Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 10:46

"For they heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God. Then answered Peter," — Acts 10:46 (ASV)

The six Jewish believers who were there with Peter were astonished at what they saw and heard. For in accepting these Gentiles and bestowing his Holy Spirit on them, God had providentially attested his action by the same sign of tongues as at Pentecost. This gift at Pentecost should probably be understood as distinguishable languages, because the tongues were immediately recognized as dialects then current (cf. comment on 2:4). Here, however, an outburst of foreign languages would have fallen on untuned ears and failed to be convincing. So we should probably view “the tongues” (GK 1185) here as being the ecstatic utterances that Paul later describes in 1Colossians 12–14. Undoubtedly the sign of tongues was given primarily for the sake of the Jewish believers right there in Cornelius’s house. But it was also given for Jerusalem believers, who would later hear of what happened, so that all would see the conversion of these Gentiles as being entirely of God and none would revert to their old prejudices and relegate these new converts to the role of second-class Christians.