Acts 17:26

αἵματος omitted with אAB. Not represented in Vulg.

προστεταγμένους with אABDEHLP. Vulg. ‘statuta tempora.’

26. ἐποίησέν τε ἐξ ἑνὸς πᾶν ἔθνος�, and hath made of one every nation of men. Thus would he bring out most prominently the doctrine of the common Fatherhood of God. It is not merely that men are all of one family and so all equal in God’s eyes, and ought to be in the eyes of one another. When we read ‘they are made of One’ we are carried back to the higher thought of the prophet (Malachi 2:10), ‘Have we not all one Father?’ This was a philosophy not likely to be acceptable to the Athenians, among whom the distinction between Greeks and Barbarians was as radical as that which has grown up in America between white man and ‘nigger,’ or between Europeans and natives of India.

κατοικεῖν ἐπὶ παντὸς προσώπου τῆς γῆς, for to dwell on all the face of the earth. For His children the Father has provided a home.

ὁρίσας προστεταγμένους καιρούς, having determined their appointed seasons. The ‘seasons’ referred to are those which God has ordained for seed-time and harvest, summer and winter, day and night, which are fixed by His decree and make the earth a fitting abode for men.

καὶ τὰς ὁροθεσίας τῆς κατοικίας αὐτῶν, and the bounds of their habitation, i.e. where they can dwell and where they cannot; or, perhaps, where each nation and tribe should dwell.