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Act_5:19-20. The historical state of the case as to the miraculous mode of this liberation,—the process of which, perhaps, remained mysterious to the apostles themselves,—cannot be ascertained. Luke narrates the fact in a legendary[169] interpretation of the mystery (comp. Neander, p. 726); but every attempt to refer the miraculous circumstances to a merely natural process (a stroke of lightning, or an earthquake, or, as Thiess, Eck, Eichhorn, Eckermann, and Heinrichs suggest, that a friend, perhaps the jailor himself, or a zealous Christian, may have opened the prison) utterly offends against the design and the nature of the text. It remains matter for surprise, that in the proceedings afterwards (Act_5:27 ff.) nothing is brought forward as to this liberation and its circumstances. This shows the incompleteness of the narrative, but not the unhistorical character of the fact itself (Baur, Zeller), which, if it were an intentional invention, would certainly also have been referred to in the trial. Nor is the apparent uselessness of the deliverance (for the apostles are again arrested) evidence against its reality, as it had a sufficient ethical purpose in the very fact of its confirming and increasing the courage in faith of the apostles themselves. On the other hand, the hypothesis that Christ, by His angel, had wished to demonstrate to the Sanhedrim their weakness (Baumgarten), would only have sufficient foundation, provided the sequel of the narrative purported that the judges had really recognised the interposition of heavenly power in the mode of the deliverance. Lange, apost. Zeitalt. II. p. 68, refers the phenomenon to a visionary condition: the apostles were liberated “in the condition of genius-life, of second consciousness.” This is extravagant fancy introducing its own ideas.
ἄγγελος ] not the angel, but an angel; Winer, p. 118 [E. T. 155].
διὰ τῆς νυκτός ] per noctem, i.e. during the night; so that the opening, the bringing out of the prisoners, and the address of the angel, occurred during the course of the night, and toward morning-dawn the apostles repaired to the temple. Comp. Act_16:9, and see on Gal_2:1. The expression is thus more significant than διὰ τὴν νύκτα (Nägelsbach on the Iliad, p. 222, ed. 3) would be, and stands in relation with ὑπὸ τὸν ὄρθρον , Act_5:21. Hence there is no deviation from Greek usage (Winer, Fritzsche).
ἘΞΑΓΑΓ .] But on the next day the doors were again found closed (Act_5:23), according to which even the keepers had not become aware of the occurrence.
Act_5:20. σταθέντες ] take your stand and speak; in which is implied a summons to boldness. Comp. Act_2:14.
τὰ ῥήματα τῆς ζωῆς ταύτης ] the words of this life. What life it was, was self-evident to the apostles, namely, the life, which was the aim of all their effort and working. Hence: the words, which lead to the eternal Messianic life, bring about its attainment. Comp. Joh_6:68. See on ταύτης , Winer, p. 223 [E. T. 297 f.]. We are not to think here of a hypallage, according to which ταύτης refers in sense to Τ . ῬΉΜΑΤΑ (Bengel, Kuinoel, and many others). Comp. Act_13:26; Rom_7:24.
[169] Ewald also discovers here a legendary form (perhaps a duplication of the history in ch. 12).