Chap. xx.--concluding word of consolation. doxology.
But neither let it trouble your understanding, that we see the unrighteous having riches and the servants of God straitened. Let us therefore, brethren and sisters, be believing: we are striving in the contest 1 of the living God, we are exercised by the present life, in order that we may be crowned by that to come. No one of the righteous received fruit speedily, but awaiteth it. For if God gave shortly the recompense of the righteous, straightway we would be exercising ourselves in business, not in godliness; for we would seem to be righteous, while pursuing not what is godly but what is gainful. And on this account Divine judgment surprised a spirit that was not righteous, and loaded it with chains. 2
To the only God invisible, 3 the Father of truth, who sent forth to us the Saviour and Prince of incorruption, 4 through whom also He manifested to us the truth and the heavenly life, to Him be the glory for ever and ever. Amen. 5
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peiran athloumen; the construction is classical, and the figure common in all Greek literature. ↩
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The verbs here are aorists, and have been rendered by the English past tense; the present participle (me` on di'kaion) describing the character of the "spirit" must, according to English usage, conform to the main verbs. Lightfoot says, "The aorist here has its common gnomic sense;" and he therefore interprets the passage as a general statement: "Sordid motives bring their own punishment in a judicial blindness." But this gnomic sense of the aorist is not common. C reads desmo's, which yields this sense: "and a chain weighed upon him." Hilgenfeld refers the passage to those Christians who suffered persecution for other causes than those of righteousness. Harnack thinks the author has in mind Satan, as the prince of avarice, and regards him as already loaded with chains. If the aorist is taken in its usual sense, this is the preferable explanation; but the meaning is obscure. ↩
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1 Tim. i. 17. ↩
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Acts iii. 15, v. 31; comp. Heb. ii. 10. ↩
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The doxology is interesting, as indicating the early custom of thus closing a homily. The practice, fitting in itself, naturally followed the examples in the Epistles. ↩
