Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 2:24

"whom God raised up, having loosed the pangs of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it." — Acts 2:24 (ASV)

Whom God hath raised up.—It is quite probable that some rumors of the Resurrection had spread among the people, and had been met by the counter-statement we read about in Matthew 28:11-15; but this was the first public witness, given by one who was ready to seal his testimony with his blood, to the stupendous fact.

Having loosed the pains of death.—The word for “pains” is the same as that for “sorrows” in Matthew 24:8: literally, travail-pangs. The phrase was not uncommon in the Septuagint (LXX) version, but was apparently a mistranslation of the Hebrew for “cords,” or “bands,” of death. If we take the Greek word in its full meaning, the Resurrection is thought of as a new birth from the womb of the grave.

Because it was not possible. . . .—The moral impossibility was, we might say, twofold. The work of the Son of Man could not have ended in a failure and death that would have contradicted all He had asserted about Himself. Its outcome could not contradict the prophecies that had implied, more or less clearly, a victory over death. The latter, as what follows shows, was the thought prominent in Saint Peter’s mind.