As signifying the inward thought, it denotes the faculty of thinking and reasoning (Heb. iv. 12); regard or consideration (Acts xx. 24); reckoning, account (Philip. iv. 15, 17; Heb. iv. 13); cause or reason (Acts x. 29).
John uses the word in a peculiar sense, here, and in ver. 14 ; and, in this sense, in these two passages only. The nearest ap- proach to it is in Apoe. xix. 138, where the conqueror is called the Word of God ; and it is recalled in the phrases Word of Life, and the Life was manifested (1 John i. 1,2). Compare Heb. iv. 12. It was a familiar and current theological term when John wrote, and therefore he uses it without explanation.
The word here points directly to Gen. 1, where the act of creation is effected by God speaking (compare Ps. xxxiii. 6). The idea of God, who is in his own nature hidden, revealing himself in creation, is the root of the Logos-idea, in contrast with all materialistic or pantheistic conceptions of creation. This idea develops itself in the Old Testament on three lines. (1) Lhe Word, as embodying the divine will, is personified in Lebrew poetry. Consequently divine attributes are predicated of it as being the continuous revelation of God in law and prophecy (Ps. xxxiii. 4; Is. xl. 8; Ps. exix.105). The Word is a healer in Ps. evii. 20; a messenger in Ps. exlvii. 15; the agent of the divine decrees in Isa. lv. 11.
(2) The personified wisdom (Job xxviii. 12 sq.; Prov. viii., ix.). Here also is the idea of the revelation of that which is hidden. For wisdom is concealed from man: “he knoweth not the price thereof, neither is it found in the land of the living. The depth saith, It is not in me; and the sea saith, It is not with me. It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. It is hid from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the fowls of the air” (Job xxviii.). Even Death, which unlocks so many secrets, and the under- world, know it only as a rumor (ver. 22). It is only God who knows its way and its place (ver. 23). He made the world, made the winds and the waters, made a decree for the rain and a way for the lightning of the thunder (vv. 25, 26). He who possessed wisdom in the beginning of his way, before His works of old, before the earth with its depths and springs and moun- tains, with whom was wisdom as one brought up with Him (Prov. viii. 26-31), declared it. “It became, as it were, ob