Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 2:27

"Because thou wilt not leave my soul unto Hades, Neither wilt thou give thy Holy One to see corruption." — Acts 2:27 (ASV)

You will not leave my soul in hell.—Literally, in Hades. (See Note on Matthew 11:23.) As interpreted by St. Peter’s words in his Epistle (1 Peter 3:19), these words conveyed to his mind the thought that has been embodied in the article of the “Descent into Hell,” or Hades, in the Apostle’s Creed. The death of Christ was an actual death, and while the body was laid in the grave, the soul passed into the world of the dead, the Sheol of the Hebrews, the Hades of the Greeks, to carry on there the redemptive work that had been begun on earth (Compare Acts 13:34-37, and Ephesians 4:9). Here again we have an interesting coincidence with St. Peter’s language (1 Peter 3:19), regarding the work of Christ in preaching to the spirits in prison.

Neither will you allow your Holy One to see corruption.—The word for “holy” is different from that commonly so rendered, and conveys the idea of personal piety and godliness rather than consecration. As the Psalmist used the words, we may think of them as expressing the confidence that he himself, as loving, and beloved by God, would be delivered from destruction, both now and hereafter.

St. Peter had learnt to interpret the words as having received a higher fulfilment. Christ was, in this sense, as well as in that expressed by the other word, the Holy One of God (Mark 1:24; Luke 4:34). In Hebrews 7:26, Revelation 15:4, and Revelation 16:5, this very word is applied to Christ. The Hebrew text of Psalms 16:10 presents the variant reading of the holy ones, as if referring to the saints that are upon the earth, of Acts 2:3. The LXX, which St. Peter follows, gives the singular, which is indeed essential to his argument, and this is also the reading of the Masoretic text. The Greek word for “corruption” ranges in its meaning from “decay” to “destruction.” The Hebrew word that corresponds to it is primarily the “pit” of the grave, and not “corruption” or “wasting away.”