But Peter, standing up with the eleven,... — We are struck at once with the marvellous change that has come over the character of the Apostle. Timidity has become boldness; for the few hasty words recorded in the Gospels we have elaborate discourses. There is a method and insight in the way he deals with the prophecies of the Christ altogether unlike anything that we have seen in him before. If we were reading a fictitious history, we should rightly criticise the author for the want of consistency in his portraiture of the same character in the first and second volumes of his work. As it is, the inconsistency becomes almost an evidence of the truth of the narratives that contain it. The writer of a made-up-history, bent only upon reconciling the followers of Peter and of Paul, would have made the former more prominent in the Gospels or less prominent in the Acts. And the facts which St. Luke narrates are an adequate explanation of the phenomena. In the interval that had passed, Peter’s mind had been opened by his Lord’s teaching to understand the Scriptures (Luke 24:45), and then he had been endued, by the gift of the Holy Spirit, with power from on high. That which he now speaks is the first utterance of the new gift of prophecy, and followed rightly on I the portent of the “tongues” to bring about the work of conversion which they had no power to accomplish. The speech which follows was spoken either in the Aramaic of Palestine, or, more probably, in the Greek, which was common in Galilee, and which would be intelligible to all, or nearly all, of the pilgrims from distant countries.
And said unto them. — The verb is not the word commonly so rendered, but that which is translated “utterance,” or “to utter,” in Acts 2:4. The unusual word was probably repeated here to indicate that what follows was just as much an “utterance” of the Holy Spirit, working on and through the spiritual powers of man, as the marvel of the “tongues” had been.
Hearken to my words. — Literally, give ear to. The verb is an unusual one, and is found here only in the New Testament. It is used not unfrequently in the LXX., as, e.g., in Genesis 4:22; Job 23:18.