Verse 3
3. Unto them To the “about one hundred and twenty” present.
Cloven tongues The tongues appeared, then settled one upon the head of each person; each tongue being cloven, that is, undivided at the root, but flaring into several points at the extremity. By this terminal division was beautifully symbolized the variety of dialect spoken by each tongue.
Most commentators at the present day construe the Greek word rendered cloven to signify distributed; that is, distributed a single tongue to each individual. But the word usually signifies, not the distribution of several wholes, but the distribution of one whole into several parts; as, for instance, a pile of garments into the several articles. But here there is no one common whole or single mass of tongues to be distributed; nor is there any common mass of fire back of the tongues to be divided or distributed off into single tongues; but each tongue being a whole is distributed into terminal parts. The other rendering destroys the symbol by which the divided or terminally distributed tongues indicate the miraculous variety of languages.
Like as of fire Not literal fire, but like as fire. It was the phenomenal emblem of the invisible Spirit; its divine essence, as it were, made visible. As Alford says, the sound was the Spirit’s symbol to the ear, as the fire (and we may add the “shape like a dove,” Luke 3:22) to the eye.
It sat What sat? Not the tongues, for that is plural; but plainly the quasi- fire just mentioned, in the tongue shape. What Luke means to say is that the Spirit itself sat upon each head and gave them utterance. The fire sat upon their heads; and, as if it burned down into the depths of their souls, they were filled with the Holy Ghost.
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