use that power ; compare Ps. Ixix. 5 ; Gen. iii. 5, etc. This feeling on His part is at the same time indicated by the verb fyetirQai, to regard, to treat it as. It would not have been robbery (rapina), if He had used His own right ; but He abstained from doing so, just as if it had been robbery. A similar phrase at 2 Cor. xi. 8, where see the note, may be compared with it. — TO sJvai Taa ®sf) laa, the accusative used adverbially, as happens often in Job, on an equality with and in a manner suitable to God. To be on an equality with God, implies His fulness and exaltation, as is evident from the double antithesis, ver. 7, 8, lie emptied and humbled Himself. The article, without which poppriv is put, makes now an emphatic addition [Epitasis]. It is not therefore wonderful, that He never called Himself God, rather rarely the Son of Go<l, generally the Son of man.
7. 'A?A', but) To this word the two clauses refer: He emptied Himself, to which the form of a servant belongs ; and He humbled Himself, on wdiicli His obedience depends. The former is opposed privatlvely, the latter also in direct contrariety to being equal with God ; wherefore these two words are used in the way of gradation, and He humbled is put before Himself} (Comp. James ii. 18, note). For, to take an example, when Philip V. ceased to be King of Spain, whose doings were agitating the public mind while we were engaged in these me ditations, he so far emptied himself, yet he did not equally humble himself : he laid down the government of a kingdom, but he did not become a subject. — eavrbv ex'evuffe, Re emptied Himself ) TDnn,
seems no very valid argument against xp^xy^o; being taken in the strict sense, as Engl. V., 'thought' the being on an equality with God no act of ' robbery,' or arrogation of what did not belong to Him. It is true the anti thesis, as Olshausen argues, *AA' IKSVUOSV, may seem to suit better Wahl's rendering. But etyway^eV, in the only passage where it occurs, Pint, de puer. educ , 120, means raptus or actio rapiendi, not res rapta. It is only by metonymy it can be made even res rapienda. As to the antithesis, «AA' plainly means, And yet: Though having been in the form of God, etc., yet, etc — ED.
1 eavTw sKsi/uffsv (the kotvTov coming first, because HIM&ELF, viewed in re spect to what He had heretofore been, is the emphatic word and thought) ; but erotTrelvaffSv sxvrov (the eavrw coming second, and trovvtiyuaea first, because the emphatic word is erMirtivaaev, which forms a climax to thepreviousl^ojffgj/, He not only emptied Himself of what He was and had, but submitted to positive humiliation) . — ED.