{"commentary":{"id":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","website":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamieson-Fausset-Brown_Bible_Commentary","licenseUrl":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/","licenseNotes":null,"licenseNotice":null,"englishName":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","language":"eng","textDirection":"rtl","sha256":"db3d4c8b3c1f32ef9d1430a57392e02bda3a17aac1f9bbe398461de021a3cb13","availableFormats":["json"],"listOfBooksApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/books.json","listOfProfilesApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/profiles.json","numberOfBooks":66,"totalNumberOfChapters":1187,"totalNumberOfVerses":17056,"totalNumberOfProfiles":0,"languageName":"English","languageEnglishName":"English"},"book":{"id":"ACT","commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Acts","commonName":"Acts","introduction":"THIS book is to the Gospels what the fruit is to the tree that bears it. In the Gospels we see the corn of wheat falling into the ground and dying: in the Acts we see it bringing forth much fruit (Joh 12:24). There we see Christ purchasing the Church with His own blood: here we see the Church, so purchased, rising into actual existence; first among the Jews of Palestine, and next among the surrounding Gentiles, until it gains a footing in the great capital of the ancient world--sweeping majestically from Jerusalem to Rome. Nor is this book of less value as an Introduction to the Epistles which follow it, than as a Sequel to the Gospels which precede it. For without this history the Epistles of the New Testament--presupposing, as they do, the historical circumstances of the parties addressed, and deriving from these so much of their freshness, point, and force--would in no respect be what they now are, and would in a number of places be scarcely intelligible.\n\nThe genuineness, authenticity, and canonical authority of this book were never called in question within the ancient Church. It stands immediately after the Gospels, in the catalogues of the Homologoumena, or universally acknowledged books of the New Testament (see Introduction to our larger Commentary, Vol. V, pp. iv, v). It was rejected, indeed, by certain heretical sects in the second and third centuries--by the Ebionites, the Severians (see EUSEBIUS, Ecclesiastical History, 4.29), the Marcionites, and the Manicheans: but the totally uncritical character of their objections (see Introduction above referred to, pp. xiii, xiv) not only deprives them of all weight, but indirectly shows on what solid grounds the Christian Church had all along proceeded in recognizing this book.\n\nIn our day, however, its authenticity has, like that of all the leading books of the New Testament, been made the subject of keen and protracted controversy. DE WETTE, while admitting Luke to be the author of the entire work, pronounces the earlier portion of it to have been drawn up from unreliable sources (New-Testament Introduction, 2a, 2C). But the Tubingen school, with BAUR at their head, have gone much farther. As their fantastic theory of the post-Joannean date of the Gospels could not pretend even to a hearing so long as the authenticity of the Acts of the Apostles remained unshaken, they contend that the earlier portion of this work can be shown to be unworthy of credit, while the latter portion is in flat contradiction to the Epistle to the Galatians--which this school regard as unassailable--and bears internal evidence of being a designed distortion of facts for the purpose of setting up the catholic form which Paul gave to Christianity in opposition to the narrow Judaic but original form of it which Peter preached, and which after the death of the apostles was held exclusively by the sect of the Ebionites. It is painful to think that anyone should have spent so many years, and, aided by learned and acute disciples in different parts of the argument, should have expended so much learning, research, and ingenuity in attempting to build up a hypothesis regarding the origination of the leading books of the New Testament which outrages all the principles of sober criticism and legitimate evidence. As a school, this party at length broke up: its head, after living to find himself the sole defender of the theory as a whole, left this earthly scene complaining of desertion. While some of his associates have abandoned such heartless studies altogether for the more congenial pursuits of philosophy, others have modified their attacks on the historical truth of the New Testament records, retreating into positions into which it is not worth while to follow them, while others still have been gradually approximating to sound principles. The one compensation for all this mischief is the rich additions to the apologetical and critical literature of the books of the New Testament, and the earliest history of the Christian Church, which it has drawn from the pens of THIERSCH, EBRARD, and many others. Any allusions which it may be necessary for us to make to the assertions of this school will be made in connection with the passages to which they relate--in Acts, First Corinthians, and Galatians.\n\nThe manifest connection between this book and the third Gospel--of which it professes to be simply the continuation by the same author--and the striking similarity which marks the style of both productions, leave no room to doubt that the early Church was right in ascribing it with one consent to Luke. The difficulty which some fastidious critics have made about the sources of the earlier portion of the history has no solid ground. That the historian himself was an eye-witness of the earliest scenes--as HUG concludes from the circumstantiality of the narrative--is altogether improbable: but there were hundreds of eye-witnesses of some of the scenes, and enough of all the rest, to give to the historian, partly by oral, partly by written testimony, all the details which he has embodied so graphically in his history; and it will appear, we trust, from the commentary, that De Wette's complaints of confusion, contradiction, and error in this portion are without foundation. The same critic, and one or two others, would ascribe to Timothy those later portions of the book in which the historian speaks in the first person plural--\"we\"; supposing him to have taken notes of all that passed under his own eye, which Luke embodied in his history just as they stood. It is impossible here to refute this gratuitous hypothesis in detail; but the reader will find it done by EBRARD (The Gospel History, sect. 110, Clark's translation; sect. 127 of the original work, Wissenschaftliche Kritik der Evangelische Geschichte, 1850), and by DAVIDSON (Introduction to New Testament, Vol. II, pp. 9-21).\n\nThe undesigned coincidences between this History and the Apostolic Epistles have been brought out and handled, as an argument for the truth of the facts thus attested, with unrivalled felicity by PALEY in his HorÃ&brvbr PaulinÃ&brvbr, to which Mr. BIRKS has made a number of ingenious additions in his HorÃ&brvbr ApostolicÃ&brvbr. Exception has been taken to some of these by JOWETT (St. Paul's Epistles, Vol. I, pp. 108 ff.), not without a measure of reason in certain cases--for our day, at least--though even he admits that in this line of evidence the work of PALEY, taken as a whole, is unassailable.\n\nMuch has been written about the object of this history. Certainly \"the Acts of the Apostles\" are but very partially recorded. But for this title the historian is not responsible. Between the two extremes--of supposing that the work has no plan at all, and that it is constructed on an elaborate and complex plan, we shall probably be as near the truth as is necessary if we take the design to be to record the diffusion of Christianity and the rise of the Christian Church, first among the Jews of Palestine, the seat of the ancient Faith, and next among the surrounding Gentiles, with Antioch for its headquarters, until, finally, it is seen waving over imperial Rome, foretokening its universal triumph. In this view of it, there is no difficulty in accounting for the almost exclusive place which it gives to the labors of Peter in the first instance, and the all but entire disappearance from the history both of him and of the rest of the Twelve after the great apostle of the Gentiles came upon the stage--like the lesser lights on the rise of the great luminary. \n\n\n\nNext: Acts Chapter 1\n\n","order":44,"numberOfChapters":28,"sha256":"c94aad3dd7e20061c0935f668f020beecd42d660333a1ba60e42c592e5a6a94e","firstChapterNumber":1,"firstChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ACT/1.json","firstChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ACT","chapter":1},"lastChapterNumber":28,"lastChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ACT/28.json","lastChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ACT","chapter":28},"totalNumberOfVerses":775},"chapter":{"number":10,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":2,"content":["A devout man, &c.--an uncircumcised Gentile proselyte to the Jewish faith, of whom there were a very great number at this time; a distinguished proselyte, who had brought his whole household establishment under the hallowing influence of the Jewish faith and the regular observance of its principal seasons of worship. \n\ngave much alms to the people--that is, the Jewish people, on the same principle as another centurion before him (Luk 7:5); thinking it no \"great thing,\" if they had \"sown unto him spiritual things, that they should reap his carnal things\" (Co1 9:11). \n\nprayed to God alway--at the stated daily seasons. (See on Act 10:3).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":3,"content":["saw . . . evidently--\"distinctly.\" \n\nthe ninth hour of the day--three o'clock, the hour of the evening sacrifice. But he had been \"fasting until that hour\" (Act 10:30), perhaps from the sixth hour (Act 10:9).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":4,"content":["What is it, Lord?--language which, tremulously though it was uttered, betokened childlike reverence and humility. \n\nThy prayers and thine alms--The way in which both are specified is emphatic. The one denotes the spiritual outgoing of his soul to God, the other its practical outgoing to men. \n\nare come up for a memorial before God--that is, as a sacrifice well-pleasing unto God, as an odor of a sweet smell (Rev 8:4).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":5,"content":["send to Joppa . . . for one Simon, &c.--(See on Act 9:11).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":7,"content":["when the angel . . . was departed, he called--immediately doing as directed, and thereby showing the simplicity of his faith. \n\na devout soldier of them that waited on him continually--of the \"soldiers under him,\" such as the centurion at Capernaum had (Mat 8:9). Who this \"devout soldier\" was, can only be matter of conjecture. DA COSTA [Four Witnesses] gives a number of ingenious reasons for thinking that, having attached himself henceforth to Peter--whose influence in the composition of the second Gospel is attested by the earliest tradition, and is stamped on that Gospel itself--he is no other than the Evangelist Mark.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":9,"content":["upon the housetop--the flat roof, the chosen place in the East for cool retirement. \n\nthe sixth hour--noon.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":10,"content":["a trance--differing from the \"vision\" of Cornelius, in so far as the things seen had not the same objective reality, though both were supernatural.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":12,"content":["all manner of four-footed beasts, &c.--that is, the clean and the unclean (ceremonially) all mixed together.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":14,"content":["Not so, Lord--See Marginal reference. \n\nI have never eaten anything that is common--that is, not sanctified by divine permission to eat of it, and so \"unclean.\" \"The distinction of meats was a sacrament of national distinction, separation, and consecration\" [WEBSTER and WILKINSON].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":15,"content":["What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common--The ceremonial distinctions are at an end, and Gentiles, ceremonially separated from the chosen people (Act 10:28), and debarred from that access to God in the visible ordinances of His Church which they enjoyed, are now on a perfect equality with them.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":16,"content":["done thrice--See Gen 41:32.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":17,"content":["while Peter doubted . . . what this should mean, behold, the three men . . . stood before the gate . . . and asked--\"were inquiring,\" that is, in the act of doing so. The preparations here made--of Peter for his Gentile visitors, as of Cornelius for him--are devoutly to be noted. But besides this, at the same moment, \"the Spirit\" expressly informs him that three men were inquiring for him, and bids him unhesitatingly go with them, as sent by Him.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":21,"content":["I am he whom ye seek--This seems to have been said without any communication being made to Peter regarding the men or their errand.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":22,"content":["they said, Cornelius . . . a just man, &c.--fine testimony this from his own servants. \n\nof good report among all the nation of the Jews--specified, no doubt, to conciliate the favorable regard of the Jewish apostle. \n\nto hear words of thee--(See on Act 11:14).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":23,"content":["called them in and lodged them--thus partially anticipating this fellowship with Gentiles. \n\nPeter went . . . with them, and certain brethren--six in number (Act 11:12). \n\nfrom Joppa--as witnesses of a transaction which Peter was prepared to believe pregnant with great consequences.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":24,"content":["Cornelius . . . called together his kinsmen and near friends--implying that he had been long enough at CÃ&brvbrsarea to form relationships there and that he had intimate friends there whose presence he was not ashamed to invite to a religious meeting of the most solemn nature.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":25,"content":["as Peter was coming in, Cornelius met him--a mark of the highest respect. \n\nfell down at his feet, and worshipped him--In the East this way of showing respect was customary not only to kings, but to others occupying a superior station; but among the Greeks and Romans it was reserved for the gods. Peter, therefore, declines it as due to no mortal [GROTIUS]. \"Those who claim to have succeeded Peter, have not imitated this part of his conduct\" [ALFORD] (therein only verifying Th2 2:4, and compare Rev 19:10; Rev 22:9).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":28,"content":["Ye know it is . . . unlawful . . . for . . . a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation, &c.--There was no express prohibition to this effect, and to a Certain extent intercourse was certainly kept up. (See the Gospel history, towards the end). But intimate social fellowship was not practiced, as being adverse to the spirit of the law.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":29,"content":["I ask therefore, &c.--The whole speech is full of dignity, the apostle seeing in the company before him a new brotherhood, into whose devout and inquiring minds he was divinely directed to pour the light of new truth.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":30,"content":["Four days ago--the messengers being despatched on the first; on the second reaching Joppa (Act 10:9); starting for CÃ&brvbrsarea on the third; and on the fourth arriving.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":33,"content":["we are all here present before God, to hear all things that are commanded thee of God--Beautiful expression of entire preparedness to receive the expected divine teaching through the lips of this heaven-commissioned teacher, and delightful encouragement to Peter to give free utterance to what was doubtless already on his lips!\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":34,"content":["Peter opened his mouth--(See on Mat 5:2). \n\nOf a truth I perceive--that is, \"I have it now demonstrated before mine eyes.\" \n\nthat God is no respecter of persons--Not, \"I see there is no capricious favoritism with God,\" for Peter would never imagine such a thing; but (as the next clause shows), \"I see that God has respect only to personal character and state in the acceptance of men, national and ecclesiastical distinctions being of no account.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":35,"content":["But in every nation--not (observe), in every religion; according to a common distortion of these words. \n\nhe that feareth him, and worketh righteousness--This being the well-known phraseology of the Old Testament in describing the truly godly man, within the pale of revealed religion, it cannot be alleged that Peter meant it to denote a merely virtuous character, in the heathen sense; and as Peter had learned enough, from the messengers of Cornelius and from his own lips, to convince him that the whole religious character of this Roman officer had been moulded in the Jewish faith, there can be no doubt that the apostle intended to describe exactly such saintship--in its internal spirituality and external fruitfulness--as God had already pronounced to be genuine and approved. And since to such \"He giveth more grace,\" according to the law of His Kingdom (Jam 4:6; Mat 25:29), He sends Peter, not to be the instrument of his conversion, as this is very frequently called, but simply to \"show him the way of God more perfectly,\" as before to the devout Ethiopian eunuch.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":36,"content":["the word . . . sent unto the children of Israel--for to them (he would have them distinctly know) the Gospel was first preached, even as the facts of it took place on the special theater of the ancient economy. \n\npreaching peace by Jesus Christ--the glorious sum of all Gospel truth (Co1 1:20-22). \n\nhe is Lord of all--exalted to embrace under the canopy of His peace, Jew and Gentile alike, whom the blood of His Cross had cemented into one reconciled and accepted family of God (Eph 2:13-18).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":37,"content":["That word . . . ye how--The facts, it seems, were too notorious and extraordinary to be unknown to those who mixed so much with Jews, and took so tender an interest in all Jewish matters as they did; though, like the eunuch, they knew not the significance of them. \n\nwhich was published throughout all Judea, and began from Galilee--(See Luk 4:14, Luk 4:37, Luk 4:44; Luk 7:17; Luk 9:6; Luk 23:5). \n\nafter the baptism which John preached--(See on Act 1:22).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":38,"content":["Now God anointed Jesus of Nazareth--rather, \"Jesus of Nazareth (as the burden of that 'published word'), how God anointed Him.\" \n\nwith the Holy Ghost and with power--that is, at His baptism, thus visibly proclaiming Him MESSIAH, \"the Lord's Christ.\" See Luk 4:18-21. For it is not His unction for personal holiness at His incarnation that is referred to--as many of the Fathers and some moderns take it--but His investiture with the insignia of the Messianic office, in which He presented Himself after His baptism to the acceptance of the people. \n\nwent about doing good--holding up the beneficent character of all His miracles, which was their predicted character (Isa 35:5-6, &c.). \n\nhealing all that were oppressed of the devil--whether in the form of demoniacal possessions, or more indirectly, as in her \"whom Satan had bound with a spirit of infirmity eighteen years\" (Luk 13:16); thereby showing Himself the Redeemer from all evil. \n\nfor God was with him--Thus gently does the apostle rise to the supreme dignity of Christ with which he closes, accommodating himself to his hearers.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":39,"content":["we are witnesses of all . . . he did--not objects of superstitious reverence, but simply witnesses to the great historical facts on which the Gospel is founded. \n\nslew and hanged--that is, slew by hanging. \n\non a tree--So Act 5:30 (and see on Gal 3:13).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":40,"content":["showed him openly; Not to all the people--for it was not fitting that He should subject Himself, in His risen condition, to a second rejection in Person. \n\nbut unto witnesses chosen before of God . . . to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose, &c.--Not the less certain, therefore, was the fact of His resurrection, though withholding Himself from general gaze in His risen body. \n\nhe which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead--He had before proclaimed Him \"Lord of all,\" for the dispensing of \"peace\" to all alike; now he announces Him in the same supreme lordship, for the exercise of judgment upon all alike. On this divine ordination, see Joh 5:22-23, Joh 5:27; Act 17:31. Thus we have here all Gospel truth in brief. But, forgiveness through this exalted One is the closing note of Peter's beautifully simple discourse.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":43,"content":["To him give all the prophets witness--that is, This is the burden, generally of the prophetic testimony. It was fitter thus to give the spirit of their testimony, than to quote them in detail on such an occasion. But let this apostolic statement of the evangelical import of the Old Testament writings be devoutly weighed by those who are disposed to rationalize away this element in the Old Testament. \n\nwhosoever believeth in him--This was evidently said with special reference to the Gentile audience then before him, and formed a noble practical conclusion to the whole discourse.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":44,"content":["While Peter yet spake . . . the Holy Ghost fell--by visible and audible manifestation (Act 10:46).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":45,"content":["they of the circumcision . . . were astonished . . . because that on the Gentiles also was poured out, &c.--without circumcision.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":46,"content":["heard them speak with tongues and magnify God--As on the day of Pentecost it was no empty miracle, no mere speaking of foreign languages, but utterance of \"the wonderful works of God\" in tongues to them unknown (Act 2:11), so here; but more remarkable in this case, as the speakers were perhaps less familiar with the Old Testament songs of praise.\nThen answered Peter, Can any man forbid water . . . which have received the Holy Ghost, &c.--Mark, he does not say, They have received the Spirit, what need have they for water? but, Having the living discipleship imparted to them and visibly stamped upon them, what objection can there be to admitting them, by the seal of baptism, into the full fellowship of the Church?\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":47,"content":["which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we--and are thus, in all that is essential to salvation, on a level with ourselves.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":48,"content":["he commanded them to be baptized--not doing it with his own hands, as neither did Paul, save on rare occasions (Co1 1:14-17; compare Act 2:38; Joh 4:2). \n\nprayed . . . him to tarry certain days--\"golden days\" [BENGEL], spent, doubtless, in refreshing Christian fellowship, and in imparting and receiving fuller teaching on the several topics of the apostle's discourse.\n\n\n\n\nNext: Acts Chapter 11\n\n"]}],"introduction":"ACCESSION AND BAPTISM OF CORNELIUS AND HIS PARTY; OR, THE FIRST-FRUITS OF THE GENTILES. (Acts 10:1-48)\n\nCÃ&brvbrsarea--(See on Act 8:40). \n\nthe Italian band--a cohort of Italians, as distinguished from native soldiers, quartered at CÃ&brvbrsarea, probably as a bodyguard to the Roman procurator who resided there. An ancient coin makes express mention of such a cohort in Syria. [AKERMAN, Numismatic Illustrations of the New Testament.]\n\n"},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ACT/10.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ACT","chapter":10},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ACT/11.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ACT","chapter":11},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ACT/9.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ACT","chapter":9},"numberOfVerses":34}