and foreigners, and aliens; seek not honors, seek not glory, seek not authority, nor revenge; bear all things, and in this way, “redeem the time”;397 give up many things, anything they may require. Imagine now, I say, a man had a magnificent house, and persons were to make their way in, on purpose to murder him, and he were to give a large sum, and thus to rescue himself. Then we should say, he has redeemed himself. So also hast thou a large house, and a true faith in thy keeping. They will come to take all away. Give whatever they may demand, only preserve the principal thing, I mean the faith. “Because the days,” saith he, “are evil.” What is the evil of the day? The evil of the day ought to belong to the day. What is the evil of a body? Disease. And what again the evil of the soul? Wickedness. What is the evil of water? Bitterness. And the evil of each particular thing, is with reference to that nature of it which is affected by the evil. If then there is an evil in the day, it ought to belong to the day, to the hours, to the day-light. So also Christ saith, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” (Matt. vi. 34.) And from this expression we shall understand the other. In what sense then does he call “the days evil”? In what sense the “time” evil? It is not the essence of the thing, not the things as so created, but it is the things transacted in them. In the same way as we are in the habit of saying, “I have passed a disagreeable and wretched day.”398 And yet how could it be disagreeable, except from the circumstances which took place in it? Now the events which take place in it are, good things from God, but evil things from bad men. So then of the evils which happen in the times, men are the creators, and hence it is that the times are said to be evil. And thus we also call the times evil. 138 Ver. 17, 18. “Wherefore,”399 he adds, “be ye not foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is; and be not drunk with wine, wherein is riot.” For indeed intemperance in this renders men passionate and violent, and hot-headed, and irritable and savage. Wine has been given us for cheerfulness, not for drunkenness. Whereas now it appears to be an unmanly and contemptible thing for a man not to get drunk. And what sort of hope then is there of salvation? What? contemptible, tell me, not to get drunk, where to get drunk ought of all things in the world to be most contemptible? For it is of all things right for even a private individual to keep himself far from drunkenness; but how much more so for a soldier, a man who lives amongst swords, and bloodshed, and 397 [Or rather, “buying up for yourselves the opportunity”: a participial clause, which gives a modal definition to the preceding ὡςσοφοὶ, “as wise.” “In this figurative conception the doing of that for which the point of time is fitted is thought of as the ‘purchase-price by which the καιρός becomes ours.’”—Meyer.—G.A.] 398 [Compare on Gal. i. 4. “This clause, ‘because the days are evil,’ supplies a motive for buying up the oppor- tunity, namely, because moral corruption is now in vogue.”—Meyer.—G.A.] 399 [“This ‘wherefore’ refers to verses 15, 16. For this cause, i.e., because ye ought to walk with such exactness, become not such as do not use the mind aright.”—Ellicott.—G.A.] 255 Ephesians 5:15,16,17