Acts 13:17,18 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The God of this people, &c. Such a commemoration of God's favours to their fathers, as he here gives, was at once calculated to conciliate their minds to the speaker, to convince them of their duty to God, and to invite them to believe his promise and its accomplishment. This paragraph contains the whole sum of the Old Testament. See the passages referred to in the margin, and the notes thereon. Chose our fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to be the objects of his special favour, and for their sakes was pleased to promise most important blessings to their offspring; and exalted the people Wrought astonishing miracles in their behalf, and raised them from the state of bondage and depression in which they lay prostrate in Egypt; and with a high arm With an evident and most extraordinary display of uncontrollable and almighty power; brought them out of it In spite of all the efforts of Pharaoh and his host to detain them in slavery. And forty years suffered he their manners Greek, ετροποφορησεν, he endured their behaviour; by which expression the apostle gives an oblique intimation of that perverseness and ingratitude which so early began to prevail among them. But, according to the Alexandrian and Cambridge manuscripts, and the Syriac, Arabic, Coptic, and Ethiopic versions, the genuine reading is, ετροφοφορησεν, he nursed, or cherished them: a sense which suggests a fine view of the conduct of Divine Providence toward them; and, as Dr. Hammond observes, is beautifully connected with the expression of taking them up, when they lay like an exposed infant. See Deuteronomy 1:31; Ezekiel 16:4-8. The common reading, however, accords better with Psalms 96:8-10; Hebrews 3:8-11, and a variety of other passages of Scripture, where the perverse and ungrateful behaviour of the Israelites toward God, and his great patience with them, are represented as being so extraordinary as to deserve peculiar attention; and therefore, it seems, that reading ought to be preferred; as also, because it is supported by a much greater number of manuscripts and versions.