In NT chains invariably denote instruments for binding, or restraining the liberty of the person, e.g. the demoniac (Mk 5'), St. Peter (Ac 12"), the dragon (Rev. 20'). Imbeciles appear always to have received consideration, if not even reverence, in the East ; but demoniacs, and persons suffering from certain forms of delirium, have been treated with horrible cruelty. Often they are loaded with chains and bound to a staple firmly fixed in the ground. The tortures apijlied are ostensibly for the purpose of driving out the evil spirit that possesses them.
Under the Roman law, vincula was a form of punishment, or of safe custody. The prisoner was chained to a soldier, who was responsible for his safe keeping. The chain was fastened round the right wrist of the prisoner and the left wrist of his guard. To this chain St. Paul refers (Ac 282", 2 Ti 1"*). For greater safety two soldiers might be assigned as guards to one prisoner, a hand of each being chained to one of his. Thus St. I'eter was confined in the stormy days of the persecution (Ac 12«) ; and St. Paul, when Lysias thought him a dangerous person (Ac 2P^). The use of viSai in their modern form may be seen to-day at Acre, in the groups of Turkish prisoners chained together by the ankles. W. EwiNG.
CHAMBER.— See Closet, and Guest-Chamber.
CHANCE. — The word occurs only once in EV of tlie Gospels, viz. in Lk 10^', where in the parable of the Good Samaritan the priest is said to have been going down that way 'by chance.' In the
tlie phrase is Karci (jityKvplay, Vulg. accidit ut. ine word avyKvpia is found nowhere else in NT, and rarely in the Gr. authors. The idea of ' ehance ' is ordinarily expressed in Gr. by the nouns Tuxi;, ffmrvxla, or by tlie verb ti'tx""'"- Neither of these nouns occurs in NT, and tlie verb, in its in- transitive sense of ' chancing ' or ' happening,' but rarely. Exarajjles are 1 Co 15*' ei rtixoi (rlrov, which EV translates ' it may cliance of wheat ' (the only other occasion on which the word ' chance ' is found in EV of NT), and 14'» a' rvxoi, EV ' it may be.'
lening,- oniy once, ana tnai is, curiously enough, in TR reading of Lk IQM, the verse iiiimedintely pre- ceding the one under consideration, where the robbern are 9^x4
CHANCE
CHARACTER
to have left their victim licre, as Jle.ver and other. ' valent to ct-rn, though ( i t
simply equi-
regarded it. The expre- li.ilf dead as he
chanced to be.' The sh.id. , i - _ , ;- i , u the robbers left
him in complete indifference lo jus laif, to live or die just as it might happen. The fact, however, tliat ■n/5-;c«»o>T« is lacking in NBDLS, al. justifies its omission from the text by WH and other critical etlitors.
Unlike tvxv and avvTuxia., avyKvpla does not denote ' chance' in the proper sense of the word, i.i'. some- thing which ' falls out ' independently of the ordi- nai-y laws of causation ('chance' comes fiom the Low Lat. cac/entia, ' a falling,' and may have heen suggested hy the falling of the dice from a dice- box). Derived as it is from (rvv and Kvpiui ('fall in with '), it coiTesponds almost exactly to our word ' coincidence.' All that our Lord's use of the phrase Kara avyKvplaf accordingly sugge.sts Is, that by a coincidence of events a certain priest came by just as the wounded traveller lay helpless on the road. And, as Godet remarks. He may even have used the exi)ression with a kind of irony, since 'it Ls certainly not by accident that the narrator brings those two personages on the scene' [Com. on Lk. inloc.).
Apart from any furtlier occuiTence of the word ' chance ' in EV of the Gospels, the idea of hap or chance may seem to be conveyed by the iLse of 'haply' in Mk IP^, where Je.'ius is said to have come to the lig-tree, ' if haply he miglit find any- thing thereon,' and in Lk \i-^, where He Himself .says of the builder who could not finish his tower, ' lest haply Avhen he hath laid a foundation, and Is not able to finish it.' But in botli cases we have to do in tlie ori^nal simply with conjunctions and particles, d apa in the one passage and p-rj ttots in the other.
As a matter of fact, the idea of chance was jvs foreign to the ancient Jewish a.s to tlie modern scientific mind ; for while the scientist holds that the universal reign of law renders the operation of chance impossible, the Hebrew may be said to have telieved (cf. Pr IfV") ,,f ,.^,.r\ ..-railed cliancc that 'Eternal God tliii . 'r : - .\\,\ j^uide.' In l»pular language thi' id. ;■ .it 1 1,,,, ^ luippening by chance appears to lie .1.111111 i.u m l.dtli OT anil NT (cf. 1 S 6", Ec9", 1 Co lo-''), .-is it constantly is among our.selve.s. But in the ca.se of the Scripture writers, at all events, it denoted only human ignorance of proximate causes, not the occurrence of events indeiiendently of the Divine will (with 1 S & cf. w.^, with Ec 9" cf. v.i, with 1 Co 15" cf. 3', Gal 6").