Acts 17:26 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Acts 17:26
And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Deuteronomy 32:7-8 Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee…
Genesis 3:20 And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.
Malachi 2:10 Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covena…
Romans 5:12-19 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
1 Corinthians 15:22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
1 Corinthians 15:47 The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.
Job 12:23 He increaseth the nations, and destroyeth them: he enlargeth the nations, and straiteneth them again.
Job 14:5 Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass;
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Acts 17:22-31
We have here St. Paul's sermon at Athens. Divers sermons we have had, which the apostles preached to the Jews, or such Gentiles as had an acquaintance with and veneration for the Old Testament, and were worshippers of the true and living God; and all they had to do with them was to open and allege that Jesus is the Christ; but here we have a sermon to heathens, that worshipped false gods, and were without the true God in the world, and to them the scope of their discourse was quite different from what it was to the other. In the former case their business was to lead their hearers by prophecies and miracles to the knowledge of the Redeemer, and faith in him; in the latter it was to lead them…
and hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth--Holding with the Old Testament teaching, that in the blood is the life (Gen 9:4; Lev 17:11; Deu 12:23), the apostle sees this life stream of the whole human race to be one, flowing from one source [BAUMGARTEN].
and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation--The apostle here opposes both Stoical Fate and Epicurean Chance, ascribing the periods and localities in which men and nations flourish to the sovereign will and prearrangements of a living God.
Adam Clarke on Acts 17:26
Hath made of one blood - In AB, some others, with the Coptic, Ethiopic, Vulgate, Itala, Clement, and Bede, the word αἱματος, blood, is omitted. He hath made of one (meaning Adam) all nations of men; but αἱμα, blood, is often used by the best writers for race, stock, kindred: so Homer, Iliad, vi. ver. 211:
Ταυτης τοι γενεης τε και αἱματος ευχομαι ειναι.
I glory in being of that same race and blood.
So Virgil, Aen. viii. ver. 142, says;
Sic genus amborum scindit se Sanguine ab uno.
Thus, from one stock, do both our stems divide.
See many examples of this form in Kypke. The Athenians had a foolish notion that they were self-produced, and were the aboriginals of mankind. Lucian ridicules this…
"And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." This is peculiar to God. Look, then, whether these things may not be predicated of the Son also. "Being Lord," he saith, "of heaven and earth" - which they accounted to be God's. Both the creation he declares to be His work, and mankind also. "Having determined," he says, "the times assigned to them, and the bounds of their habitation."
And he made from one every kind of human being. What he says from one is clear, because he means from one human being. But it is fuller in Greek: He made from one blood, which no one doubts means the same. For by the name of blood, he indicates the propagation of the flesh; and by the flesh, according to the usual manner of Scripture, he wants a human being to be understood according to that of the Psalmist: All flesh will come to you (Psalm 64).
"Having appointed the times." He says, "Having appointed to seek God"; but he did not appoint this for all time, rather for appointed times, showing that they did not find him when they did not seek him now. For since when they sought, they did not find, he shows that he was revealed in such a way, as if toward something to be grasped in the middle; for the heaven was not here, but elsewhere. Nor was he in this time, but in another; so that it is possible to find him at every season and at every fixed point; for therefore he arranged it, so that he might be hindered neither by place nor by time. For this indeed contributed most of all to their belief, that the heaven is everywhere, that it stands in every time. [CHRYSOSTOM]
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Adam — Red, a Babylonian word, the generic name for man, having the same meaning in the Hebrew and the Assyrian languages. It was the name given to the first man, whose creation, fall, and subsequent…
Areopagus — The Latin form of the Greek word rendered “Mars’ hill.” But it denotes also the council or court of justice which met in the open air on the hill. It was a rocky height to the west of the Acropolis…
Blood — (1.) As food, prohibited in Gen. 9:4, where the use of animal food is first allowed. Comp. Deut. 12:23; Lev. 3:17; 7:26; 17:10-14. The injunction to abstain from blood is renewed in the decree of the…
Mars Hill — The Areopagus or rocky hill in Athens, north-west of the Acropolis, where the Athenian supreme tribunal and court of morals was held. From some part of this hill Paul delivered the address recorded…
Paul — =Saul (q.v.) was born about the same time as our Lord. His circumcision-name was Saul, and probably the name Paul was also given to him in infancy “for use in the Gentile world,” as “Saul” would be…
Predestination — This word is properly used only with reference to God’s plan or purpose of salvation. The Greek word rendered “predestinate” is found only in these six passages, Acts 4:28; Rom. 8:29, 30; 1 Cor. 2:7;…
Athens · A city of Greece — A city of Greece
Blood · Of all men the same — Of all men the same
Gentiles · UNCLASSIFIED SCIPTURES RELATING TO — UNCLASSIFIED SCIPTURES RELATING TO
Man · EQUALITY OF — EQUALITY OF
Mars’ Hill · A hill in Athens — A hill in Athens
John Gill on Acts 17:26
And hath made of one blood,.... That is, of one man's blood; the Vulgate Latin version reads, "of one"; and the Arabic version of De Dieu reads, "of one man"; of Adam, the first parent of all mankind, and who had the blood of all men in his veins: hence the Jews (u) say,
"the first man was , "the blood of the world";''
and this by propagation has been derived from him, and communicated to all mankind. They also say (w), that
"the reason why man was created alone (or there was but one man created) was, on account of families, that they might not be stirred up one against another;''
that is, strive and contend with one another about pre-eminence: and they add,
"that the righteous might n…
Acts 17:26-29
26. And hath made of one blood all mankind to dwell upon all the face of the earth, and hath appointed the times before determined, and the bounds of their habitation. 27. That they might seek God, if peradventure they may grope [after] him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us. 28. For in him we live, move, and have our being; as certain of your poets said, For we be also his generation. 29. Therefore, seeing we be the generation of God, we must not think that the Godhead is like to gold, or silver, or to stone, graven by the cunning cogitation of man.
26. And he hath made of one blood. Paul doth now show unto the men of Athens to what end mankind was crea…
Paul’s remarkable sermon in Athens reveals his versatility in preaching the Good News (Rom 11:14; 1 Cor 9:19-23; 10:33; cp. Acts 16:3; 17:2-3; 21:20-26). While Paul’s Greek audience did not know the Scriptures or have a tradition of monotheism as the Jews did, they did have a rich intellectual heritage. So Paul established a point of contact on the basis of an Athenian inscription to an Unknown God. He then explained God’s nature as the Creator (17:22-29), followed by God’s purpose as the Redeemer (17:30-31). • As he did elsewhere in his own writings (see 1 Cor 15:33; Titus 1:12), Paul made use of the Greek poets. There are several points of connection in this sermon with the Hymn to Zeus by…
Providence Of God, The · Is exercised in: Determining the period of human life — Is exercised in: Determining the period of human life
Religion · NATURAL — NATURAL
Time · All events of, predetermined by God — All events of, predetermined by God
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
