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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Acts 1:12 - 1:12
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
12. τοῦ καλουμένου, as well as the subsequent indication of the locality of mountain, shew us that he for whom the Acts was written was a stranger to these places.
Ἐλαιῶνος. Here Ἐλαιών is given as the designation by which the mountain was known. Its name was = Olivetum.
ἐγγὺς Ἱερουσαλήμ, near unto Jerusalem. The A.V. omits to translate the preposition. The mount of Olives is on the east of Jerusalem, between that city and Bethany.
σαββάτου ὁδόν. The journey which a Jew was allowed to take on the sabbath. This was put at two thousand yards or cubits (Heb. ammoth), and the Rabbis had arrived at the measure by a calculation based on their exposition of Exo 16:29, ‘Abide ye every man in his place.’ Here the Hebrew word is takhtav, and this the Talmud (Erubin 51 a) explains to mean the four yards (which is the space allowed for downsitting and uprising), but in the same verse it says, ‘Let no man go out of his place,’ and here the word is makom, and this means two thousand yards. For makom is in another passage explained by nisah = flight, and nisah is explained by gebul = border, and gebul is explained elsewhere by khuts = extremity, and in one place khuts = two thousand yards. For it is written (Num 35:5) ‘And ye shall measure from the extremity of the city on the east side two thousand yards.’
So taking khuts as defined in the last passage, they made an equation khuts = gebul = nisah = makom, and made makom in Exo 16:29 also equal to two thousand yards. The Scriptural passages on which the above reasoning is based are (1) Exo 21:13 ‘I will appoint thee a place (makom) whither he shall flee’ (yanus), and from the verb yanus the noun nisah is formed. (2) Num 35:26 ‘But if the slayer shall at any time come without the border (gebul) of the city of his refuge whither he is fled,’ a passage which connects gebul and nisah. (3) Num 35:27 ‘If the avenger of blood shall find him without (mikhuts) the border of the city of his refuge,’ where gebul is brought into connexion with khuts.