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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comVincent Word Studies - Acts 10:11 - 10:11
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Saw (θεωρεῖ)
Rev., better, and more literally, beholdeth. See on Luk 10:18. The present tense is graphically introduced into the narrative.
Unto him
The best texts omit.
Sheet (ὀθόνην)
Only here and Act 11:5. Originally fine linen; later, sail-cloth or a sail. Dr. J. Rawson Lumby suggests that the word, “applied to loose, bellying sails of ships,” may indicate that the form of vessel which appeared to Peter “recalled an image most familiar to his previous life - the wind-stretched canvas of the craft on the Lake of Galilee” (“Expositor,” iii., 272).
Knit (δεδεμένον)
If this is retained, we must render bound, or attached; but the best texts omit, together with the following and. Render, as Rev., let down by four corners. Compare Act 11:5.
Corners (ἀρχαῖς)
Lit., beginnings; the extremity or corner, marking a beginning of the sheet. “We are to imagine the vessel, looking like a colossal four-cornered linen cloth letting itself down, while the corners attached to heaven to support the whole.” The word is used in this sense by Herodotus, describing the sacrifices of the Scythians. The victim's forefeet are bound with a cord, “and the person who is about to offer, taking his station behind the victim, pulls the end (ἀρχὴν)of the rope, and thereby throws the animal down” (iv., 60). The suggestion of ropes holding the corners of the sheet (Alford, and, cautiously, Farrar) is unwarranted by the usage of the word. It was the technical expression in medical language for the ends of bandages. The word for sheet in this passage was also the technical term for a bandage, as was the kindred word ὀθόνιον, used of the linen bandages in which the Lord's body was swathed. See Luk 24:12; Joh 19:40; Joh 20:5, Joh 20:6, Joh 20:7. Mr. Hobart says: “We have thus in this passage a technical medical phrase - the ends of a bandage - used for the ends of a sheet, which hardly any one except a medical man would think of employing” (“Medical Language of St. Luke”).