THE SECOND DIVISION OF THE PROLOGUE. THE WORD DISOWNED. Against the eternal being, light and life of the divine Word, a contrary principle emerges in the world —darkness. The purpose and work of God in creation having been set forth, we are now shown man’s attitude toward these.
5. Shineth (¢aivec). Note the present tense, indicating not merely the present point of time, but that the light has gone forth continuously and without interruption from the beginning until now, and is still shining. Hence gaiver, shineth, denot- ing the peculiar property of light under all circumstances, and not dwrtifer, lighteneth or clluminateth, as in ver. 9. The shin- ing does not always illuminate. Compare 1 John ii. 8.
In the darkness (év 7H ocxotia). Xxotia, darkness, is a word peculiar to later Greek, and used in the New Testament almost exclusively by John. It oceurs once in Matt. x. 27, and once in Luke xii. 8. The more common New Testament word is oxétos, from the same root, which appears in oxida, shadow, and oxnvy, tent. Another word for darkness, fodos, occurs only in Peter and Jude (2 Pet. ii. 4,17; Jude 6, 13). See on 2 Pet. li, 4. The two words are combined in the phrase blackness of darkness (2 Pet. ii. 17; Jude 13). In classical Greek oxéros, as distinguished from {ddos, is the stronger term, denoting the condition of darkness as opposed to light in nature. Hence of death ; of the condition before birth s of night. Zédos, which is mainly a poetical term, signifies gloom, half-darkness, nebu- lousness. Here the stronger word is used. The darkness of sin is deep. The moral condition which opposes itself to di- vine light is udterly dark. The very light that is in it is darkness. Its condition is the opposite of that happy state of humanity indicated in ver. 4, when the life was the light of men ; it is a condition in which mankind has become the prey
of falsehood, folly and sin. Compare 1 John i.9-11. Rom. 21, 29.
Comprehended (xaréraSev). Rev., apprehended. Wryc., took not wt. See on Mark ix. 18; Acts iv. 13. Comprehended,