Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 2:23

"him, being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye by the hand of lawless men did crucify and slay:" — Acts 2:23 (ASV)

By the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.—The adjective appears again in St. Peter’s speech in Acts 10:42; the word for “foreknowledge” in his epistle (1 Peter 1:2), and only there in the New Testament. The coincidence is not without its force concerning the genuineness of both the speech and the letter. It has now become the habit of the Apostle’s mind to trace the working of a divine purpose, which men, even when they are most determined on thwarting it, are unconsciously fulfilling. In Acts 1:16, he had seen that purpose in the treachery of Judas; he sees it now in the malignant injustice of priests and people.

You have taken. . . .—Better, you took, and by lawless hands crucified and slew. Stress is laid on the priests having used the hands of one who was “without law” (1 Corinthians 9:21), a Gentile ruler, to inflict the death sentence which they dared not inflict themselves.