the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Helps
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
or HELPS . Acts 27:17 ‘they used helps, undergirding the ships.’ The reference is to ‘cables passed round the hull of the ship, and tightly secured on deck, to prevent the timbers from starting, especially amidships, where in ancient vessels with one large mast the strain was very great. The technical English word is frapping , but the process has only been rarely employed since the early part of the century, owing to improvements in shipbuilding’ (Page’s Acts of the Apostles; see Smith’s Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul , p. 105).
HELPS . In 1 Corinthians 12:28 St. Paul, in order to show the diversity in unity found in the Church as the body of Christ, gives a list of services performed by various members of the churchly body. In the course of his enumeration he uses two Gr. nouns ( antilçmpseis and kybernçseis ) employed nowhere else in the NT, and rendered in EV [Note: English Version.] ‘helps,’ ‘governments.’ ‘Helps’ may suggest a lowly kind of service, as of one who acts as assistant to a superior. The usage of the Gr. word, however, both in the LXX [Note: Septuagint.] and in the papyri, points to succour given to the needy by those who are stronger; and this is borne out for the NT when the same word in its verbal form occurs in St. Paul’s exhortation to the elders of the Ephesian Church to ‘help the weak’ ( Acts 20:35 RV [Note: Revised Version.] ). ‘Helps’ in this list of churchly gifts and services thus denotes such attentions to the poor and afflicted as were specially assigned at a later time to the office of the deacon; while ‘ governments ’ (RVm [Note: Revised Version margin.] ‘wise counsels’) suggests that rule and guidance which afterwards fell to presbyters or bishops.
We are not to think, however, that there is any reference in this passage to deacons and bishops as Church officials. The fact that ‘helps’ are named before ‘governments,’ and especially that abstract terms are used instead of concrete and personal ones as in the earlier part of the list, shows that it is functions, not offices, of which the Apostle is thinking throughout. The analogy of Acts 20:35 , moreover, where it is presbyters ( Acts 20:17 RVm [Note: Revised Version margin.] ) or bishops ( Acts 20:28 RV [Note: Revised Version.] ) that are exhorted to help the weak, is against the supposition that in an Ep. so early as 1 Cor. ‘helps’ and ‘governments’ corresponded to deacons and bishops. ‘Helps,’ as Hort says ( Chr. Ecclesia , p. 159), are ‘anything that could be done for poor or weak or outcast brethren, either by rich or powerful or influential brethren, or by the devotion of those who stood on no such eminence.’ ‘Governments,’ again, refers to ‘men who by wise counsels did for the community what the steersman or pilot does for the ship.’
J. C. Lambert.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Helps'. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdb/h/helps.html. 1909.
