Expositor's Bible Commentary 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)

Here the resurrection of Jesus is attributed directly to God, apart from any human action or even Jesus himself—just as elsewhere in the NT it is so attributed in quotations from early Christian hymns and catechisms (e.g., 1 Corinthians 15:4). The imagery is of “death pangs” and their awful clutches (cf. 2 Samuel 22:6; 116:3), from which God is “freeing” Jesus “because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.”