οἴδαμεν γὰρ κ. τ. λ.: How Christians know this Paul does not say. Perhaps we may say that the Christian consciousness of sin and redemption is in contact with the ultimate realities of the universe, and that no interpretation of nature can be true but one which, like this, is in essential harmony with it. The force of the preposition in συστενάζει and συνωδίνει is not that we sigh and are in pain, and creation along with us; but that the whole frame of creation, all its parts together, unite in sighing and in pain. Weiss is right in saying that there is no reference to the dolores Messiae; but in συνωδίνει there is the suggestion of the travail out of which the new world is to be born. ἄχρι τοῦ νῦν means up till now, without stopping, ever since the moment of ὑπετάγη.

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Old Testament