2 Corinthians 4:4 - Exposition

The god of this world; rather, the god of this age . It is, as Bengel says, "a great and horrible description of the devil." He is not, however, here called a god of the kosmos, but only of the olam hazzeh, the present dispensation of things as it exists among those who refuse to enter that kingdom in which the power of Satan is brought to nought. The melancholy attempt to get rid of Manichean arguments by rendering the verse "in whom God blinded the thoughts of the unbelievers of this world" is set aside by the fact that the terrible description of Satan as "another god" ( El acheer ) was common among the rabbis. They knew that his power was indeed a derivative power, trot still that it was permitted to be great ( Ephesians 2:2 ; Ephesians 6:12 ). In John 12:31 ( John 14:30 ) our Lord speaks of him as "the ruler of the kosmos." Hath blinded; rather, blinded . The verb here has no other meaning than "to blind," and is quite different from the verb "to harden," rendered by "to blind" in 2 Corinthians 3:14 with the same substantive. They are blind from lack of faith, and so being "unbelieving'' they are" perishing" ( Ephesians 5:6 ), seeing that they "walk in darkness" ( John 8:12 ) and are in Satan's power ( Acts 26:18 ). Blindness of heart," says St. Augustine, "is both a sin and a punishment of sin and a cause of sin." The light of the glorious gospel of Christ ; rather, the illumination of the gospel of the glory of the Christ . The word photismos in later ecclesiastical Greek was used for "baptism." Who is the image of God ( 2 Corinthians 3:18 ; Colossians 1:15 ; Hebrews 1:3 ). Should shine unto them; or, as in the Revised Version, should dawn upon them . The other rendering, "that they should not see the illumination," gives to the verb augazo, a rarer sense, only found in poetry, and not known to the LXX .