Acts Chapter 17 verse 27 Holy Bible

ASV Acts 17:27

that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us:
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BBE Acts 17:27

So that they might make search for God, in order, if possible, to get knowledge of him and make discovery of him, though he is not far from every one of us:
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DARBY Acts 17:27

that they may seek God; if indeed they might feel after him and find him, although he is not far from each one of us:
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KJV Acts 17:27

That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:
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WBT Acts 17:27


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WEB Acts 17:27

that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
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YLT Acts 17:27

to seek the Lord, if perhaps they did feel after Him and find, -- though, indeed, He is not far from each one of us,
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Acts 17 : 27 Bible Verse Songs

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 27. - God for the Lord, A.V. and T.R. (Meyer does not accept this reading); is for be, A.V.; each for every, A.V. If haply they might feel after him. Ψηλαφάω is "to touch, feel, or handle," as Luke 24:39; Hebrews 12:18; 1 John 1:1. But it is especially used of the action of the blind groping or feeling their way by their hands in default of sight. So Homer describes Polyphemus as χερσὶ ψηλαφόων, feeling his way to the mouth of the cave with his hands after he was blinded by Ulysses ('Odyssey,' 9:416). And in the LXX. of Deuteronomy 28:29 we read, Ἔση ψηλαφῶν μεσημβρίας ὠς εἴ τις ψηλαφήσαι τυφλὸς ἐν τῷ σκότει, "Thou shall grope at noonday as the blind gropeth in darkness." The teaching, therefore, of the passage is that, though God was very near to every man, and had not left himself without abundant witness in his manifold gifts, yet, through the blindness of the heathen, they had to feel their way uncertainly toward God. In this fact lies the need of a revelation, as it follows ver. 30, etc. And hence part at least of the significance of such passages as, "Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord" (Ephesians 5:8); "Who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light" (1 Peter 2:9 ); "God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:6), and many more like passages.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(27) Should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him.--The word for "feel after" expresses strictly the act of groping in the dark. From the Apostle's point of view, anticipating in part the great Theodikaea--the vindication of the ways of God--in the Epistle to the Romans, the whole order of the world's history was planned, as part of the education of mankind, waking longings which it could not satisfy, leading men at once to a consciousness of the holiness of God and of their own sinfulness. The religions of the world were to him as the movements of one who climbs"Upon the great world's altar stairs,That slope through darkness up to God;"who can only say--"I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,And gather dust, and chaff, and callTo what I feel is Lord of all,And faintly trust the larger hope."Their ritual in all its manifold variety was but as the inarticulate wailing of childhood--"An infant crying for the light,And with no language but a cry."--Tennyson, In Memoriam, liv. . . .