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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
The Healing of the Lame Man.
The lame beggar:
v. 1. Now Peter and John went up together into the Temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour.
v. 2. And a certain man lame from his mother's womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the Temple which is called Beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered into the Temple;
v. 3. who, seeing Peter and John about to go into the Temple, asked an alms.
Of the many signs and wonders which the apostles performed for the confirmation of their teaching, chap. 2:43, Luke here narrates one which stands out from the rest by virtue of the amount of attention it attracted. The disciples, after the ascension of Christ and even after the Day of Pentecost, did not abandon the usages of the Jewish religion which did not conflict with the teaching of Jesus. (So also Luther, with conservative tact, did not permit iconoclastic tendencies to direct his reformatory labors.) As before, they observed the Jewish hours of prayer. At the ninth hour, that is, at three o'clock in the afternoon, the time of the evening sacrifice, Peter and John went up into the Temple to pray. At that time the prayers of the believers were wafted upwards as incense sweet in the nostrils of God, and the lifting up of their hands accompanied the bringing of the evening sacrifice. But when the two apostles arrived at the Temple, they were halted by a peculiar circumstance. A certain man, who had been lame from his birth, and could in no way walk, but had to be carried about from one place to another, was daily placed by some friends or acquaintances at that gate of the Temple which was known as "The Beautiful," there to follow his profession as beggar by soliciting alms from the visitors to the Temple. The Temple itself was situated on an eminence overlooking the city, whence the apostles were obliged to go up to visit its courts and halls. "Either the gate that opened out of the Court of the Women to the eastward, or the one between the Court of the Women and the Court of Israel (it is uncertain which one) had been given by one Nicanor and was of fine Corinthian bronze. It was sometimes called 'The Gate Beautiful' and sometimes 'Nicanor's Gate. "It was by this gate, and so near the treasury where people were devoting their money to religion, that Peter and John found the lame man begging." The lame man had probably seen Peter and John often, but this was the occasion on which the Lord wanted to show him an act of especial mercy. He looked at the two apostles as they were about to enter, and asked to receive an alms from them.