Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Acts 2:7 - 2:8
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Act_2:7-8. Ἐξίσταντο denotes the astonishment now setting in after the first perplexity, Act_2:6; ἐθαύμαζον is the continuing wonder resulting from it. Comp. Mar_6:51.
ἰδού ] to be enclosed within two commas.
πάντες οὗτοι κ . τ . λ .] pointing out: all the speakers present. It does not distinguish two kinds of persons, those who spoke and those who did not speak (van Hengel); but see Act_2:4. The dislocation occasioned by the interposition of εἰσίν brings the πάντες οὗτοι into more emphatic prominence.
Γαλιλαῖοι ] They wondered to hear men, who were pure Galileans, speak Parthian, Median, etc. This view, which takes Γαλ . in the sense of nationality, is required by Act_2:8; Act_2:11, and by the contrast of the nations afterwards named. It is therefore foreign to the matter, with Herder, Heinrichs, Olshausen, Schulz, Rossteuscher, van Hengel, and older commentators, to bring into prominence the accessory idea of want of culture (uncultivated Galileans); and erroneous, with Stolz, Eichhorn, Kuinoel, and others, to consider Γαλ . as a designation of the Christian sect—a designation, evidence of which, moreover, can only be adduced from a later period. Augusti, Denkwürd. IV: pp. 49, 55. It is erroneous, also, to find the cause of wonder in the circumstance that the Galileans should have used profane languages for so holy an object (Kuinoel). So, in opposition to this, Ch. F. Fritzsche, nova opusc. p. 310.
καὶ πῶς ] καί , as a simple and, annexes the sequence of the sense; and (as they are all Galileans) how happens it that, etc.
ἡμεῖς ἀκούομεν ἕκαστος κ . τ . λ .] we on our part (in contrast to the speaking Galileans) hear each one, etc. That, accordingly, ἐγεννήθ . is to be understood distributively, is self-evident from the connection (comp. ταῖς ἡμετ . γλώσσαις , Act_2:11); therefore van Hengel[124] wrongly objects to the view of different languages, that the words would require to run: πῶς ἡμ . ἀκ . τ . ἰδ . διαλ ., ἐν ᾗ ἕκαστος ἐγεννήθη .
ἐν ᾗ ἐγεννήθ . designation of the mother-tongue, with which one is, in the popular way of expressing the matter, born furnished.
[124] l.c. p. 24 f.: “How comes it that we, no one excepted, hear them speak in the mother-tongue of our own people?” Thus, in his view, we are to explain the passage as the words stand in the text, and thus there is designated only the one mother-tongue—the Aramaic.