Verse 16
16. Paul waited… at Athens Having left Silas and Timothy, and dismissed his Berean conductors, the apostle treads the streets a pensive solitaire. He who could quote, even here, the appropriate passage from the Greek poets, was doubtless not blind to the perfection with which art had wrought poetry in marble. But he comes with the firmness of a conqueror, not to be subdued by the beauty of his foe. He is the missionary of the Infinite, and he must not be seduced out of his mission by the fascinations of the esthetic. Under all this exterior of gaiety he knows there lurks a sadness, a sensualism, and a despair; for Greece, in forgetting God, has lost her assurance of life and immortality. Groping in vain for truth, she tries in vain to satisfy herself with beauty and voluptuousness.
Stirred in him Literally, was sharpened. He was impatient at the evidences afforded on every side that the true God was utterly excluded from Athens by a pantheon of false gods, and he was stimulated to assail the system of falsehood by the revelation of the truth.
Given to idolatry Κατειδωλον , an expressive term; literally, under-idoled. The soil of the city underlay the images like a stratum. In Athens, it was said, you could oftener find a god than a man. It was almost as thickly peopled with marble statues as with living inhabitants.
Be the first to react on this!
