17—18,
339
τοῦ νοὸς αὐτῶν, 18. " ἐσκοτισμένοι ' τῇ ᾿ διανοίᾳ dvtes,” " ἀπηλλοτ- e=Rom. 1.
II, Xi. 10
ριωμένοι τῆς "ζωῆς τοῦ "θεοῦ, διὰ τὴν | ἄγνοιαν ὃ τὴν οὖσαν only; Ps.
f Ch, ii. 3 τοῦ, μ Ch. ii. 12 reff.
h Here only.
Ixviii. 23. i Acts iii. 17, xvii. 30; 1 Pet. i. 14; Lev. xxii. 14
‘eoxotwpevor AB, Ath.; AB 17, etc.; εσκοτισµενοι DEFGKLO?P, mss., appy.,
Clem., Chr., Thdrt., all. 2 ovres om. FG 115, Thl.
merely the intellectual faculty or under- standing, but also the faculty for recog- nising moral good and spiritual truth (Rom. i. 28, vii. 23; 1 Tim. vi. 5, etc.). ματαιότης, a peculiarly biblical and ec- clesiastical term, occurring in NT only here andin Rom. viii. 20 ; 2 Pet. ii. 18, and
corresponding to the Heb. pap NW,
means vanity in the sense of purposeless- ness, uselessness. There is nothing in the clause to restrict it to the case of idol- worshippers or to that of the heathen philosophers (Grot.). It is a description of the walk of the heathen world generally —a walk moving within the limits of in- tellectual and moral resultlessness, given over to things devoid of worth or reality (cf. Rom. i. 21, ἐματαιώθησαν ἐν τοῖς διαλογισμοῖς αὐτῶν).
Ver. 18. ἐσκοτισμένοι τῇ διανοίᾳ ὄν- τες: being darkened in their understand- ing. For ἐσκοτισμένοι of the TR, with DGKLP, etc., the more classical form ἐσκοτωμένοι is given in BSA, etc., and is preferred by LTTrWH. The ὄντες is more appropriately attached (with LTTr WHERYV, Theod., Beng., Harl., de Wette, Alf., Ell., Abb., Mey., etc.) to this clause than to the following ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι (Beza, Riick., etc.). The parallelism of the two clauses is better kept in this way, _ while the emphasis is thrown first on the ἐσκοτωμένοι and then on the ἀπηλλο- τριωμένοι. The sentence is a further description of the walk of the Gentiles and an explanation of its vanity. Their walk is what it is because of the condition of moral darkness into which they fell and in which they continue. With ἐσ- κοτωμένοι compare the ἐσκοτίσθη, κ.τ.λ. of Rom. i. 21, and contrast the πεφωτισ- μένοι as the note of the new condition in Eph. i. 18. The τῇ διανοίᾳ is not to be taken as if this clause referred only to the intellectual condition. διάνοια covers the ideas not only of understanding, but also of feeling and desiring. It is the faculty or seat of thinking and feeling (Matt. xxii. 37 ; Luke i. 51, x. 27; Col. 1. 21; 2 Pet. iii. 1). The dat. is that known as the dat. of sphere or reference (cf.
ϑαγνωσιαν FG,
Bernh., Synt., p. 84; Win.-Moult., pp. 263, 270), or the ‘local dat. ethically used ”’ (Ell. on Gal. i. 22; Donald., Greek Gram., p. 458).---ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι: alien- ated. Being in a state of moral darkness they also become alienated from the true life. The word is used of those who have estranged themselves from God, here and
in ii, 12; Col. i. 21 (cf. the OT VV
in Ps, lviii. 3; Ezek. xiv. 5, 7.---τῆς ζωῆς τοῦ Θεοῦ: from the life of God. This cannot mean the godly life, the way of life approved by God. For ζωή in the NT seems never to mean the course of life, but life itself, the principle of life as opposed to death. The two things are distinguished, e.g., in Gal. v. 25. Nor is there any reference here to the life of the Logos (John i. 3) in the pre-Christian world (Harl.). For it is the ἔθνη as they were known to him that Paul has in view here. The Θεοῦ, therefore, is best taken as the gen. of origin (as in δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ, Rom. i. 17; ἡ εἰρήνη τοῦ Θεοῦ, Phil. iv. 7; ¢f. Win.-Moult., p. 233), = “the life that comes from God,” the spirit- ual life communicated by God. Some (Ell., Abb., etc.) think that the phrase means more than this, and indicates that the life thus imparted to us by God is His own life, the very life possessed by Him- self, in the profoundest and most real sense ‘‘ the life of God” in τι8.--διὰ τὴν ἄγνοιαν τὴν οὖσαν ἐν αὐτοῖς : because of the ignorance that is in them. Explicit statement of the cause of their estrange- ment, which was implicitly given in the ἐσκοτωμένοι. The term ἄγνοια again is not aterm merely of intellect. It denotes an ignorance of Divine things, a want of knowledge that is inexcusable and in- volves moral blindness (Acts iii. 17, xvii. 30; 1 Pet. i. 14). It is further defined here not simply as αὐτῶν ‘their ignor- ance,” but as an ignorance οὖσαν ἐν avrots—surely a phrase that is neither tautological nor without a purpose, but one that describes their ignorance in re- spect of its seat. Their alienation had its cause not in something external, casual, or superficial, but in themselves—in a cule