Acts 3:12

This address of St. Peter divides itself into two parts, 12 16, 17 26, and although it covers much of the same ground as in chap. 2, there is no need to regard it with Overbeck and Holtzmann as unhistorical: see Blass, in loco, and Feine; the latter points out that St. Peter would naturally, as in chap. 3, take the incident before him as his text, place it in its right light, and draw from it an appeal to repentance and conversion. But whilst we may grant the common and identical aim of the two discourses, to proclaim the Messiahship of Jesus before the Jews, none can fail to see that in chap. 3 the Messianic idea becomes richer and fuller. Jesus is the prophet greater than Moses: Jesus is the fulfilment of the Abrahamic covenant, through which the blessing of Abraham is to extend to all the earth, Matthew 8:11. And more than this: St. Peter has learnt to see in the despised Nazarene not only the suffering servant of Jehovah (παῖς), but in the servant the King, and in the seed of David the Prince of Life. And in the light of that revelation the future opens out more clearly before him, and he becomes the first prophet in the Messianic age the spiritual presence which the believers now enjoyed, and by which those mighty deeds are wrought, is only a foretaste of a more visible and glorious Presence, when the Messiah should return in His glory; and for that return repentance and remission of sins must prepare the way (see Briggs, Messiah of the Apostles, pp. 31, 32). On St. Peter's discourses see additional note at end of chapter. ἀπεκρίνατο : cf. Luke 13:14; Luke 14:3, answered, i.e., to their looks of astonishment and inquiry. The middle voice as here, which would be the classical usuage, is seldom found in the N.T., but generally the passive aorist, ἀπεκρίθη, and so in the LXX. “In Biblical Greek the middle voice is dying, in modern Greek it is dead,” Plummer. Thus in modern Greek, ὑποκρίνομαι in the passive = to answer, Kennedy, Sources of N. T. Greek, p. 155, and Blass, Grammatik des N. G., p. 44. ὡς πεποιηκόσιν τοῦ περιπατεῖν : this use of the infinitive with the genitive of the article, instead of the simple infinitive with or without ὥστε, to express a purpose, or result as here: “non de consilio sed de eventu” (Blass), may be illustrated from the LXX, Genesis 37:18; Genesis 37:1 Chron. 44:6, Isaiah 5:6. εὐσεβείᾳ : “godliness,” R.V., as always elsewhere in A.V., i.e., by our piety towards God, as always in the Bible, although εὐσέβεια may be used like the Latin pietas of piety towards parents or others, as well as of piety towards God. It is frequently used in the LXX of reverence towards God, εἰς, so too in Josephus, πρὸς τὸν Θεόν, cf. Proverbs 1:7; Proverbs 13:11; Isaiah 11:2, Wis 10:12, and often in 4 Macc. In Trench, N. T. Synonyms, ii., p. 196, and Grimm-Thayer, sub v. In the N.T. the word is used, in addition to its use here, by St. Paul ten times in the Pastoral Epistles, and it is found no less than four times in 2 Peter, but nowhere else. St. Chrysostom, Hom. ix., comments: “Do you see how clear of all ambition he is, and how he repels the honour paid to him?” so too Joseph: Do not interpretations belong to God?