23—23.
αἰῶνος.
117
22.1 Μωσῆς μὲν γὰρ πρὸς τοὺς πατέρας εἶπεν, “Or προ-
φήτην ὑμῖν ἀναστήσει Κύριος ὁ Θεὸς ὑμῶν ἐκ τῶν ἀδελφῶν ὑμῶν,
ὡς ἐμέ. αὐτοῦ ἀκούσεσθε κατὰ πάντα ὅσα ἂν λαλήση πρὸς Spas.
23. ἔσται δέ, Taga ψυχή, ῆτις ἂν μὴ ἀκούσῃ τοῦ προφήτου ἐκείνου,
1 Μωσης, SONEP; but Μωνσης in ABCD, so Tisch., W.H., Weiss, Hilg., so
Winer-Schmiedel, p. 51. so Tisch., W.H., R.V., Weiss, Wendt.
God conferred the blessings of the Christ ; cf. ii. 39, where the same revising hand is at work. But St. Peter’s ‘ univer- salism’’ here is in no way inconsistent with that of a pious Jew who would believe that all nations should be blessed through Israel, so far, 1.6., as they conformed to the covenant and the law of Israel. Spitta sees no difficulty in referring both the passage before us and ii. 39 to the Jewish Diaspora (so too Jiingst).—8.a «στόματος τῶν ay. προφ.: cf. Luke i. 70, a‘periphrasis of which St. Luke is fond (Plummer), cf. i. 16, iii. 18, iv. 25, 30, xv. 7, not found in the other Evangelists except once in St. Matthew in a quota- tion, iv. 4.---ᾱπ᾿ αἰῶνος: in the singular the phrase is only used by St. Luke in the N.T., Luke i. 70, Acts iii. 21, and xv. 18, but the plural am αἰώνων is used twice, Col. i. 26, Ephes. iii. ο (Friedrich), cf. in LXX, Gen. vi, 4, Isaiah xlvi. 9, Jer. xxxv. (xxvili.) 8. The phrase here may be taken simply = ‘‘of old time,” cf. Tobit iv. 12.
Ver. 22. μὲν: answered by, or rather connected with, καὶ πάντες δὲ (ver. 24), “‘ Moses indeed, yea and all the Prophets from Samuel’’—not “truly” as in A.V., as if μὲν were an adverb. The quotation is freely made from Deut. xviii.15. On the Messianic bearing of the passage see Weber, Fiidische Theologie, p. 364 (1897), and Lumby, Acts, in loco. Wetstein sees no necessity to refer the word προφήτην, νετ. 22, to Jesus, but rather to the succession of prophets who in turn prophesied of the Coming One. But ‘“‘similitudo non officit excellentiz ’’ (Bengel, so Wendt), and the words in Deuteronomy were fulfilled in Christ alone, the new Law-giver; the Revealer of God’s will, of grace and truth, ‘‘ Whom the Lord knew face to face,’’ Who was from all eternity ‘with God”. But the N.T. gives us ample reason for referring the verse, if not to the Messiah, yet at least to the Messianic conceptions of the age. To say nothing of St. Stephen’s significant reference to the same pro-
μεν yap; but only µεν in SABCDE, vers., Iren., Chrys., προς τους πατερας om. ΔΑΒΟ τς, 18, 61, Vulg., Syr. Pesh., Boh.; so Tisch., W.H.,
R.V., Weiss, Wendt.
phecy, vii. 37, it would certainly seem that in the conversation of our Lord with the Samaritan woman, John iv. 19 ff., the conception of the Messianic prophet is in her mind, and it was upon this pre- diction of a prophet greater than Moses that the Samaritans built their Messianic hopes (Briggs, Messiah of the Gospels, p. 272, and see also for Deut. xviii. 15, and its Messianic fulfilment, Messianic Pro- phecy, Ῥ. 110 ff.). On other allusions in St. John’s Gospel to the anticipation in Deut. xviii. 15 see Bishop Lightfoot, Expositor, i. (fourth series), pp. 84, 85; there are, he thinks, four passages, John i, 21, 25, vi. 14, vii. 40, in all of which ‘“‘the prophet” is mentioned (so R.V. in each place). But whilst in St. John the conception is still Jewish (that is to say, St. John exhibits the Messianic concep- tions of his countrymen, who regard the Christ and the prophet as two different persons), in Acts it is Christian. St. Peter identified the prophet with the Christ (and so inferentially St. Stephen). (But see also Alford’s note on St. John vi. 14, and also Weber, ubi supra, p. 354, for the view that Jeremiah was 6 προφ., in John i. 21, 25, vii. 40 (cf. 2 Macc. xv. 14), whilst Wendt’s Teaching of $esus, i., ΡΡ. 67-69, E.T., should also be consulted.) —ds ἐμέ: rendered by A.V.and R.V. “like me ”’ (the meaning of the Hebrew, in loco), but in margin Κ.Υ. has ‘“‘as he raised up me,” a rendering adopted as the only admissible one of the Greek by Page and Rendall; as no doubt it is, if we read ὥσπερ, as in LXX, Deut. xviii. 18. But @s is found in the LXXinv.15. Cer- tainly the rendering in A.V. and R.V, could not be applied to any one prophet so truly as to Christ, and the ὡς ἐμέ is a