Bible Commentaries

Genesis 12:1-3 — blessing: and I will bless them that bless thee, and him that curseth thee I will curse; and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed." "Jehovah said unto Abram" We are not informed as to the manner of God's communicating with Abram; but Acts 7:2 declares that, "The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham." God is Spirit, and it might be conjectured that in this call there occurred one of the great theophanies which, again and again, marked God's dealings with His people. "Unto the land

Isaiah 65:17-25 — designation of Douglas as correct. He designated these last nine verses as, "The Overflowing Blessings in the Messianic Age."George C. M. Douglas, p. 409. The great difficulty of accepting this understanding of the passage lies in the first verse (Isaiah 65:17) where the "new heavens and the new earth" are promised; because the apostle Peter clearly identified this promise with the final judgment of mankind, the destruction of the earth with fire, in which "the heavens shall pass away with a great noise,

Hosea 2:2 — suggest Hosea's domestic situation; but this impression fades quickly "into the picture of a nation under the figure of a marriage which has gone wrong."J. B. Hindley, The New Bible Commentary, Revised (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1970), p. 706. The mother here is then the nation of Israel, and the children are individual members of the whole nation, of whom a small remnant were faithful to God; and, it is to that remnant of the faithful that the admonition to "Contend with your

Amos 9:8 — whole world of wicked and unbelieving humanity is dramatically detailed in the prophecy of Revelation (Revelation 19:11-21). In the case of the kingdoms of the Jews, the very initiation of their kingdom under Saul was a rejection of God (1 Samuel 8:7); reciprocally, this was also their rejection of their own status as "God's chosen people," a term that henceforth would apply to the "righteous remnant" and not to Israel as a whole. McKeating interpreted this and the preceding verse 7 as "a formal

Jonah 4:1 — absolutely the most amazing reaction to spiritual awakening we can find anywhere. Of all people, one would think the preacher would be happy about converts!"James T. Draper, Jr., Jonah Living in Rebellion (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House, Publishers, 1971), p, 87. There are different opinions about the exact point in this history that Jonah became angry. Keil was of a very positive opinion that Jonah's anger did not flair until the forty days were concluded, and it became evident that God would not

Deuteronomy 1:1 — modernists. He denied the Matthew authorship of that Gospel, saying, "It was written by a Jewish Christian of insight and devotion!" (at a time long after Matthew lived).Edgar J. Goodspeed, The Story of the Bible (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), p. 57. The prominent point in all this is that the unbelieving enemies of the Bible approve the fraudulent and crooked devices alleged to have been practiced on the sacred text of the Bible. From this, we are required to be doubly suspicious of all their

Luke 17:1-2 — Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1951), p. 431. Hobbs thought the four sayings might be entitled "Four things of which the Christian should beware." These were enumerated by him as "the sin of tempting others (Luke 17:1-2), … the sin of an unforgiving spirit (Luke 17:3-4), … the sin of overlooking the power of faith in this (Luke 17:5-6), … and the sin of supposing that one may merit salvation (Luke 17:7-10).Herschel H. Hobbs, An Exposition of

John 1:19-20 — identification in the second clause of what the confession was. The unique construction reflects Jewish idiom. Thus, Josephus wrote of King Saul, "Saul confessed that he was guilty and denied not the sin."Flavius Josephus, Antiquities, vi, 7, 4. Numerous little touches like this throughout the Gospel make it absolutely certain that the writer was Jewish.

Acts 1:8 — is inclusive and not selective, which is another way of saying that it is gracious and not conditional. There are no conditions in Acts 1:8. Frederick Dale Bruner, A Theology of the Holy Spirit (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, Publishers, 1971), pp. 160, 161. It is impossible, however, for such a view to be reconciled with Galatians 4:6, which states that "Because ye are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, etc." God's Spirit was never given to any man

Acts 14:22 — men are saved through, or by, Christianity, or the Christian religion. Through many tribulations we must enter … The significance of "must" as applied to all of God's creation is discussed in my Commentary on Matthew, under Matthew 18:7. In focus here is the necessity of sufferings, persecutions, etc. for those who will obey the gospel and enter God's kingdom. The lives of the Christians in these Galatian cities afforded ample proof of this, as did also that of the great apostle who

Romans 10:21 — But as to Israel he saith, All day long did I spread out my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people. This quotation of Isaiah 65:2 summarizes Isaiah's whole paragraph at that place (through the 7th verse), where it is plain that God's anger with Israel was not due merely to their disobedience, but also to the high-handed and arrogant manner of it. Their conduct was called "gainsaying" in Paul's quotation; but in the passage from which

Romans 9:17-18 — purposed, either way, to use him as a demonstration of God's power and a means of publishing the divine name all over the world; but the choice of HOW this would come about remained with Pharaoh until he was HARDENED. See more on the latter under Romans 11:7. What happened to the king of Nineveh, following the preaching of Jonah, should be remembered in the connection here. Both Pharaoh and the ruler of Nineveh heard the word of God, the one by Moses, the other by Jonah. Nineveh received mercy; Egypt did

1 Corinthians 14:27-28 — be done unto edifying, and tongues do not edify. 5.    Love is a better thing to practice than speaking in tongues. 6.    Five intelligible words are to be preferred to ten thousand in an uninterpreted tongue. 7.    Under no circumstances let the women do it (1 Corinthians 14:34), interpreter or no interpreter. 8.    Greater is the teacher than the tongue-speaker. 9.    Uninterpreted tongues will cause

Galatians 6:4-5 — "Every man shall bear his own burden." "Every one of us must give an account of himself to God" (2 Corinthians 5:10; Romans 14:12). Every man must bear the burden of ordering his life after "the sayings of Jesus Christ" (Matthew 7:24-27), upon pain of being either a wise or a foolish builder; and no commentator or preacher ever had the right to bear that burden for him. See Law of Christ at end of chapter. C.    The burdens that are too heavy to be borne.

1 Thessalonians 4:16 — will signal the onset of the Second Advent. Such sounds attended the giving of the Law of Moses on Mt. Sinai; but it is idle to speculate as to the meaning of such things. The Second Advent will also be with the clouds of heaven (1 Thessalonians 4:17), the same having been mentioned at the time of the Ascension (Acts 1:9-11), with the metaphor being changed to "flaming fire" in 2 Thessalonians 1:7, and with the Saviour himself having stressed the same thing (Luke 21:27). THE NEED OF THE

1 Timothy 3:1 — with Stibbs who construed this expression as the mark of Paul's "concern to encourage a proper regard for the task of oversight" A. M. Stibbs, The New Bible Commentary, Revised (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1970), p. 1171. of the churches. This is the second of five times that Paul used this rather peculiar expression; and it seems to have been applied to particularly important or timely truths which had come to be something like proverbs among the earliest

Hebrews 11:31 — and Gomorrah, and Tyre, Babylon, and Nineveh, to name only a few. In all of such examples there was the same pattern of excessive sin, reprobacy, judgment, and destruction; nor was Israel itself exempt from the same righteous judgment. Matthew 22:6-7 reveals that the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. was a judgment of God upon that people for their rejection of Christ. (See further discussion of this in Commentary on Matthew.) James Burton Coffman, Commentary on Matthew (Abilene, Texas, ACU Press,

Hebrews 13:1 — worthy indeed of standing thus alone as a divine injunction of the greatest importance. Westcott divided the various exhortations listed in this chapter into the three categories of: (1) social duties (Hebrews 13:1-6); (2) religious duties (Hebrews 13:7-17); and (3) personal instructions of the author (Hebrews 13:18-25). Significantly, love of the brethren stands at the head of the list of all obligations. BROTHERLY LOVE Our brother! He stands before us, like ourselves, made in the image of God, an

James 2:13 — alone," or (b) "by works alone"; (6) that all of the alleged contradiction between the sacred writers James and Paul derives not from what either of them said, but from the false allegations of theologians concerning what they meant; (7) and that Luther did not misunderstand James (as frequently urged), but that he misunderstood Paul. The interpretation advocated here is oriented in the New Testament and not to theological speculations which have so largely supplanted the sacred text. What

James 4:1 — "fundamentalism" peculiar to certain schools of New Testament criticism. "James cannot be thinking of wars and fightings between nations." Ronald A. Ward, New Bible Commentary, Revised (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Company, 1970); p. 1231. Roberts, quoting Arndt and Gingrich, noted that the Greek word for "fightings" "is used always in the plural and always of battles carried on with weapons." J. W. Roberts, The Letter of James (Austin, Texas: Sweet Publishing