LXX = “HD NW) receive (lift up) the face of, i.e., be favourable and later partial, to. The degeneration of the phrase was due to the natural contras!
18 ἀναστράφη ἐλυτρώθητε ἐκ τῆς 19 δότου :
between the face and the heart of a man, which was stamped on the Greek equiva- lent by the use of πρόσωπον for mask of the actor or hypocrite—«pivovra. If the tense be pressed, compare the saying of Jesus recorded in John xii. 31, viv κρίσις ἐστιν τοῦ κόσμου τούτου. Rom. ii. 16 is referred to the last Judgment by διὰ Χριστοῦ ᾿Ιησοῦ. But the present participle may be timeless as in 6 καλῶν, 6 βαπτίζων, etc.—KkaTa τὸ ἑκάστουν ἔργον, a commonplace Jewish and Christian, cf. Ps. xii. 12 (cited Rom. ii. 6), σὺ ἀποδώσεις ἑκάστῳ κατὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ (Hebrew has the work). R. Aqiba used to say . . . The world is judged by grace and everything is according to the work (Pirge Aboth., iii. 24). For col- lective singular lifework, cf. also 1 Cor. iii, 13-15, etc.—év φόβῳ, Fear is not entirely a technical term in N.T. Chris- tians needed the warning to fear God (so Luke xii. 5 ; 2 Cor. v. 10), although love might be proper to the perfect—Gnostic or Pharisee—z John iv. 18. The natural and acquired senses exist side by side, as appears in the use of ἄφοβος. Compare ἄφοβος οὐ δύναται δικαιωθῆναι (Sir. i. (22 with ἐν τούτῳ ἄφοβός cipr (Ps. xxvii. 2, Symmachus) = 1x Him I am con- fident.—tov τῆς παροικίας χρο- νον, during your earthly pilgrimage, which corresponds to the sojourn of Israel in Egypt (Acts xiii. 17). If God is their Father, heaven must be their home (i. 4); their life on earth is therefore a sojourn (see on i. 1). St. Paul has his own use of the metaphor (Eph. il. το). Gentile Christians are no longer strangers and sojourners, but fellow-citizens of the saints.
Ver. 18. Amplification of Isa. lii. 3 f., Δωρεὰν ἐπράθητε καὶ οὐ μετὰ ἀργυρίου λυτρωθήσεσθε (cf. αἷν. 13) . . « Eis Αἴγυπτον κατέβη ὁ λαός µου τὸ πρότερον παροικῆσαι ἐκεῖ. The deliverance from Babylon corresponds to the deliver- ance from Egypt. To these the Chris- tians added a third and appropriated to it the descriptions of its predecessors.—ot Φθαρτοῖς, κ.τ.λ. The preceding negative relief to positive statement is characteristic of St. Peter, who here found it in his original (Isa. 1.ο.). φΦθαρ- τοῖς echoes ἀπολλυμένου and is prob- ably an allusion to the Golden Calf of which it was said These be thy gods O
τε: εἰδότες ὅτι οὗ φθαρ µαταίας ὑμῶν ἄναστρο > x 4 9 ς
ἀλλὰ τιµίῳ αἵματι ὡς
τοῖς ἀργυρίω ἢ χρυσίω
φῆς πατροπαρα- ἀμνοῦ ἀμώμου καὶ ἆ σπίλου Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt (Exod. xxxii. 14). Accord- ing to Sap. xiv. 8, it is the proper name for an idol : τὸ δὲ φθαρτὸν θεὸς ὠνομάσθη. So the dative represents the agent and not only the instrument of the deliver- ance.—patatas supports the view taken of φθ., for the gods of the nations are
vanity, µάταια bin (Jer. x. 3, etc.).— πατροπαραδότου, ancestral, here-
ditavy. The adjective indicates the source of the influence, which their old way of life—patrius mos, patrit ritus—still exer- cised over them. The ancient religion had a strength—not merely vis inertiae— which often baffled both Jewish and Christian missionaries: ‘to subvert a custom delivered to us from ancestors the heathen say is not reasonable” (Clem. Ac. Protr. x.). “This power of the dead hand is exemplified in the pains taken by the Stoics and New Pythagoreans to con- serve the popular religion and its myths by allegorical interpretation. Among the Jews this natural conservatism was highly developed; St. Paul was a zealot for the ancestval laws. But the combination of patriarch and tradition does not prove that the persons addressed were Jewish Christians. The law, according to which the Jews regulated their life, was Divine, its mediator Moses; and there is a note of depreciation in the words not that it ts derived from Moses only from the Fathers (John vii. 22). πατρο is contrasted with πατέρα (17) as παραδότου with the direct calling.