Acts Chapter 17 verse 24 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 24. - The God for God, A.V. (surely a change for the worse); he being Lord for seeing that he is Lord, A.V. Made with hands (χειροποιήτοις); see the same phrase in Mark 14:5, 8; Acts 7:48; Hebrews 9:11. St. Paul applies it, too, to the circumcision made with the knife, as distinguished from that wrought by the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 3:11). It is frequent in the LXX. It is a striking instance of St. Paul's unflinching boldness and fidelity to the truth, that he should expose the hollowness of heathen worship, standing within a stone's throw of the Parthenon and the temple of Theseus and the countless other temples of gods and goddesses, which were the pride and glory of the Athenian people. Note how he begins his catechetical instruction to the Athenians with the first article of the Creed: "I believe in God the Father almighty, Maker of heaven and earth."

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(24) God that made the world . . .--The masculine form of the pronoun and participles throughout the sentence presents an emphatic contrast to the neuter pronoun of the previous verse.Seeing that he is Lord.--Better, He, being Lord.Dwelleth not in temples made with hands.--We note with special interest the reproduction of the thought which the then persecutor had heard from the lips of the martyr Stephen. (See Note on Acts 7:48.) As asserted of the Temple at Jerusalem, it had at that time, even though it was quoted from a Jewish prophet, driven the Pharisee Saul into the frenzy of fanaticism. Now, having learnt the lesson as regards that Temple, he proclaims the truth as applicable a fortiori to all temples raised by human hands. It is obvious that this truth places the sacredness of Christian churches on a ground entirely different from that which influenced the minds of Jew or Greek in regard to their respective temples. Churches are holy, not because God dwells in them, but because they are set apart for the highest acts of the collective life of the congregation of His people. In those acts men hold communion with God, and so the Church is for them all, and more than all, that the Tabernacle of Meeting (this, as meaning the place where man met God, rather than Tabernacle of the Congregation, being the true rendering of the Hebrew term; comp. Exodus 29:42) was to the Israelites of old. Romish theory and practice, in presenting the consecrated wafer in pyx or monstrance, or carrying it in procession, as an object of adoration, revives the old Pagan view which St. Paul disclaims.