Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.
Read Chapter 17
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
Lactanius ridicules the folly of idolatry in a neat strain of irony, which he introduces by the following verses from Lucilius: Ut pueri infantes credunt signa omnia ahena. Viv ere et esse homines; sic isti omnia ficta. Vera putant. The poet compares these fools to children. I think them worse; for the latter only take the statues for men, they for gods. Age causes the error of the one, folly of the other. These soon cease to be deceived, but the folly of those lasts and increases always. (Lactanius, de fals. Relig. lib. i.)
It is providentially ordered that against his will he stays there, while waiting for those others. (a) His spirit, it says, within him παρωξύνετο . It does not mean there anger or exasperation: just as elsewhere it says, There was παροξυσμὸς between them. Acts 15:30 (c) Then what is παρωξύνετο? Was roused: for the gift is far removed from anger and exasperation. He could not bear it, but pined away. He reasoned therefore in the synagogue, etc.
Observe how he meets with greater trials among the Jews than among the Gentiles. Thus in Athens he undergoes nothing of this kind; the thing goes as far as ridicule, and there an end: and yet he did make some converts: whereas among the Jews he underwent many perils; so much greater was their hostility against him.--"His spirit," it says, "was roused within him when he saw the city all full of idols." Nowhere else were so many objects of worship to be seen. But again "he disputed with the Jews in the synagogue, and in the market daily with them that met with him. Then certain of the philosophers of the Stoics and Epicureans encountered him." (v. 18.) It is a wonder the philosophers did not laugh him to scorn, speaking in the way he did. "And some said, What does this babbler mean to say?" insolently, on the instant: --this is far from philosophy. "Other some said, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods," from the preaching, because he had no arrogance. They did not understan...
