Acts 2:32-36 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

This Jesus Whom we assert to be the true Messiah; hath God raised up According to the tenor of his promise; whereof Of which resurrection; we all are witnesses On our personal and certain knowledge; having seen him with our eyes, and examined into the truth of the matter with all possible care. Therefore, being by the right hand of God That is, by God's almighty power, exalted from the grave to heaven; or, as some read the clause, Being exalted to the right hand of God, to supreme power, majesty, and glory; and having received of the Father As the great anointed one of the Lord; the promise of the Holy Ghost The Holy Ghost promised to his disciples; he hath Agreeably to the notices he gave us before his ascension; shed forth this miraculous effusion of it, the effects of which ye now see and hear. For David himself Who has not yet been raised from the dead; is not With respect to his body; ascended into heaven To be advanced there to the highest dignity and power: but he saith In another Psalm, (where he plainly shows that he spoke of another person, and such another as was superior to himself, even his Lord;) The Lord Namely, Jehovah, (the word here used;) said unto my Lord That is, God the Father said unto the Messiah, (whom, though in one sense David's son, he honoured as his Lord;) Sit thou on my right hand Be thou invested with the highest power and glory; until I make thy foes All that are so presumptuous as to persist in hostility to thee; thy footstool Until I lay them prostrate at thy feet, so that thou mayest trample upon them at pleasure, as entirely subdued. See note on Psalms 110:1. This text is here quoted with the greatest address, as suggesting, in the words of David, their great prophetic monarch, how certain their own ruin must be, if they went on to oppose Christ. It may be proper to observe here, that in these two verses there is an allusion to two ancient customs: one, to that of kings placing those persons on their right hands to whom they intended the highest honour; as Solomon did Bathsheba, when sitting on his throne, 1 Kings 2:19; and the other, to the custom of conquerors, who used to tread on the necks of their vanquished enemies, as a token of their entire victory and triumph over them. Therefore Upon the whole, from this concurrent evidence, both of prophecy and miracle, and from the testimony God has given to that Jesus whom we preach, not only by his resurrection from the dead, but by the effusion of the Holy Spirit on his followers; let all the house of Israel know assuredly How contrary soever it may be to their former apprehensions and rooted prejudices; that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have rejected and crucified, both Lord and Christ Hath demonstrated him to be the expected Messiah, and hath constituted him the King of his people, and Lord of all: let them know certainly that this truth has now received its full confirmation, and we our full commission to publish it. Thus Peter shows, in a striking light, what aggravated wickedness they had been guilty of, in that they had crucified one whom God designed to glorify, and had put him to death as a deceiver, who had given such pregnant proofs of a divine mission.