Acts 14:16
Translations
King James Version (KJV)
Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways.
American King James Version (AKJV)
Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways.
American Standard Version (ASV)
who in the generations gone by suffered all the nations to walk in their own ways.
Basic English Translation (BBE)
Who in the past let all nations go in the ways which seemed good to them.
Webster's Revision
Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways.
World English Bible
who in the generations gone by allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways.
English Revised Version (ERV)
who in the generations gone by suffered all the nations to walk in their own ways.
Clarke's Acts 14:16 Bible Commentary
Who in times past suffered all nations, etc. - The words παντα τα εθνη, which we here translate, all nations, should be rendered, all the Gentiles, merely to distinguish them from the Jewish people: who having a revelation, were not left to walk in their own ways; but the heathens, who had not a revelation, were suffered to form their creed, and mode of worship, according to their own caprice.
Barnes's Acts 14:16 Bible Commentary
Who in times past - Previous to the gospel; in past ages.
Suffered all nations - Permitted all nations; that is, all Gentiles, Acts 17:30. "And the times of this ignorance God winked at."
To walk in their own ways - To conduct themselves without the restraints and instructions of a written law. They were permitted to follow their own reason and passions, and their own system of religion. God gave them no written laws, and sent to them no messengers. Why he did this we cannot determine. It might have been, among other reasons, to show to the world conclusively:
(1) The insufficiency of reason to guide people in the matters of religion. The experiment was made under the most favorable circumstances. The most enlightened nations, the Greeks and Romans, were left to pursue the inquiry, and failed no less than the most degraded tribes of people. The trial was made for four thousand years, and attended with the same results everywhere.
(2) it showed the need of revelation to guide man.
(3) it evinced, beyond the possibility of mistake, the depravity of man. In all nations, in all circumstances, people had shown the same alienation from God. By suffering them to walk in their own ways, it was seen that those ways were sin, and that some power more than human was necessary to bring people back to God.
Wesley's Acts 14:16 Bible Commentary
14:16 Who in times past - He prevents their objection, "But if these things are so, we should have heard the in from our fathers." Suffered - An awful judgment, all nations - The multitude of them that err does not turn error into truth, to walk in their own ways - The idolatries which they had chosen.