Romans 1:29
Posted by Romans on Wednesday, 22 February 2012
Romans 1:29-31
(29) Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
(30) Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
(31) Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
The mental vacuum created by dismissing God was filled (the perf. tense implies filled full) with four forms of active sin: wickedness (adikia; cf. v. 18), evil (ponēria), greed, and depravity (kakia, “badness or malice”). These four in turn express themselves in 17 more specific types of wickedness. The first two, envy and murder, sound much alike in Greek: phthonou and phonou. Also the four vices in verse 31 each begin with the Greek letter alpha (“a” in Eng.).
