and the universe. Thick darkness, therefore,

behooved to rest on all their religious conceptions. To dissipate this,

the apostle sets out with a sharp statement of the fact of creation

as the central principle of all true religion--not less needed now,

against the transcendental idealism of our day.

seeing he is Lord--or Sovereign.

of heaven and earth--holding in free and absolute subjection all the

works of His hands; presiding in august royalty over them, as well as

pervading them all as the principle of their being. How different this

from the blind Force or Fate to which all creatures were regarded as in

bondage!

dwelleth not in temples made with hands--This thought, so familiar to

Jewish ears

(1Ki 8:27;

Isa 66:1, 2;

Ac 7:48),

and so elementary to Christians, would serve only more sharply to

define to his heathen audience the spirituality of that living,

personal God, whom he "announced" to them.

25. Neither is worshipped with--ministered unto, served by

men's hands, as though he needed anything--No less familiar as this

thought also is to us, even from the earliest times of the Old Testament

(Job 35:6, 8;

Ps 16:2, 3; 50:12-14;

Isa 40:14-18),

it would pour a flood of light upon any candid heathen mind that heard

it.

seeing he--He Himself.

giveth to all life, and breath, and all things--The Giver of all

cannot surely be dependent for aught upon the receivers of all

(1Ch 29:14).

This is the culminating point of a pure Theism.

26, 27. and hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all

the face of the earth--Holding with the Old Testament teaching, that

in the blood is the life

(Ge 9:4;

Le 17:11;

De 12:23),

the apostle sees this life stream of the whole human race to be one,

flowing from one source [BAUMGARTEN].

and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their

habitation--The apostle here opposes both Stoical Fate and Epicurean

Chance, ascribing the periods and localities in which men and

nations flourish to the sovereign will and prearrangements of a living

God.

27. That they should seek the Lord--That is the high end of all these

arrangements of Divine Power, Wisdom, and Love.

if haply they might feel after him--as men groping their way in the

dark.

and find him--a lively picture of the murky atmosphere of Natural

Religion.

though he be not far from every one of us--The difficulty of finding

God outside the pale of revealed religion lies not in His distance from

us, but in our distance from Him through the blinding effect of sin.

28. For in him we live, and move, and have our being--(or, more

briefly, "exist").--This means, not merely, "Without Him we have no

life, nor that motion which every inanimate nature

displays, nor even existence itself"

[MEYER],

but that God is the living, immanent Principle of all these in men.

as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his

offspring--the first half of the fifth line, word for word, of an

astronomical poem of Aratus, a Greek countryman of the apostle, and his

predecessor by about three centuries. But, as he hints, the same

sentiment is to be found in other Greek poets. They meant it doubtless

in a pantheistic sense; but the truth which it expresses the apostle

turns to his own purpose--to teach a pure, personal, spiritual Theism.

(Probably during his quiet retreat at Tarsus.

Ac 9:30,

revolving his special vocation to the Gentiles he gave himself to the

study of so much Greek literature as might be turned to Christian

account in his future work. Hence this and his other quotations from

the Greek poets,

1Co 15:33;

Tit 1:12).

29. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to

think--The courtesy of this language is worthy of notice.

that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art

and man's device--("graven by the art or device of man"). One can

hardly doubt that the apostle would here point to those matchless

monuments of the plastic art, in gold and silver and costliest stone,

which lay so profusely beneath and around him. The more intelligent

pagan Greeks no more pretended that these sculptured gods and goddesses

were real deities, or even their actual likenesses, than Romanist

Christians do their images; and Paul doubtless knew this; yet here we

find him condemning all such efforts visibly to represent the invisible

God. How shamefully inexcusable then are the Greek and Roman churches in

paganizing the worship of the Christian Church by the encouragement of

pictures and images in religious service! (In the eighth century, the

second council of Nicea decreed that the image of God was as proper an

object of worship as God Himself).

30. the times of this ignorance God winked at--literally (and far

better), "overlooked," that is, bore with, without interposing to punish

it, otherwise than suffering the debasing tendency of such worship to

develop itself (compare

Ac 14:16,

and see on

Ro 1:24,

&c.).

but now--that a new light was risen upon the world.

commandeth--"That duty--all along lying upon man estranged from his

Creator, but hitherto only silently recommending itself and little

felt--is now peremptory."

all men every where to repent--(compare

Col 1:6, 23;

Tit 1:11)

--a tacit allusion to the narrow precincts of favored Judaism, within

which immediate and entire repentance was ever urged. The word

"repentance" is here used (as in

Lu 13:3, 5; 15:10)

in its most comprehensive sense of "repentance unto life."

31. Because he hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the

world--Such language beyond doubt teaches that the judgment will, in

its essence, be a solemn judicial assize held upon all mankind

at once. "Aptly is this uttered on the Areopagus, the seat of judgment"

[BENGEL].

Joh 5:22, 23, 27;

Ac 10:42.

whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised

him from the dead--the most patent evidence to mankind at large of the

judicial authority with which the Risen One is clothed.

32-34. when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked--As

the Greek religion was but the glorification of the present life, by the

worship of all its most beauteous forms, the Resurrection, which

presupposes the vanity of the present life, and is nothing but life out

of the death of all that sin has blighted, could have no charm for the

true Greek. It gave the death blow to his fundamental and most cherished

ideas; nor until these were seen to be false and fatal could the

Resurrection, and the Gospel of which it was a primary doctrine, seem

otherwise than ridiculous.

others said, We will hear thee again of this--"an idle compliment to

Paul and an opiate to their consciences, such as we often meet with in

our own day. They probably, like Felix, feared to hear more, lest they

should be constrained to believe unwelcome truths"

(Ac 24:25;

and compare

Mt 13:15)

[WEBSTER

and

WILKINSON].

33. So Paul departed--Whether he would have opened, to any extent, the

Gospel scheme in this address, if he had not been interrupted, or

whether he reserved this for exposition afterwards to earnest inquirers,

we cannot tell. Only the speech is not to be judged of as quite

complete.

34. Howbeit certain men clave unto him--Instead of mocking or

politely waiving the subject, having listened eagerly, they joined

themselves to the apostle for further instruction; and so they

"believed."

Dionysius the Areopagite--a member of that august tribunal. Ancient

tradition says he was placed by the apostle over the little flock at

Athens. "Certainly the number of converts there and of men fit for

office in the Church was not so great that there could be much choice"

[OLSHAUSEN].

a woman named Damaris--not certainly one of the apostle's audience

on the Areopagus, but won to the faith either before or after. Nothing

else is known of her. Of any further labors of the apostle at Athens,

and how long he stayed, we are not informed. Certainly he was not driven

away. But "it is a serious and instructive fact that the mercantile

populations of Thessalonica and Corinth received the message of God with

greater readiness than the highly educated and polished Athenians. Two

letters to the Thessalonians, and two to the Corinthians, remain to

attest the flourishing state of those churches. But we possess no letter

written by Paul to the Athenians; and we do not read that he was ever in

Athens again" [HOWSON].