What say I then? that the idol is any thing, or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is any thing?
What say I then? The inference might be drawn, from the analogies of the Lord's supper and Jewish sacrifices, that an idol is really what the pagan thought it, and that in eating idol meats they had fellowship with the god. This verse guards against this: 'What do I mean then? that a thing sacrificed to idols has any real virtue, or that an idol is any real thing?' (A B read in this order: supply 'Nay'), 'But (I say) that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons.' Paul here introduces a new fact. It is true that an idol has no reality in the pagan's sense; but it has a reality in another sense: pagandom being under Satan's dominion, as "prince of this world," he and his demons are in fact the powers worshipped by the pagan, whether they are or are not conscious of it (Deuteronomy 32:17, Hebrew, sheediym (H7700); Leviticus 17:7; 2 Chronicles 11:15; Psalms 106:37; Revelation 9:20). 'Devil' is in the Greek restricted to Satan; 'demons is applied to his subordinate spirits. Fear, rather than love, is the motive of pagan worship: cf. the English word 'panic,' from PAN, whose human form with horns and cloven hoofs gave rise to the common representations of Satan, just as fear is the spirit of Satan and his demons (James 2:19).