Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Acts 15:10 - 15:10
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
10. νῦν οὖν, now therefore, i.e. after you have had so much evidence of God’s acceptance of the Gentiles, both in the early days and in the journeys of St Paul and Barnabas.
τί πειράζετε τὸν θεόν; why tempt ye God? Men are said ‘to tempt God’ when they distrust His guidance, and in consequence disobey His revealed will (cf. Psa 95:9). So the Jews tempted God in the wilderness (Heb 3:9) when they saw His mighty works and yet murmured at His leaders; so they are said to have tempted Christ (1Co 10:9) when they were punished by the fiery serpents; and Ananias and Sapphira are said to ‘have agreed to tempt the Spirit of the Lord,’ by acting as though they thought they could deceive God in their offering. From these instances the force of the question in the text will be seen. Those who should act as the Pharisaic party would recommend, would be distrusting God’s knowledge of the hearts of men, and refusing to be guided by what His Spirit had made known in the conversion of Cornelius.
ἐπιθεῖναι κ.τ.λ., to put a yoke. The infinitive is sometimes used as here to express the way or manner in which anything is done, and is in force something like a gerund, ‘by placing a yoke.’ Cf. 1Pe 4:3, ‘The time past of our life sufficeth us (κατειργάσθαι) for having wrought the will of the heathen.’
ζυγόν, a yoke. So St Paul (Gal 5:1) calls the ceremonial law ζυγὸν δουλείας. Christ uses the word ζυγός as a designation for His own precepts, knowing that a yoke was needed for the guidance of men, but He calls it ζυγὸς χρηστός, ‘an easy and profitable yoke,’ Mat 11:30.
ἰσχύσαμεν βαστάσαι, are able to bear. How this was felt is shewn by the Rabbinic injunction to ‘make a hedge about the Law,’ i.e. so to fence in its precepts by additional regulations of their own, that there should be no chance of infringing the commandment. These additions, commandments of men, as our Lord styles them, had made the ceremonial observances into a killing load. ‘The yoke of the commandments’ was a Rabbinic expression (T. B. Berachoth II. 2) and referred to the penalties for disobedience, the duty of laying up the commands in the heart, of binding them upon the hands, and as frontlets between the eyes, of teaching them to children, and speaking of them at all times, and writing them upon the doorposts and the gates. So that ‘the yoke’ was a heavy one for the teacher as well as for the learner.