The Holy Bible Verses

Romans 1:23

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Translations sourced from the public-domain WEB, KJV, and ASV. See all sources.

“and traded the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed animals, and creeping things.”

— WEB

“And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.”

— KJV

“and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.”

— ASV

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Commentary

And changed--or "exchanged." the glory of the uncorruptible God into--or "for" an image . . . like to corruptible man--The allusion here is doubtless to the Greek worship, and the apostle may have had in his mind those exquisite chisellings of the human form which lay so profusely beneath and around him as he stood on Mars' Hill; and "beheld their devotions." (See on Act 17:29). But as if that had not been a deep enough degradation of the living God, there was found "a lower deep" still. and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and to creeping things--referring now to the Egyptian and Oriental worship. In the face of these plain declarations of the descent of man's religious belief from loftier to ever lower and more debasing conceptions of the Supreme Being, there are expositors of this very Epistle (as REICHE and JOWETT), who, believing neither in any fall from primeval innocence, nor in the noble traces of that innocence which lingered even after the fall and were only by degrees obliterated by wilful violence to the dictates of conscience, maintain that man's religious history has been all along a struggle to rise, from the lowest forms of nature worship, suited to the childhood of our race, into that which is more rational and spiritual.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Commentary (public domain)

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