n Luc. i. 74; ἔστι, τὸν διάβολον, 15. "Kal ἀπαλλάξῃ τούτους, ὅσοι φόβῳ θανάτου
16. οὐ γὰρ δήπου ἀγ-
In the Phaedo frequently of
Rom. . Q ο κ᾿ ” Ts, διὰ παντὸς τοῦ ζῆν ἔνοχοι ἦσαν δουλείας. 1 δουλιας in ΜΕ "ΗΡ; δουλειας in ΑΒΟΒΡ, etc., E**KLM. so. He brings sins to remembrance, he τούτου.
appears as the accuser of the brethren, as the counsel for the prosecution. Thus he creates a fear of death, a fear which is one of the most marked features of Ο.Τ. experience. Both Schoettgen and Weber produce rabbinical sayings which illustrate the power of a legal religion to produce servility and fear, so that the natural expression of the Jew was, “In this life death will not suffer a man to be glad”. Life, in short, with sin unac- counted for, and with death viewed as the punishment of sin to look forward to, is a δουλεία unworthy of God’s sons. This indeed is expressly stated in ver. 15. The δουλεία which contradicts the idea of sonship and prevents men from entering upon their destiny of dominion over all things is occasioned by their fear of death (φόβῳ, the dative of cause) as that which implies rejection by God. [Among the races whose conscience was not edu- cated by the law, views of death varied greatly. These will be found in Geddes’ Phaedo, pp. 217, 223; and cf. the open- ing paragraphs of the third Book of the Republic, as well as pp. 330 and 486 B. Aristotle with his usual straightforward frankness pronounces death φοβερώτατον. On the other hand, many believed τεθνάμεναι βέλτιον ἢ βίοτος ; Hegesias was styled 6 πεισιθάνατος, and by his persuasions and otherwise suicide became popular; and death was πο longer reckoned an everlasting ill, but “ portum potius paratum nobis et perfugium”. Wholly applicable to the present passage is Spinoza’s “homo /iber de nihilo minus quam de morte cogitat’’. Cf. Philo, Omn. sap. liber, who quotes Eurip., tis ἐστι δοῦλος τοῦ θανεῖν ἄφροντις ὧν; This then was the bondage which characterised the life (διὰ παντὸς Tod ζῆν) of those under the old dispensation; the bondage in which they were held (ἔνοχοι = évexdpevon, “held” or “ bound,” *‘sub- ject to,’’ see Thayer, s.v.), and from which Christ delivered τούτους ὅσοι, not as if it were a restricted number who were delivered, but on the contrary to mark that the deliverance was coexten- sive with the bondage. ἀπαλλάξῃ, used especially of freeing from slavery [exx. from Philo in Carpzov, and cf. Isocrates οὗτος ἀπήλλαξεν αὐτοὺς τοῦ δέους
soul emancipated from the body.] How the Son wrought this deliverance διὰ τοῦ θανάτου can now be answered; and it cannot be better answered than in the words of Robertson Smith: “Το break this sway, Jesus takes upon Himself that mortal flesh and blood to whose infirmi- ties the fear of death under the O.T. attaches. But while He passes through all the weakness of fleshly life, and, finally, through death itself, He, unlike all others, proves Himself not only exempt from the fear of death, but victorious over the accuser. Το Him, who in His sinlessness experienced every weakness of mortality, without diminu- tion of his unbroken strength of fellow- ship with God, death is not the dreaded sign of separation from God’s grace (cf. ver. 7), but a step in his divinely appointed career; not something inflicted on Him against His will, but a means whereby (διὰ with genitive) He consciously and
- designedly accomplishes His vocation as
Saviour. For this victory of Jesus over the devil, or, which is the same thing, the fear of death, must be taken, like every Other part of His work, in connec- tion with the idea of His vocation as Head and Leader of His people.” In short, we see now what is meant by His tasting death ‘“‘for every man,” and how this death guarantees the perfect dominion and glory depicted in Psalm viii. All the humiliation and death are justified by the necessities of the case, he concludes, ‘‘For, as I need scarcely say, it is not angels (presumably sinless and spiritual beings, πνεύματα, i. 14) He is taking in hand, but He is taking in hand Abraham’s seed (the dying children of a dead father; ‘also dergleichen sterbliche und durch Todes- furcht in Knechtschaft befangene Wesen,’ Bleek). δήπου: frequently in classics, as Plato, Protagoras, 309 Ὁ. οὐ γὰρ δήπου ἐνέτυχες, “for I may take it for granted you have not met’ (Afol., 21 B). τί ποτε λέγει 6 θεός . . . φάσκων ἐμὲ σοφώτατον εἶναι; οὐ γὰρ δήπου ψεύδεταί ye, ‘for, at any rate, as need hardly be said, he is not saying what is untrue”. ἐπιλαμβάνεται : “lays hold to help” or simply ‘‘ succours,” with the idea of tak- ing a person up to see him through. Cf,