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Mar_16:17. Σημεῖα ] marvellous significant appearances for the divine confirmation of their faith. Comp. 1Co_14:22.
τοῖς πιστεύσουσι ] those who have become believing, generically. The limitation to the teachers, especially the apostles and seventy disciples (Kuinoel), is erroneous. See Mar_16:16. The σημεῖα adduced indeed actually occurred with the believers as such, not merely with the teachers. See 1 Corinthians 12. Yet in reference to the serpents and deadly drinks, see on Mar_16:18. Moreover, Jesus does not mean that every one of these signs shall come to pass in the case of every one, but in one case this, in another that one. Comp. 1Co_12:4.
παρακολ .] shall follow them that believe, shall accompany them, after they have become believers. The word, except in Luk_1:3, is foreign to all the four evangelists, but comp. 1Ti_4:6; 2Ti_3:10.
ταῦτα ] which follow. See Krüger, Xen. Anab. ii. 2. 2; Kühner, ad Anab. ii. 5. 10.
ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί μου ] in my name, which they confess, shall the ground be, that they, etc. It refers to all the particulars which follow.
δαιμ . ἐκβαλ .] Comp. Mar_9:38.
γλώσσ . λαλ . καιναῖς ] to speak with new languages. The ecstatic glossolalia (see on 1Co_12:10), which first appeared at the event of Pentecost, and then, moreover, in Act_10:46; Act_19:6, and is especially known from the Corinthian church, had been converted by the tradition with reference to the Pentecostal occurrence into a speaking in languages different from the mother-tongue (see on Act_2:4). And such is the speaking in new languages mentioned in the passage before us, in such languages, that is, as they could not previously speak, which were new and strange to the speakers. Hereby the writer betrays that he is writing in the sub-apostolic period, since he, like Luke in reference to the Pentecostal miracle, imports into the first age of the church a conception of the glossolalia intensified by legend; nay, he makes the phenomenon thereby conceived as a speaking in strange languages to be even a common possession of believers, while Luke limits it solely to the unique event of Pentecost. We must accordingly understand the γλώσσ . λαλεῖν καιναῖς of our text, not in the sense of the speaking with tongues, 1 Corinthians 12-14, but in the sense of the much more wonderful speaking of languages, Acts 2, as it certainly is in keeping with the two strange particulars that immediately follow. Hence every rationalizing attempt to explain away the concrete designation derived, without any doubt as to the meaning of the author, from the Acts of the Apostles, is here as erroneous as it is in the case of Acts 2, whether recourse be had to generalities, such as the newness of the utterance of the Christian spirit (Hilgenfeld), or the new formation of the spirit-world by the new word of the Spirit (Lange), the ecstatic speaking on religious subjects (Bleek), or others. Against such expedients, comp. Keim in Herzog, Encykl. XVIII. p. 687 ff. The ecstatic phenomena of Montanism and of the Irvingites present no analogy with the passage before us, because our passage has to do with languages, not with tongues. Euthymius Zigabenus: γλώσσαις ξέναις , διαλέκτοις ἀλλοεθνέσιν .