Heb. 12:23.-The phrase "general assembly " (πανηγύρει) is clearly, in my judgment, epexegetic of the preceding words, "the innumerable company of angels," just as, in the clause before, "the heavenly Jerusalem " is a further explanation of "the city of the living God." The conjunction χαί introduces each new clause, which arrangement is destroyed in this particular instance, but observed in all the other parts of the sentence in the English Bible. The same confusion appears in Beza, Diodati, the Dutch, Martin, Ostervald, the Lausanne, etc. Bengel rightly objects to this construction. "Nam et polysyndeton retinendum est; et aliorum sine dubio est panegyris: aliorum, ecclesia, quis enim conjungeret synonyma, panegyris et ecclesia? Ecclesia, primogenitorum est; panegyris igitur; angelorum." But then he falls into the mistake of making, not only the angels, but the church of the first-born ones refer to the myriads, which is equally, as it seems to me, contrary to the linking of each separate term by the conjunction, not to speak of other objections. The Syriac and Vulgate, with those that follow them, Luther and the Elberfeld, avoid either error, and give the true sense with more or less clearness.
The apostle ascends from the lowest point of millennial glory which unites heaven and earth, the seat of royalty raised up in pure grace (after Ichabod was written on Israel, and the king of their choice was slain), in contrast with Sinai, which was the place and expression of the nation's responsibility. He then
words in John 6:51 (εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα) are the commonest possible expression of eternity, or "forever," whether absolute or relative, which of course depends on the context and nature of the case. See Matt. 21:19; Mark 3:29;11: 14; Luke 1: 55; John 4:14; 6: 58, 8: 35, 51, 52; 10: 28; 11: 26; 12: 34, 13: 8; 14: 16; 1 Cor. 8:13; 2 Cor. 9: 9; Heb. 6:20;7: 17, 21, 24, 28; 1 Peter 1:23,25; 1 John 2:17; 2 John 2; which are, I think, all the occurrences in the New Testament. Εἰς αἰῶνα (in 2 Peter 2:17) has been dropped by some editors, though even they admit the same phrase in Jude 13. The omission of the article implies that the phrase is characteristic, i.e. adjectival of the sense; and "everlasting," as "forever," pertains to τοῦ σχότους, rather than to the verb. The plural form often occurs, as in Rom. 1:25; 9: 5; 11: 36; 16: 27;
2 Cor. 11:31, etc.; or with πάντας, as in Jude 25; or yet more emphatically εὶς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰῶνω, as in Gal. 1:5, and often elsewhere. The idea here is not so much one unbroken eternity (expressed by the singular, simple or complex, as in Heb. 1:8), as the constant succession of age upon age, which is pretty well given in the English " forever and ever." Eph. 3:21 is the most peculiar of all; for γενεάς expresses ordinarily human generations, τοῦ αἰῶνος of itself would convey the thought of an undivided everlasting; and τῶν αὶώνων closes the series with successive ages sweeping on. The whole phrase intimates, I suppose, a future beyond the bounds
of every measure of time. The anarthrous form εὶς αἰῶας αἰώνων occurs in Rev. 14:11 (where, however, C. has αὶῶνα αἰῶνος), which, as we have seen, modifies the sense so far as to present no positive object before the mind, as in Rev. 19:3, and simply in this case characterizes the action of the verb.