Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Philippians 1:12-13

Philippians 1:12. So that my bonds have become manifest in Christ. So that it has become known that the reason why I am imprisoned is because I am a preacher of Christ. Thus he points out how the cause of the Gospel was served by his chains. Many who would never have cared to inquire about Christian teaching were prompted to do so when told of this as the reason for the apostle's imprisonment. Thus Christ's name and word were spread abroad from that hired house where he was bound,

throughout the whole Prætorium and in all other places. The praetorium was a name given primarily to the tent of the commander-in-chief in a Roman camp. Then it was employed for the residence of any Roman governor, as the hall or palace of Pilate (Matthew 27:27; Mark 15:16), or for the military quarters in the palace of Herod (Acts 23:35), but in Rome it was the name given to the barrack of the praetorian guard, which Suetonius (Tib. 37) tells us was a place specially assigned to those soldiers by Tiberius. By the frequent change of the guard who was chained to him, and who would be kept in that service only for a turn of a few hours, the news of St. Paul's imprisonment, and the cause of it, had been widely published. It was a novel charge, and so likely to arrest attention, and the apostle would be sure to publish the knowledge of Christ to all who came in his way. The expression ‘all other places,' though seemingly hyperbolic, is not without its interest when we remember that one of the traditions concerning the first publication of the Gospel in Britain ascribes it to Roman soldiers who may have been the hearers of St. Paul in his prison. The Revised Version renders ‘throughout the whole praetorian guard and to all the rest,' thus making the reference to the persons rather than to the place. The usage of prætorium in other passages of the New Testament seems opposed to such a translation, though the latter words in the Greek are such as would be used of persons ‘all the rest.'

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Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Philippians 1:12-13

Old Testament

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