Acts 17:27

That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: THAT THEY SHOULD SEEK THE LORD - ('seek God' is the much better supported reading.) 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 EVERYONE 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....

− 27._That they might seek God. _This sentence hath two members; to wit, that it is man’s duty to seek God; secondly, that God himself cometh forth to meet us, and doth show himself by such manifest tokens, that we can have no excuse for our ignorance. Therefore, let us remember that those men do wickedly abuse this life, and that they be unworthy to dwell upon earth, which do not apply their studies to seek him; as if every kind of brute beasts should fall from that inclination which they have naturally, which should for good causes be called monstrous. And, surely, nothing is more absurd, than that men should be ignorant of their Author, who are endued with understanding principally for this use. And we must especially note the goodness of God, in that he doth so familiarly insinuate himself, that even the blind may grope after him. For which cause the blindness of men is more shameful...

22-31 Here we have a sermon to heathens, who worshipped false gods, and were without the true God in the world; and to them the scope of the discourse was different from what the apostle preached to the Jews. In the latter case, his business was to lead his hearers by prophecies and miracles to the knowledge of the Redeemer, and faith in him; in the former, it was to lead them, by the common works of providence, to know the Creator, and worship Him. The apostle spoke of an altar he had seen, with the inscription, "TO THE UNKNOWN GOD." This fact is stated by many writers. After multiplying their idols to the utmost, some at Athens thought there was another god of whom they had no knowledge. And are there not many now called Christians, who are zealous in their devotions, yet the great object of their worship is to them an unknown God? Observe what glorious things Paul here says of that G...

Verse Acts 17:27. _THAT THEY SHOULD SEEK THE LORD_] This is a conclusion drawn from the preceding statement. God, who is infinitely great and self-sufficient, has manifested himself as the maker of the world, the creator, preserver, and governor of men. He has assigned them their portion, and dispensed to them their habitations, and the various blessings of his providence, to the end that they should seek him in all his works. _FEEL AFTER HIM_] ψηλαφησειαν αυτον, That they might grope after him, as a person does his way who is blind or blindfolded. The Gentiles, who had not a revelation, must grope after God, as the principle of spiritual life, that they might find him to be a Spirit, and the source of all intellectual happiness; and the apostle seems to state that none need despair of finding this fountain of goodness, because he is not far from every one o

THAT THEY SHOULD SEEK THE LORD - Greek: to seek the Lord. The design of thus placing them on the earth - of gang them their habitation among his works - was, that they should contemplate his wisdom in his works, and thus come to a knowledge of his existence and character. All nations, though living in different regions and climates, have thus the opportunity of becoming acquainted with God, Romans 1:19. The fact that the nations did not thus learn the character of the true God shows their great stupidity and wickedness. The design of Paul in this was doubtless to reprove the idolatry of the Athenians. The argument is this: “God has given to each nation its proper opportunity to learn his character. Idolatry, therefore, is folly and wickedness, since it is possible to find out the existence of the one God from his works.” I

EXPOSITION ACTS 17:1 AMPHIPOLIS. This was the ancient capital of that division of Macedonia (Macedonia Prima); see Acts 16:12, note. It was situated on the Via Egnatia, thirty-four miles southwest from Philippi, and three miles from the AEgean Sea. It lay in a peninsula, surrounded on three sides by the Strymon, whence its name, _Amphipolis; _its modern name is _Neokhoria, _now a village. Its original name was Ἐννέα ̔οδοί, The Nine Ways. Originally a Thracian city, it was conquered by the Athenians, then by the Lacedaemonians, then fell under the dominion of Philip of Macedon, and finally, with the rest of Macedonia, became part of the Roman empire. APOLLONIA; now probably _Polina, _thirty miles due west

THAT THEY SHOULD SEEK THE LORD,.... Or "God", as the Alexandrian copy and others, and the Vulgate Latin, Syriac, and Ethiopic versions read; their Creator, and kind Benefactor, and who has appointed their time of life, and their habitations for them; and this should engage them to seek to know him, who has done all this for them, and to fear and serve him, and to glorify his name: IF HAPLY THEY MIGHT FEEL AFTER HIM, AND FIND HIM; which shows, that though it is possible for men, by a contemplation of the perfections of God, visible in the works of creation and providence, so to find God, as to know that there is one, and that there is but one God, who has made all things; and so as to be convinced of the vanity and falsehood of all other gods, and to see the folly, wickedness, and weakness of idolatrous worship; yet, at the same time, it very strongly intimates, how dim and obscure the l...

ACTS 17:27 zhtei/n to.n qeo,n {A} The reading ku,rion undoubtedly arose from the careless substitution by a scribe of k=n= for ;=n=, an exchange that occurs frequently. In any case, the argument of Kilpatrick, who assumes that ku,rion was original and that scribes felt it to be ambiguous, 323 is difficult to reconcile with the circumstance that the following verb “to feel after” agrees better with ku,rion than with either qeo,n or qei/on. Although it is doubtless true, as Nestle pointed out, that scribes would be more likely to alter qeo,n...

CHAPTER 17 _ 1. The Gospel in Thessalonica (Acts 17:1)._ 2. The Gospel in Beroea (Acts 17:10). 3. Paul in Athens (Acts 17:15). Three cities in which the Gospel is next preached are before us in this chapter. But there is a marked difference between these three places. In Thessalonica there was much hostility, the result of the success of the Gospel. In Beroea a more noble class of Jews were found. Their nobility consisted in submission to the Scriptures, the oracles of God, and in a ready mind. There was a still greater blessing among the Jews and the Gentiles. In Athens the Apostle Paul met idolatry, indifference and ridicule. An interesting fact is learned concerning the activity of the apostl

PAUL'S SPEECH TO THE AREOPAGUS. He opens with a compliment to the religiosity of the Athenians. He has walked up and down the city and marked the many objects of worship; he has also found an altar with the inscription To the Unknown God (the argument that follows calls for the definite article). There are various instances in antiquity of such an inscription; though always, it is true, in the plural, not the singular number. Jerome says the inscription in the text must have run To the unknown and foreign gods, and in Pausanias, Philostratus, and other ancient writers such inscriptions are spoken of. In Deissmann's _St. Paul_ (p. 261) an inscription is described which has recently been unearthed at Pergamum, also in the plural. That in our text is the only example in antiquity of the inscription in the singular, and Paul's argument is based on it in that form. It would dedicate the altar...