Acts 2:23,24 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Him, being delivered Unto death, by God his heavenly Father, who not only permitted him to be put to death, but delivered him up for us all. Romans 8:32; devoted and gave him up; and yet he was approved of God: and there was nothing in this that implied, in any degree, the disapproving of him. For it was done by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God In infinite wisdom, and for holy ends, in which, and in the means leading to them, Jesus himself freely and fully concurred. For it was necessary that thus divine justice should be satisfied, God and man reconciled, sinners saved, and Christ himself glorified. It must be observed, the apostle here anticipates an objection. Why did God suffer such a person to be so treated? Did he not know what wicked men intended to do? And had he not power to prevent it? Yea, he knew all that those wicked men intended to do. And he had power to blast all their designs in a moment. But he did not exert that power, because he so loved the world! Because it was the determinate counsel of his love to redeem mankind from eternal death, by the death of his only-begotten Son. Ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified, &c. Thus the apostle speaks, because neither God's foreknowing what they would do, nor his designing that his Son should be offered as a sacrifice to expiate the sins of mankind, nor his bringing unspeakable and everlasting good out of this fact, could in the least excuse their sin who were agents in it; for it was their voluntary act and deed, proceeding from a principle morally evil, and therefore they are justly said to have perpetrated it with wicked hands. It is probable some of those who had cried, Crucify him, crucify him, or who had been otherwise aiding and abetting in the murder, were here present, and that Peter knew it. Be this as it may, it was justly looked upon as a national act, because done by the vote of the great council, and by the voice of the great crowd, clamouring for his blood. He charges it particularly upon them, as a part of the nation on which it would be peculiarly visited, the more effectually to bring them to repentance and faith, because that was the only way to distinguish themselves from the guilty that were about to perish in their sins, and to discharge themselves from the guilt of so dreadful a crime, and save themselves from the coming vengeance due to it. Whom God hath raised up Whose honour God hath abundantly vindicated, and to whose innocence, truth, and dignity he hath borne a most glorious testimony; having loosed the pains of death Or the bonds in which he lay, when the pains of death had done their work upon him; because it was not possible that he The Prince of life, and a person who had never sinned, and therefore was not liable to the penalty of death, only due to sinners; should be finally holden of it Or detained under its power. The word ωδινας, here rendered pains, properly means, the pains of a woman in travail, an expression which seems to be here used to signify the agony which Christ suffered in his soul before he was nailed to the cross: and the extreme anguish he afterward endured, before he bowed his head and gave up the ghost. The word, however, seems to be used by the LXX. for cords and bands, Psalms 18:4; and Dr. Hammond thinks, that from them the apostle here used it in the same sense, to which, indeed, the metaphor of being held and loosing best agrees. Christ was imprisoned for our debt, was thrown into the bonds of death; but divine justice being satisfied, it was not possible he should be detained there, either by right or by force, for he had life in himself, and in his own power, and had conquered the prince of death.