Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 2

Luke describes the miracle of the coming of the Holy Spirit, with its accompanying signs, in four short verses, remarkable for their nuances. The miracle occurred on the festival known as Pentecost, which was celebrated on the fiftieth day after Passover (Leviticus 23:15–16). It was originally the Festival of the Firstfruits of the grain harvest (Exodus 23:16; Leviticus 23:17–22; Numbers 28:26–31); it was called the Feast of Weeks because it came after a period of seven weeks of harvesting that began with the offering of the first barley sheaf during the Passover celebration.

By the time of the first century A. D., however, it was considered the anniversary of the giving of the law at Mount Sinai and was a time for the annual renewal of the Mosaic covenant; it was therefore looked upon as one of the three great pilgrim festivals of Judaism (along with Passover and Tabernacles). Now no one who had been a companion of the apostle Paul could have failed to have been impressed by the fact that it was on the Jewish festival of Pentecost that the Spirit came so dramatically upon the early believers in Jerusalem. It is this significance that Luke emphasizes as he begins his Pentecost narrative; namely, that whereas Pentecost was for Judaism the day of the giving of the law, for Christians it is the day of the coming of the Holy Spirit.

So for Luke the coming of the Spirit upon the early Christians at Pentecost is not only a parallel to the Spirit’s coming upon Jesus at his baptism, it also shows that the mission of the Christian church, as was the ministry of Jesus, is dependent upon the Holy Spirit. And by his stress on Pentecost as the day when the miracle took place, he is also suggesting (1) that the Spirit’s coming is in continuity with God’s purposes in giving the law, and yet (2) that the Spirit’s coming signals the essential difference between the Jewish faith and commitment to Jesus, for whereas the former is Torah-centered and Torah-directed, the latter is Christcentered and Spirit-directed—all of which sounds very much like Paul. As to just where the believers were when they experienced the coming of the Spirit, Luke is somewhat vague. His emphasis is on the “when”; all he tells us about “where” is that “they were all together in one place,” in a “house” (v.2.). Most likely Luke is referring to the same upper room as in 1:12–26 as the setting for the miracle of the Spirit’s coming and the place from where the disciples first went out to proclaim the Gospel.

There is, of course, nothing necessarily sensory about the Holy Spirit. Yet God in his providence often accompanies his Spirit’s working by visible and audible signs—particularly at certain crises in redemptive history. This he does to assure his people of his presence. In vv.2–4 three signs of the Spirit’s coming are reported to have appeared, each of them—wind, fire, and inspired speech— being considered in Jewish tradition as a sign of God’s presence. Wind as a sign of God’s Spirit is rooted linguistically in the fact that both the Hebrew word ruah (GK 8120) and the Greek word pneuma (GK 4460) mean either “wind” or “spirit,” depending on the context, and this allows a rather free association of the two ideas (cf. Jn 3:8). Ezekiel had prophesied of the wind as the breath of God blowing over the dry bones in the valley of his vision and filling them with new life (Ezekiel 37:9–14), and it was this wind of God’s Spirit that Judaism looked forward to as ushering in the final Messianic Age. Thus Luke tells us that one sign of the Spirit’s coming upon the early followers of Jesus was “a sound like the blowing of a violent wind.”

Just why he emphasized the “sound” of the blowing of the “wind” is difficult to say. This sound “came from heaven” and “filled the whole house,” symbolizing to all present the presence of God’s Spirit among them in a way more intimate, personal, and powerful than they had ever before experienced.

Fire as a symbol of the divine presence was well known among first-century Jews (cf. the burning bush [Exodus 3:2–5], the pillar of fire that guided Israel by night through the desert [Exodus 13:21], the consuming fire on Mount Sinai [Exodus 24:17], and the fire that hovered over the wilderness tabernacle [Exodus 40:38]). John the Baptist explicitly linked the coming of the Spirit with fire (cf. Matthew 3:11). The “tongues of fire” here are probably not to be equated with the “other tongues” of v.4 but should be taken as visible representations of the overshadowing presence of the Spirit of God. Also significant is Luke’s statement that these tokens of the Spirit’s presence “separated and came to rest on each of them.” This seems to suggest that, though under the old covenant the divine presence rested on Israel as a corporate entity and upon many of its leaders for special purposes, under the new covenant, as established by Jesus and inaugurated at Pentecost, the Spirit now rests upon each believer individually. In other words, though the corporate and individual aspects of redemption cannot actually be separated, the emphasis in the proclamation of redemption from Pentecost onward is on the personal relationship of God to the believer through the Spirit, with all corporate relationships resulting from this.

In OT times prophetic utterances were regularly associated with the Spirit’s coming upon particular persons for special purposes (cf. Numbers 11:26–29; 1 Samuel 10:6–12; et al.). In Judaism, however, the belief arose that with the passing of the last of the writing prophets in the early postexilic period, the spirit of prophecy had ceased in Israel, and God now spoke to his people only through the Torah as interpreted by the teachers. But Judaism also expected that with the coming of the Messianic Age there would be a special outpouring of God’s Spirit, in fulfillment of Eze 37, and that prophecy would once again flourish. This is exactly what Luke portrays as having taken place at Pentecost among the followers of Jesus. The “tongues” (GK 1185) here are often identified with ecstatic utterances of the sort Paul discusses in 1Colossians 12–14. This identification is made largely (1) because in both instances the expression “other tongues” is used, and (2) because the verb translated “enabled” (or “gave utterance”; GK 1443 & 710) is frequently used in the OT and other Greek literature in connection with ecstatics (cf. Micah 5:12; Zechariah 10:2).

But the words spoken at Pentecost under the Spirit’s direction were immediately recognized by those who heard them as being languages then current, while at Corinth no one could understand what was said until someone present received a gift of interpretation. And the above-mentioned verb appears in contexts that stress clarity of speech and understanding (26:25). Therefore, the tongues in 2:4 are best understood as “languages” (see NIV note). The coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was of utmost significance both theologically and practically for the early church. Was Pentecost the birthday of the Christian church? A great deal depends upon what one means by the term “church” (GK 1711) in the NT. One meaning is “the body of Christ” as the redeemed of all ages. For this meaning, it can hardly be said that the church had its beginning only at Pentecost. What Luke seems to be stressing is (1) that the relationship of the Spirit to the members of the body of Christ became much more intimate and personal at Pentecost, in fulfillment of Jesus’ promise that the Spirit who “lives with you... will be in you” , and (2) that at Pentecost a new model of divine redemption was established as characteristic for life in the new covenant—one that, while incorporating both individual and corporate redemption, begins with the former in order to include the latter. A second meaning of “church” is “an instrument of service” (distinguishable from the nation Israel) used by God for his redemptive purposes. It has been called by God to take up the mission formerly entrusted to Israel. In this sense, Luke is certainly presenting the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost as the church’s birthday.

Neither Jesus’ ministry nor the mission of the early church would have been possible apart from the Spirit’s empowering. So Luke emphasizes Jesus’ explicit command to the disciples to stay in Jerusalem till they were empowered from on high by the Spirit (Acts 1:4–5, 8).

Certain “God-fearing Jews” who were residing in Jerusalem from many parts of the Diaspora, together with a number of Jews and proselytes who had returned to Jerusalem as pilgrims for the Pentecost festival, were “in bewilderment,” “utterly amazed,” and “perplexed” by the miraculous coming of the Spirit (vv.6–7, 12). Others, however, mocked (v.13). What drew the crowd and caused its bewilderment? Commentators differ as to whether it was the sound of the wind or the disciples’ speaking in various languages. But if we break the sentence with some kind of punctuation after “crowd” rather than (as is usually done) after “bewilderment,” we have two coordinate sentences with two separate yet complementary ideas: “When they heard this sound, a crowd came together. And they were bewildered because each one heard them speaking in his own language.” On this reading, “this sound” refers back to the “sound” of v.2 and conjures up a picture of people rushing to the source of the noise to see what is going on. When they get there, they become bewildered on hearing Galileans speaking in their own native languages.