g Actsxv. ἁγιασμὸς ὑμῶν, © ἀπέχεσθαι ὑμᾶς ἀπὸ τῆς "πορνείας: 4. Ξ εἰδέναι
h 1 Pet. iii. ἧς 7. τον i See Tob. Viii. 4-9, and 1 Cor. vii. 39. on ii. 14. ὃ 20, 3 b). purpose.
© sc. τινα from ἕκαστον (4). q Cf. on 2 Cor. vii. 11.
ments, Paul taught as here that the ex- perience of the Spirit guaranteed the believer’s vindication at the end (cf. i. 9, 10) and also implied his ethical behaviour during the interval. The comparative lack of any allusion to the forgiveness of sins (cf. e.g., iii. 5, το, 13) does not mean that Paul thought the Thessa- lonians would be kept sinless during the brief interval till the parousia (so Wernle, der Christ u. die Siinde δεί Paulus, 25- 32); probably no occasion had called for any explicit teaching on this common- place of faith (x Cor. xv. 3, 11).
Yer. 4. Paul demands chastity from men ; it is not simply a feminine virtue. Contemporary ethics, in the Roman and Greek world, was often disposed to con- done marital unfaithfulness on the part of husbands, and to view prenuptial un- chastity as ἀδιάφορον or at least as a comparatively venial offence, particularly in men (cf. Lecky’s Htstory of European Morals, i. 104 f., ii. 314 f.). The strict purity of Christ’s gospel had to be learnt (εἰδέναι). --- σκεῦος (lit. ‘ vessel ”) = “wife ;” the rendering ‘“‘ body ” (cf. Barn. vii. 3) conflicts with the normal meaning of κτᾶσθαι (‘‘ get,” ‘ acquire ; ᾽᾿ of mar- riage, LXX. Ruth iv. 10; Sir. xxxvi. 20, Xen., Symp., ii. 10). Paul views mar- riage on much the same level as he does in 1 Cor. vii. 2, 9; in its chaste and religious form, it is a remedy against sensual passion, not a gratification of that passion. Each of you (he is ad- dressing men) must learn (εἰδέναι = know [how] to, cf. Phil. iv. 12) to get a wife of his own (when marriage is in question), but you must marry ἐν ἁγιασμῷ (as a Christian duty and vocation) καὶ τιμῇ (with a corresponding sense of the moral dignity of the relationship). The two latter words tend to raise the current estimate, presupposed here and in ver. 6, of a wife as the σκεῦος of her husband; this in its turn views adultery primarily as an infringement of the husband’s tights or an attack on his personal pro-
Ὁ σκεῦος κτᾶσθαι ἐν ᾿ ἁγιασμῷ καὶ
k See Heb. xiii. 4 and Ignat. ad Polyk. v. 2. 3 n From Jer. x. 25; cf. Il. i. 8: “whose characteristic is ignorance of God" (Win.
: p Cf. iii. 3, for the accus. infin. with neg. to denote r Ps. xciv. 1, cf. Sir. v. 3; Rom. xii. 19, and xiii. 4.
= τιμῇ,
πάθει " ἐπιθυμίας, καθάπερ “kal τὰ ἔθνη "τὰ μὴ εἰδότα ν ΕΝ ο Sop ο τε , ‘ a es “4 ,
τὸν Θεόν - 6. “τὸ " μὴ ὑπερβαίνειν καὶ πλεονεκτεῖν “ἐν τῷ “πράγματι ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ: διότι " ἔκδικος Κύριος περὶ πάντων τούτων,
1 4 Mace. 1. 35. m Cf,
perty. Paul, however, closes by an em- phatic word on the religious aspect (6-8) of the question; besides, as Dr. Drum- mond remarks, “is it not part of his greatness that, in spite of his own somewhat ascetic temperament, he was not blind to social and physiological facts?’’ It is noticeable that his eschat- ology has less effect on his view of mar- riage here than in 1 Cor. vii. Even were κτᾶσθαι taken as = “ possess,” a usage not quite impossible for later Greek (cf. Field, 72), it would only extend the idea to the duties of a Christian husband. The alternative rendering (‘‘acquire mastery of,” Luke xxi. 19) does not justify the “body ” sense of σκεῦος.
Ver. 6. Compare the saying of rabbi Simon ben Zoma (on Deut. xxiii. 25): ‘* Look not on thy neighbour’s vineyard. If thou hast looked, enter not; if thou hast entered, regard not the fruits; if thou hast regarded them, touch them not ; if thou hast touched them, eat them not. But if thou hast eaten, then thou dost eject thyself from the life of this world and of that which is to come” (quoted in Bacher’s Agada der Tannaiten, and ed., 1903, i. 430). There is no change of subject, from licentiousness to dishonesty. The asyndeton and the euphemistic ἐν τῷ πράγματι (not τῳ = τινί, Win. §6 44) show that Paul is still dealing with the immorality of men, but now as a form of social dishonesty and fraud. The metaphors are drawn from trade, perhaps as appropriate to a trading community. While ὑπερβαίνειν may be intransitive (in its classical sense of κε transgress ’’), it probably governs ἀδελ- φόν in the sense of “ get the better of,” or “ overreach ;”’ πλεονεκτεῖν similarly = ‘“overreach,” “defraud,” ‘take advant- age of” (2 Cor. vii. 2, xii. 17, 18; Xen., Mem., ili. 5, 2; Herod. viii. 112). Com- pare ἀκαθαρσίας πάσης ἐν πλεονεξίᾳ (Eph. iv. 19). The passage (with ver. 8) sounds almost like a vague reminiscence of Test. Asher, ii. 6: 6 πλεονεκτῶν τὸν