Acts 3:22

22. For This word connects 22-26 with Acts 3:21. Jesus must stay in heaven while the prophecies of Moses, Samuel, and all are being fulfilled that is, during the these days (Acts 3:24) of Gospel probation.

A Prophet Peter in this and the following verse gives the substance in brief of Deuteronomy 18:15-19, in which God by Moses promises a prophet yet to come like unto Moses. By Jews, and rationalists, semi-rationalists, and even, strange to say, by some evangelic divines, this prophecy has been held to predict, either solely or secondarily, not Christ nor any single prophet, but a line of prophets. Kuinoel asserts this to be proved conclusively by its context. On the contrary we submit:

1 . The Jewish writers themselves maintained a single prophet to be meant, and he the Messiah, until the application of it to Jesus induced them to invent a different interpretation. The Samaritans, also, who, even to the present day, hold to a Messiah to come. (see note on John 4:25,) and who derived the doctrine from the Pentateuch. (since they rejected all the other Old Testament hooks,) must have drawn it from this passage. Candid rationalists would admit that such expressions as “the prophet,” John 7:40, “Messias cometh,” John 4:25, “that prophet that should come,” John 6:14, are good proof of the prevalent interpretation found at Christ’s first coming. We may therefore assume that a single prophet, and he the Messiah, was found in this text by the ancient Jewish Church.

2 . A single prophet, and not a line of prophets, is the undeniable import of the words of the text, Deuteronomy 18:15-19. The singular alone, and the singular repeated in various forms and connexions, is in express terms used. Not the slightest hint is given of a collective or plural sense. “A prophet,” “a prophet like unto me,” “him,” “his mouth,” “he,” etc. In saying that a single prophet is meant, we only say that what is said is meant.

3 . But, it is replied, the context shows that Jehovah is warning Israel against necromancers and other false foretellers, Acts 3:9-14, and as against them he promises a line of true prophets, Acts 3:15-19, and a test of false prophets, Acts 3:20-22. But, asks Kuinoel, in warning them against soothsayers, what force was there in telling them that God would hereafter raise up a Messiah? Very great force, we reply. Moses assures them that, 1. That prophet would be not like the ordinary prophets, such as existed during his own day (Numbers 11:24-29) and formerly, (Genesis 20:7; Jude 1:14,) but one like unto himself; a mediator-prophet, standing thee to face with God, and so a standard prophet, the expectation of whom should be a conserving rule and regulation for their faith, and a test against all pretenders. A Messiah future should be their regulator, as Messiah past is ours. 2. God would “raise him up unto thee,” “from the midst of thee, of thy brethren.” That is, the faith-ruling standard prophet should be an Israelite and in Israel; therefore need they never go to foreign nations, whose predictions were not to be authenticated by any mediator-prophet, and were therefore unreliable and dangerous. And so even at the present day Christ, the true God incarnate, and his Church of all ages from Moses until now, with their holy revelation, furnish our standard and test by which we decide that all miracles not agreeing with them are either juggles, or works of Satan or satanic beings, human or otherwise. The grand antidote to all demonism in both Jewish and Christian Church is Christ.

And then in Acts 3:20-22 Moses furnishes the test by which they should judge an ordinary Jewish prophet; just as in Acts 3:9-14 he had given a sweeping warning against all the predictions of the foreign sort. It is plain that the “a prophet” of Acts 3:22 means any prophet, and not the prophet “like unto me” of Acts 3:15.

4 . By a prophet “like unto me” cannot merely be meant “a prophet just as I am one,” but a prophet of extraordinary nature. He must be a prophet that could face the very blaze and thunder of Horeb, before which, even in the distance, Israel, with all her ordinary prophets, trembled and shrunk. He must be no prophet of mere inspiration, or vision, or dream; but a prophet looking in the face of Jehovah. Other prophets might be disobeyed with impunity; but whoso obeys not this one, dies.

5 . If, then, as is unquestionably the case, a one great personage, a Messiah, is predicted by many passages in the Old Testament, there can be no just excuse for declining to assign this passage to that class. And how wonderfully the position and character of Moses do shadow forth those of the human Jesus is shown in Bishop Newton’s chapter on this passage with great force, but at too great length for our space. If such a thing as true supernatural prediction ever existed this is one, truly applied by Peter in his present words.

Like unto me Christ was mainly, like Moses, the founder of a dispensation. Under each, the theocracy or kingdom of God was in form, and largely in spirit, reconstructed. There arose nothing like either between their two existences on earth. And hence, reasoning from a Christian standpoint, we could hardly fail to expect that there should be, as it were, a divine sympathy between them, and that there should be vouchsafed to the former some prophetic anticipations of the latter.

Shall ye hear So that Peter has an order from Moses enjoining upon these Jews to hear Jesus. And the adducing this prophecy was a powerful stroke in the Christian argument. The claim of the Jews against Jesus would be that his miracles infringed against Moses and the law and were, therefore, demoniac. This prophecy avers that Jesus is not only in the line of Moses, but was personally predicted by Moses as the second highest founder, who was to be obediently heard. He is not to be tested by any other thing or being, but is the supreme test for all.

All things Even should he in fulfilling render obsolete something of Moses.