Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Acts 3:8

ἐξαλλόμενος, leaping up. Thus manifesting his faith by his instant obedience, though his limbs must have shrivelled with forty years’ want of use.

περιεπάτει. Every word seems to express the man’s joy. He kept walking is the sense of this imperfect.

εἰσῆλθεν, he went in. As we see afterwards, he did not want to leave his benefactors. Beside this, it was the best use he could make of his new powers, to go to the Temple with the other worshippers. Of this conduct Chrysostom says, διὰ τοῦ μετὰ τὸ ἅλλεσθαι αἰνεῖς τὸν θεόν, οὐκ ἐκείνους θαυμάζων�' ἐκείνων ἐνεργήσαντα οὕτως εὐχάριστος ἦν ὁ�.

ἁλλόμενος. He cannot put his strength sufficiently to exercise by the calm pace of those who have been walking all their lives. His exultant ‘leaping’ was a part of his ‘praising God.’

We can hardly fail to see, if we compare the narrative of this miracle with that of the similar one wrought at Lystra by St Paul (14), to which we have already referred, that St Luke has used faithfully the materials with which he was furnished by ‘eye-witnesses,’ and has given the accounts as he received them without any colouring of his own. In this chapter we have a description such as a painter would desire; the scene is brought vividly before us, and all the characters are in lively action. It is just such an account as we find in St Mark’s Gospel of the cure of the demoniac child (Mark 9:14-27), and both are quite in accord with all that we know of St Peter’s mode of speaking, and from St Peter it is most probable that the narrative in this chapter (like the substance of the Second Gospel) is derived. On the contrary, the story of the cure wrought at Lystra by St Paul is told in the fewest possible words and with no touch of the graphic power of which this description is so full. The difference bespeaks the faithfulness of the writer of the Acts, and shews us that he has left the narratives as they came to his hand, without any attempt to stamp on them an individuality of his own.

Continues after advertising

BibliaPlus

Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Acts 3:8

Old Testament

New Testament