Acts 17:23 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

And beheld your devotions,— Σεβασματα ;—the objects, and instruments of your worship. This is the proper signification of the original, which has no English word exactly corresponding to it. (Comp. 2 Thessalonians 2:4.) Diogenes Laertius, in his life of Epimenides, gives us the following account of the inscription. He tells us, "that in the time of that philosopher, about 600 years before Christ, there was a terrible pestilence at Athens; and when none of the deities to whom they sacrificed, appeared able or willing to avert it, Epimenides advised them to bring some sheep to the Areopagus, and, letting them loose from thence, to follow them till they lay down; and then to sacrifice them to the god, near whose temple or altar they then were." Now it might have happened that, Athens not being then so full of these monuments of superstition and idolatry as afterwards, these sheep lay down in places where none of them were erected, and so occasioned the rearing what the historian calls anonymous altars, or altars each of which had the inscription, "To the unknown God;" meaning thereby, the god that had sent the plague, whoever he were; one of which altars, at least, however it might have been repaired, remained till St. Paul's time, and long after. Now, as the God whom St. Paul preached was indeed the Deity who sent and removed this pestilence, the apostle might, on supposition of the truth of the above account, with great propriety tell the Athenians, He declared to them Him, whom, without knowing him, they worshipped; as the latter clause of this verse should be read. It may be proper just to observe, that Witsius, with Hensius, &c. understands this inscription of Jehovah, whose name not being pronounced by the Jews themselves, might, they think, give occasion to this appellation; and to this sense Biscoe inclines. Dr. Wellwood, in the introduction to his translation of "The Banquet of Xenophon," observes, "Iknow there are different opinions about this altar, and upon what occasion it came to be erected; but it is very probable, and I have several ancient historians and divines for vouchers, that it was done by Socrates. It seems, instead of raising an altar, as was the custom, to any of the fictitious gods of Greece, he took this way, as the safest, to express his devotion to the one true God; of whom the Athenians had no notion, and whose incomprehensible being, he insinuated by this inscription, was far beyond the reach of their, or of his own understanding: and it is very reasonable to think, that it was owing to the veneration they had for the memory of its founder, that it came to be preserved so many ages after, though they understood not the sense of the inscription." To these observations we may add, that though the heathens held Jupiter to be the one supreme god, yet their Jupiter was not the true God, but a being whom they supposed to be attended with many imperfections, and to whom they ascribed several enormities; and whether that altar was erected by Socrates, or by whatever other person, or upon whatever occasion, it appears highly probable that it was designed in honour of the true God; that is to say, the God of the Jews. For as the Jews neither erected any image to the true God, nor were willing to discover his name to strangers, he had therefore neither image nor name at Athens; though there was an altar dedicated to him, at once to express the Athenians' reverence for, and ignorance of him.