(II.) Hospitably to receive any one, guest, beggar, or fugitive, Matt.
10:14, 40, 41; Heb. 11:31; and often in contrast with to repulse (Sturz, excipere,
vel epulis, vel aliis amicitiam declarandi modis). In classical Greek, e.g., of Hades which receives the dead, e.g. Soph. Trach. 1085, ὦναξ Ἀΐδη, δέξαι μʼ. Accordingly in Acts 3:21, ὃν δεῖ οὐρανὸν μὲν δέξασθαι κ.τ.λ., not ὅν, but οὐρανόν, had better be taken as the accusative
subject, “whom the heaven must receive,” and thus the connection with ver. 20
will be more correct, cf. ver. 15; Acts 7:59. (Hermann Cremer, Biblio-Theological
Lexicon of New Testament Greek [trans. William Urwick; Edinburgh: T. &
T. Clark, 1895], 174-75)
. . . μέν
appears in a few passages (apparently) without correlative particles /
conjunctions. Several times, as also in classical Greek, other means are used
to signify the contrast: Acts 3:13: ἐκείνου; 1 Cor 12:28: ἔπειτα;
5:3 (see v. 6); Col 2:23: οὐ
(as in Heb 12:9, provided δέ
is not to be supplied); in 2 Cor 9:1–3 and 11:4–6 the correlation of μέν and δέ is separated only by transitional phrases
introduced by γάρ. A
claim in 2 Cor 12:12 has no verbal correlation in the following statement; in 1
Cor 6:7, with the omission of οὖν,
μέν takes on the
preclassical sense and thus intensifies ἤδη:
“indeed already”; in Acts 28:22 the
correlative idea is omitted because it is anticipated at the beginning of the
verse; in both 1:1 and 3:21 the initial idea appears not to be pursued to
completion because the potential contrasting idea is introduced with temporal ἄχρι. (K. -H. Pridik, “μεν,” in Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Horst Robert Balz and Gerhard Schneider, 3 vols. [Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1990–], 2:406)
