Acts 13:19-20 - Exposition

Canaan for Chanaan, A.V.; he gave them their land for an inheritance, for about four hundred and fifty years: and after these things he gave them judges, etc., for he divided their land unto them by lot: and after that he gave unto them judges about the space of four hundred and fifty years, etc., A.V. and T.R. It is difficult to say what is the meaning of the R.T. in regard to the four hundred and fifty years, what is the terminus a quo or ad quem intended by it. The usual explanations of the reading of the R.T. (adopted by Lachman, Bishop Wordsworth, and others) is that the years are dated from the birth of Isaac, and that the meaning is that the promise to give the land to the seed of Abraham was actually performed within four hundred and fifty years ( ὡς ἔτεσι ) (after the analogy of Galatians 3:17 ), which gives a good sense and is not at all improbable (see Bishop Wordsworth's note). The reading of the T.R. has grave objections on the score of chronology as well as grammar. Duration of time is expressed by the accusative case, as Acts 13:18 and Acts 13:21 ; the measure of time in which a thing is done by the dative. So that the natural rendering of the T.R. would be that he gave them judges four hundred and fifty years after the entrance into Canaan; which of course cannot be the meaning. The other objection is that, if the times of the judges from the final conquest of the land to the judgeship of Samuel was four hundred and fifty years, the whole time from the Exodus to the building of the temple must have been about six hundred and forty years £ , whereas 1 Kings 6:1 gives the time as four hundred and eighty years; while the genealogies suppose a much shorter time—about two hundred and eighty years. It is an immense gain, therefore, to get rid of this four hundred and fifty years for the time of the judges, and by the well-supported reading of the R.T. to get a calculation in agreement with Galatians 3:17 and with the chronology of the times. Gave them … for an inheritance . The T.R. has κατεκληροδότησεν , the R.T. has κατεκληρονόμησεν , which words are not infrequently interchanged in different codices of the LXX . (see Joshua 19:51 ; Deuteronomy 1:38 ; Deuteronomy 21:16 , etc.). They have nearly identical meanings, "to give as an inheritance by lot." Neither word occurs elsewhere in the New Testament.