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Act_10:22-25. Μαρτυρούμ .] as in Act_6:3.
ἐχρηματ .] See on Mat_2:12. The communication on the part of the angel (Act_10:4-7) is understood as a divine answer to the constant prayer of Cornelius (Act_10:2).
Peter and his six (Act_11:12) companions had not traversed the thirty miles from Joppa to Caesarea in one day, and therefore arrived there only on the day after their departure. The messengers of Cornelius, too, had only arrived at Peter’s abode on the second day (Act_10:8-9), and had passed the night with him (Act_10:23), so that now ( τῇ ἐπαύριον , Act_10:24) it was the fourth day since their departure from Caesarea. Cornelius expected Peter on this day, for which, regarding it as a high family-festival, he had invited his (certainly like-minded) relatives and his intimate friends ( τοὺς ἀναγκ . φίλους , see Wetstein; Kypke, II. p. 50).
ὡς δὲ ἐγένετο τοῦ εἰσελθεῖν τὸν Π .] but when it came to pass that Peter entered. This construction is to be regarded as a very inaccurate, improper application of the current infinitive with τιοῦ . No comparison with the Hebrew åÇéÀäÄé ìÈáåÉà , Gen_15:12 (Gesenius, Lehrgebr. p. 787), is to be allowed, because åÇéÀäÄé does not stand absolutely, but has its subject beside it, and because the LXX. has never imitated this and similar expressions (Gesenius, l.c.) by ἐγένετο τοῦ . The want of corresponding passages, and the impossibility of rationally explaining the expression, mark it as a completely isolated[257] error of language, which Luke either himself committed or adopted from his original source,—and not (in opposition to Fritzsche, ad Matth. p. 848, and Rinck, Lucubr. crit. p. 64) as a corruption of the transcribers, seeing that the most important witnesses decide in favour of τοῦ , and its omission in the case of others is evidently a correction. Comp. now also Winer, p. 307 [E. T. 412].
ἐπὶ τ . πόδας ] at the feet of Peter. Comp. Luk_8:41; Luk_17:16; Mar_5:22; Joh_11:32, al.
προσεκύνησε ] See on Mat_2:2. He very naturally conjectured, after the vision imparted to him, that there was something superhuman in the person of Peter (comp. on Luk_5:8); and to this, perhaps, the idea of heroes, to which the centurion had not yet become a stranger, contributed.
[257] Even at Rev_12:7 it is otherwise, as there, if we do not accede to the conjecture of Düsterdieck, ἐγένετο must be again mentally supplied with ὁ Μιχαήλ , but in the altered meaning: there came forward, there appeared (comp. on Mar_1:4; Joh_1:6), so that it is to be translated: And there came (i.e. there set in, there resulted) war in heaven: Michael came, and his angels, in order to wage war. Among Greek writers also, as is well known, the verb to be repeated in thought is often to be taken in an altered meaning. Comp. e.g. Plat. Rep. p. 471 C, and Stallb. in loc. Least of all will such a supplement occasion difficulty in a prophetic representation, which is often stiff, angular, and abrupt in its delineation (as especially in Isaiah).