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).
JFB.
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