Acts 4:2

διαπονούμενοι. The word is found in LXX. (Ecclesiastes 10:9) of the pain and risk which a man incurs in removing stones. Here the pain is mental, they were sorely grieved. It is used (Acts 16:18) of St Paul’s feeling when the ‘damsel possessed with a spirit of divination’ cried after him at Philippi.

Chrysostom’s words on this sentence are: διεπονοῦντο οὐ μόνον ὅτι ἐδίδασκον, ἀλλ' ὅτι οὐκ αὐτὸν μόνον ἔλεγον ἐγηγέρθαι, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἡμᾶς δι' ἐκεῖνον�. οὔτως ἰσχυρὰ ἐγένετο ἡ�.

διδάσκειν. The scribes and priests would have made teaching a monopoly of their own, and would be the more vexed because these new teachers were ἄνθρωποι�. See Acts 4:13.

καταγγέλλειν ἐν τῷ Ἰ. κ.τ.λ. Bender, and published in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. This would rouse the feelings of the Sadducees. The resurrection is said to be in Jesus, because His resurrection was a pledge that all should rise. ‘In Christ all shall be made alive’ (1 Corinthians 15:22). The language of the Apostles in the Acts does not dwell on this as a consequence of the resurrection of Jesus, for the Apostles set forth at first what was historical rather than doctrinal teaching. Their language was a proclamation, not an argument.

τὴν�, the resurrection from the dead. Here this expression seems to mean exactly the same as ἀνάστασις νεκρῶν in Acts 24:21, viz. the general resurrection. The latter expression is the more common, being found nine or ten times (in Acts 24:15 modern editors omit νεκρῶν), and means most frequently the general resurrection, though it is applied to Christ’s resurrection in Acts 26:23; Romans 1:4; while in 1 Corinthians 15:21 it signifies the general resurrection implied in the particular raising up of Jesus.

ἡ� (Matthew 22:31; 1 Corinthians 15:42) of the general resurrection; and the form in this verse (ἡ�) is found again in Luke 20:35, there, as here, signifying the resurrection of all men. Like this is ἡ ἐξανάστασις ἡ ἐκ νεκρῶν of Philippians 3:11. And we have once (1 Peter 1:3) ἀνάστασις Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐκ νεκρῶν.

When the verb (ἐγείρω, ἀνίστημι, &c.) is used, the preposition which most usually follows it is ἐκ; commonly ἐκ νεκρῶν, now and then ἐκ τῶν νεκρῶν. In St Matthew we have, three times, ἀπὸ τῶν νεκρῶν (Matthew 14:2; Matthew 27:64; Matthew 28:7).

It appears that the preposition most commonly employed after the verb was also put after the derived noun (as 1 Peter 1:3); and once or twice the preposition was used, as here, in the adjectival form (ἡ ἐκ νεκρῶν) appended to the noun.

Those sentences where the verb is used refer nearly always to Christ’s coming up from among the dead, or to some particular rising, like that of Lazarus or John the Baptist; but once in Mark 12:25 there is a wider sense. Where the noun is found the phrase is nearly always of the general resurrection, though the examples given above shew that it is sometimes restricted to our Lord’s rising again.