Acts 2:1

II. THE PENTECOST.

1. The Advent of the Spirit, Acts 2:1-13 .

1. Day of Pentecost There were annually three great feasts at Jerusalem which every male Jew was required by the law to attend, namely, the Passover, the Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. Each of these had a twofold reference; one historical, and the other agricultural. Israel was both a theocratic and an agricultural nation; and he blended the events of his theocratic history with the events of his agricultural year. Thus is commemorated God’s mercy both in the past and present. The God of the theocracy is thereby recognized as the God of nature.

(1.) The PASSOVER ( a) commemorated the deliverance from Egypt by the hand of Moses, and ( b) marked the earlier or barley harvest. It was continued one week. On the first day the Passover lamb was slain, symbolizing the historical event, as detailed in our note on Matthew 26:2. On the morrow after the Passover Sabbath the priest was ceremonially, and with prescribed sacrifice, to wave a sheaf of the first-fruits of the harvest in token of acknowledgment of the divine bounty. And before this act neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears were to be eaten. (Exodus 23:10-14.) It was rendering to the God who first delivered Israel his thanks for the bounty of harvest.

(2.) The Feast of TABERNACLES (see our note on John 7:2) commemorated the wanderings in the wilderness, and marked the final harvest, namely, of the vintage and the fruits.

(3.) Between these two, seven weeks, or fifty days inclusive from the day of the wave-sheaf, was the Feast of PENTECOST, kept for a single day. From the seven weeks’ interval between it and the Passover it was originally called by the Hebrews The Feast of Weeks. But later it was called Pentecost, from the Greek words signifying Fiftieth, from the number of intervening days. It marked a second or wheat harvest. That it also commemorated the giving of the law on Mount Sinai is not, indeed, said expressly in the Scriptures, and so is doubted by many biblical scholars; but we join with those who hold it as true: ( a) because it was historically a fact that seven weeks did occur from the leaving of Egypt to the giving of the Law on Sinai; ( b) because some of the most eminent Jewish commentators so held; ( c) because the analogy of the other two great feasts requires a historical reference; and ( d) because of the striking correspondence, yet contrast, between the giving of the Old Law by Moses and this giving of the New Law by Christ. The last day of the seven weeks, says Grotius, was the day of the given law, as is inferred from Exodus 19:1-2, and was called on this account שׁמהת תורה , The Feast of the Law.

St. Jerome thus finely contrasts the two: “Each law was made on the fiftieth day from the Passover; the one upon Sinai, the other upon Zion. At the one, the mountain trembled with a shaking of the earth; at the other, the house of the apostles. At the former, amid fiery flames and flashing lightnings there sounded a whirl of winds and a crash of thunders; at the latter, together with a sight of fiery tongues, there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing wind. In the former, the blast of a clarion uttered the words of the law; at the latter, the Gospel trumpet sounded forth from the mouth of the apostles.”

Wordsworth says: “From the end of Saturday, the sixteenth day of Nisan, forty-nine days are counted; and the fiftieth, or Feast of Pentecost, falls on SUNDAY. It was the ancient belief of the ancient Christian Church” that the Pentecostal day was Sunday.

All with one accord The same one accord as in Acts 1:14, of the same body enumerated in Acts 1:15; namely, the about one hundred and twenty names representative of the New Testament Church. This one accord beautifully and repeatedly emphasises the unanimity of heart and movement of this wonderful little condensation of Christianity. The they of this verse grammatically referring to this company clearly negatives the addition of some imaginary Christians from the country at the feast, supposed by Alford and others.

In one place Not, as some suppose, in the Temple. (See note on Acts 1:13.) Had Israel, indeed, accepted Jesus, (see note on Acts 1:7,) the Spirit, the life, and the Shekinah (note on Acts 7:2) would no doubt have made their centre, as of old, in the ancient house of God. The miraculous tongues would have belonged not to twelve, or a hundred and twenty only, but to more than a hundred and twenty thousand. All Israel, the chosen seed, would have been Christ’s holy apostles. But Israel’s unbelief shut them out of the holy sanctuary, and so shut the sanctuary out to be sanctuary no more, but to be food for fire and ashes, and left these, the new chosen seed, the holy remnant, to inaugurate the Dispensation of the Spirit in an unrecognised “upper room.”