{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-3202","native_reference":{"book_number":510,"chapter_from":7,"chapter_to":7,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":6,"verse_to":6},"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"verse-keyed-module-record","review_required":["English edition and exact text","author/work attribution","dating","verse mapping and citation kind","reuse and attribution","split author quotations and deduplicate"],"review_status":"unreviewed","source_html":"<p><b>Bede</b>: For his seed shall be a stranger in a foreign land, and they shall subject them to slavery and mistreat them for four hundred years. It should not be understood as if he said that this seed would be mistreated or subjected to slavery for those four hundred years, but by a hyperbaton it should be read that his seed would be strangers for four hundred years, during part of which time slavery also occurred. For it is written: \"In Isaac shall your seed be called\" (Gen. XXI), and from the year of Isaac's birth to the year of the exodus from Egypt four hundred and five years are counted, which Scripture, in its manner, calls four hundred years, during which that seed would be strangers, either in the land of Canaan or in Egypt. It can also be understood that from Isaac's fifth year, when through the son of the bondwoman, affliction began, the labor of four hundred years is counted.<br/><i>— Commentary on Acts</i></p><p><b>John Chrysostom</b>: See, what a number of years the Promise has been given, and the manner of the Promise, and nowhere sacrifice, nowhere circumcision! He here shows, how God Himself suffered them to be afflicted, not that He had anything to lay to their charge. \"And they shall bring them into bondage,\" etc. But nevertheless, they did not these things with impunity. \"And the nation to whom they shall be in bondage I will judge, said God.\" For, to show that they are not to go by this, in estimating who are pious (by reason of their saying, \"He trusted in God, let Him deliver Him\")--He, the Same that promised, He that gave the land, first permits the evils. So also now, though He has promised a Kingdom, yet He suffers us to be exercised in temptations. If here the freedom was not to be till after four hundred years, what wonder, with regard to the Kingdom? Yet he performed it, and lapse of time availed not to falsify His word. Moreover, it was no ordinary bondage they underwent. And the matter does not terminate solely in the punishment of those (their oppressors); but they themselves also, He saith, shall enjoy a mighty salvation. Here he reminds them too of the benefit which they enjoyed.<br/><i>— Homily on Acts 16</i></p><p><b>John Chrysostom</b>: This is suitable to be said here also: that God is rich in ways and means to bring us up from hence. For this above all showed the riches of God's resources, that in its very reverses the nation increased, while enslaved, while evil-entreated, and sought to be exterminated. And this is the greatness of the Promise. For had it increased in its own land, it had not been so wonderful. And besides, it was not for a short time, either, that they were in the strange land: but for four hundred years. Hence we learn a great lesson of philosophic endurance: they did not treat them as masters use slaves, but as enemies and tyrants--and he foretold that they should be set in great liberty: for this is the meaning of that expression, \"They shall serve Me: and they shall come up hither again\"; and with impunity.<br/><i>— Homily on Acts 16</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: For whence was Noah \"found righteous,\" if in his case the righteousness of a natural law had not preceded? Whence was Abraham accounted \"a friend of God,\" if not on the ground of equity and righteousness, (in the observance) of a natural law? Whence was Melchizedek named \"priest of the most high God,\" if, before the priesthood of the Levitical law, there were not levites who were wont to offer sacrifices to God? For thus, after the above-mentioned patriarchs, was the Law given to Moses, at that (well-known) time after their exode from Egypt, after the interval and spaces of four hundred years. In fact, it was after Abraham's \"four hundred and thirty years\" that the Law was given.<br/><i>— An Answer to the Jews</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"a19dd5794e5563aa925e1493f7417f249edd1a0059080668bedb13171d832e67","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":3202,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"103105a83df161901eeaf6c02d2acec95201501011c4b7210b20a9b5ce8f8d19","translator":null,"work":null}