Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 2:14

"But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and spake forth unto them, [saying], Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and give ear unto my words." — Acts 2:14 (ASV)

But Peter, standing up with the eleven, . . .—We are struck at once with the marvelous change that has come over the character of the Apostle. Timidity has become boldness; for the few hasty words recorded in the Gospels we have elaborate discourses. There is a method and insight in the way he deals with the prophecies of the Christ altogether unlike anything that we have seen in him before.

If we were reading a fictitious history, we should rightly criticize the author for the lack of consistency in his portraiture of the same character in the first and second volumes of his work.

As it is, the inconsistency becomes almost evidence of the truth of the narratives that contain it. A writer of a made-up history, focused only on reconciling the followers of Peter and Paul, would have made Peter more prominent in the Gospels or less prominent in Acts. And the facts that St. Luke narrates are an adequate explanation of the phenomena.

In the interval that had passed, Peter’s mind had been opened by his Lord’s teaching to understand the Scriptures (Luke 24:45), and then he had been endowed by the gift of the Holy Spirit with power from on high. What he now speaks is the first utterance of the new gift of prophecy, and it rightly followed upon the portent of the “tongues” to bring about the work of conversion, which the tongues themselves had no power to accomplish. The speech that follows was spoken either in Aramaic, the language of Palestine, or, more probably, in Greek, which was common in Galilee and would have been intelligible to all, or nearly all, the pilgrims from distant countries.

And said unto them.—The verb is not the word commonly translated this way, but that which is translated “utterance,” or “to utter,” in Acts 2:4. The unusual word was probably repeated here to indicate that what follows was just as much an ‘utterance’ of the Holy Spirit, working on and through the spiritual powers of man, as the marvel of the ‘tongues’ had been.

Hearken to my words.—Literally, give ear to. The verb is an unusual one and is found here only in the New Testament. It is used not infrequently in the LXX., as, e.g., in Genesis 4:22;Job 23:18.