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Acts 17:21
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19 And they took him and brought him to the1 Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak?  
20 For you are bringing some strange things to our ears. Therefore we want to know what these things mean.”
21 For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.

Addressing the Areopagus

22 Then Paul stood in the midst of the1 Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious;  
23 for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you:
24 a“God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is bLord of heaven and earth, cdoes not dwell in temples made with hands.  
25 Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He agives to all life, breath, and all things.  
26 And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and athe boundaries of their dwellings,  
27 aso that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, bthough He is not far from each one of us;  
28 for ain Him we live and move and have our being, bas also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’  
29 Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, awe ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising.  
30 Truly, athese times of ignorance God overlooked, but bnow commands all men everywhere to repent,  
31 because He has appointed a day on which aHe will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by braising Him from the dead.”  
32 And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, while others said, “We will hear you again on this matter.”
33 So Paul departed from among them.
34 However, some men joined him and believed, among them Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them.
Commentaries:
Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown
<< Acts 17:20   Acts 17:22 >>


Acts 17:21

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.



Acts 17:18-21

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.




Other Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown entries containing Acts 17:21:

1 Corinthians 1:22
2 Timothy 4:3

 

<< Acts 17:20   Acts 17:22 >>

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