Home > Work > The Open Your Bible New Testament Commentary: Page by Page (Open Your Bible Commentary Book 2)
1 " We are all, in our more candid moments, conscious of the fact that we bend more easily to ill than good, that we seek with greater ease the good of self than the good of others, that even our virtues are based more on fear of punishment than on love of good, and that pride, self-assertion, arrogance, the very element and essential of all sin, mingles itself like a pervading poison with all our pretence and practice of good. "
― F.F. Bruce , The Open Your Bible New Testament Commentary: Page by Page (Open Your Bible Commentary Book 2)
2 " Great Babylon” (16:19): though Babylon is not mentioned in Scripture between Genesis 11:9 (Babel is the Hebrew name for Bab-ili, which we render Babylon) and the days of Hezekiah, it had its own position in Hebrew thought. Though it had little political importance between its capture by the Kassites in 1530 BC and its being made the capital of a Chaldean empire in 626 BC, it was the virtually undisputed commercial and religious capital of the Fertile Crescent. So it is the personification, so to speak, for the Bible, of humanity organized for financial profit, and of manmade religion in all its attractive sophistry. These are the two aspects which are dealt with in chapters 17 (religion) and 18 (commerce). If we compare Nahum and Habakkuk, we shall learn something of the different impression created by the pride and cruelty of Assyria and the corruption of human nature which the prophet saw in Babylon. "
