Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 1:3

"To whom he also showed himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing unto them by the space of forty days, and speaking the things concerning the kingdom of God:" — Acts 1:3 (ASV)

After His passion.—Literally, after He had suffered. The English somewhat anticipates the later special sense of “passion.”

By many infallible proofs.—There is no adjective in the Greek corresponding to “infallible,” but the noun is one that was used by writers on rhetoric (for example, Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.2) for proofs that carried certainty of conviction with them, as contrasted with those that were only probable or circumstantial. No other New Testament writer uses it.

Being seen by them forty days.—St. Luke uses a peculiar and unusual word (it occurs twice in the LXX: 1 Kings 8:8 and Tobit 12:19) for “being seen,” perhaps with the wish to imply that the presence was not continuous, and that our Lord was seen only at intervals. This may be noted as the only passage that gives the time between the Resurrection and the Ascension.

It had its counterpart in the forty days of the Temptation in the wilderness (Luke 4:2), just as that period also had its precedent in the earlier histories of Moses (Exodus 24:18; Deuteronomy 9:9; Deuteronomy 9:18) and Elijah (1 Kings 19:8).

There was a certain symbolic fitness in the time of triumph on earth coinciding with that of special conflict. If we ask what was the character—if one may say so—of our Lord’s risen life between His manifestation to the disciples, the history of the earlier forty days partly suggests the answer.

Then, as before, we may believe His life was one of solitude and communion with His Father, no longer tried and tempted, as it had been then, by contact with the power of evil. It was a life of intercession, such as that which expressed itself in the great prayer of John 17.

Where He spent His days and nights, we can only reverently conjecture. Analogy suggests the desert places and mountain heights of Galilee (Luke 4:42; Luke 6:12). The mention of Bethany in Luke 24:50, and of the Mount of Olives in Acts 1:12, makes it probable that Gethsemane may have been one of the scenes that witnessed the joy of the victory, as it had witnessed before the agony of the conflict.

The things pertaining to the kingdom of God.—This implies, it is obvious, much unrecorded teaching. What is recorded points to:

1. The true interpretation of the prophecies of the Messiah (Luke 24:27; Luke 24:44–45);
2. The extension of the mission of the disciples to the whole Gentile world, and their admission to the Kingdom by baptism (Matthew 28:19);
3. The promises of supernatural powers and divine protection (Mark 16:15–18);
4. His own perpetual presence with His Church (Matthew 28:20).