Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• In this passage, what was first predicted by John the Baptist (Luke 3:16, “John answered all of them by saying, ‘I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire”) and by the risen Christ (Acts 1:4-5, “While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now’”) finally comes to fruition, baptism by the Holy Spirit.
• The story of the Spirit coming at Pentecost is unique to Luke/Acts. While the Gospel of John has Jesus giving the disciples the Spirit immediately after his resurrection (John 20:22, “Then he breathed on them and said, ‘receive the Holy Spirit’”) and Paul spoke of Jesus’ appearance to a crowd of five-hundred (1 Corinthians 15:6) possible as “a life-giving spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:45), only Luke/Acts has the Spirit coming in tongues of fire at Pentecost. Given the centrality of the story for Luke/Acts, its brevity (only four verses) seems strange. Commentaries posit this is to move the reader quickly from the coming of the Spirit to the Spirit’s effect on moving the community’s mission forward.
• “Pentecost” (literally “fiftieth day”) was a word used by Diaspora Jews for the harvest festival more commonly called the “Feast of Weeks” (Shavuot) that took place fifty days after Passover (Exodus 23:16; 34:22; Leviticus 23:15-21; Numbers 28:26; Deuteronomy 16:9-12). It was one of the three pilgrimage feasts, where Diaspora Jews would travel to Jerusalem to celebrate, which could account for the list of nations in v. 9-10.
• “They were all together in one place” (v. 1). The coming of the Spirit is not an individual event, it happens in community.
• Some commentators saw connections between the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and Moses giving the Law to the Israelites at Mt. Sinai, as both events took place fifty days after Passover. Jewish interpreters saw Pentecost as having importance in line with the Torah, Christian saw it as the new covenant to renew the old, failed one. Modern scholarship questions this connection, because the commemoration of the coming of Torah at Pentecost may have been a later rabbinic tradition. While Luke does use symbolism from Moses’ time on Sinai (fire, sound, speech), the dating of the Spirit to Pentecost may have been Luke’s own staging.
• Important to Luke is the idea of the inbreaking of heaven into the world. The Holy Spirit is described as like wind (a nod to Genesis 1:2b, “…while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters,” “wind” here can also be translated “spirit” or “mighty wind”) and like fire (a nod to Exodus 3:2, “Then an angel of the Lord appeared to [Moses] in a flame of fire out of a bush…” and to Psalm 104:4, “you make the winds your messengers, fire and flame your ministers.”) The Spirit’s presence among the community was not subtle, it could not be missed.
• “Tongues of fire” (glossai hosei pyros) rested on each of the apostles, empowering them to be able to speak and be understood by a wide audience. Dr. Wall says that at this point it was not yet as much about the message as it was about the bold proclamation of that message. J. Levison argues that “fire” (pyr) was a frequent image as a metaphor for prophetic inspiration. Luke’s use of tongues of fire implied both the power to speak the word of God effectively and to think about God in new ways. By this, to be “filled with the Holy Spirit” is not just to preach persuasively. It also means to be able to interpret scripture in new and inspired ways.
• While the Spirit is concentrated here on the apostles, it belongs not to an enlightened few but to the whole people of God (as we will see develop throughout Acts).
• A crowd of “devout Jews” (v. 5) was amazed to see Galileans (who apparently were not known for their linguistic talents) speaking of God’s deeds of power. This is the first of over fifty references to “Jews” in Acts. The church’s proclamation of the power of God began with faithful Jews.
• Speeches make up almost a third of the book of Acts. The speeches are “missionary speeches,” they are the response to Jesus’ commission in Acts 1:8 to be Jesus’ “witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” While the speeches reflect Luke’s use of reliable sources, they are his own compositions. Readers then should not assume they are transcribed verbatim, but that the speeches function as an element in the narrative and serve a purpose.
• The word used for “listen” in v. 14 is an interesting one. It is enotizomai, which literally translates “let me place it [the word of God] into your ears.” It echoes Luke 4:21, when Jesus told an audience in Nazareth that “today” the words from Isaiah about bringing good news to the poor would “be fulfilled in your hearing,” literally among those “with ears” (en osin).
• Peter quoted the Greek translation of Joel 3:1-5. In the Greek translation, the Hebrew word for God was translated as kyrios, “Lord,” allowing Peter to say that this “Lord” is the risen Jesus.
• Peter made other adjustments to Joel. “After these things” (Joel 3:1) becomes “in the last days” (Acts 2:17). With this change, Peter is locating the outpouring of the Spirit as bringing in a new era of salvation history, that of the “last days.” Peter also added “God declares,” which gives the words added intensity and emphasis.
• Typically in this time, the last phrase heard was the most important. So is it in Peter’s quoting of Joel. “Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Acts 2:21) is a summary of the purpose of the first half of Acts.
Works Sourced:
Wall, Robert W. “The Acts of the Apostles.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume X. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2002.
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