Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Romans 7:9

ἐγὼ δὲ ἔζων κ.τ.λ. ‘I was living unaffected by law once.’ He goes back to a pre-moral state—not necessarily in actual memory of a completely non-moral experience, but comparatively: his life as a child was untouched by numberless demands of law, which accumulated with his moral development; at that period whole regions of his life were purely impulsive; one after another they came under the touch of law, and with each new pressure of law upon his consciousness the sphere, in which it was possible to sin, was enlarged. It was easy to carry this retrospect one step beyond memory and to see himself living a life of pure impulse before the very first voice of law reached him: and to regard such a stage as a typical stage in the general development of the moral sense in man.

ἀνέζησεν, ‘sprang to life’: only here and Luke 15:24 (= revived), not classical. We should perhaps recognise here an instance of the ‘perfectivising’ function of the preposition; cf. Moulton, p. 112. Both A. and R.V. ‘revived’: but the whole point is that at that moment sin for the first time came to life. For this use of ἀνὰ cf. ἀναβοᾶν, ἀναθυμιᾶσθαι, ἀνακύπτειν, ἀνατέλλειν.

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Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Romans 7:9

Old Testament

New Testament