Acts 3:18

δὲ : a further mitigation; whilst they were acting in their ignorance, God was working out His unerring counsel and will. πάντων τῶν προφητῶν : not to be explained by simply calling it hyperbolic. The prophets are spoken of collectively, because the Messianic redemption to which they all looked forward was to be accomplished through the death of Christ, cf. Acts 10:43. The view here taken by St. Peter is in striking harmony with his first Epistle, 1 Peter 1:11, and 1 Peter 2:22-25. παθεῖν τὸν Χ. αὐτοῦ, R.V., “his Christ,” cf. Luke 17:25; Luke 24:26. The phrase, which (W.H [144]) is undoubtedly correct, is found in Psalms 2:2, from which St. Peter quotes in Acts 4:26, and the same expression is used twice in the Apocalypse, but nowhere else, in the N.T.; Revelation 11:15; Revelation 12:10 (cf. also Luke 2:26; Luke 9:20). See also the striking passage in Psalms of Solomon, Acts 18:6 (and Acts 3:8), ἐν ἀνάξει Χριστοῦ αὐτοῦ, and Ryle and James on Psalm 17:36. The paradox that the suffering Messiah was also the Messiah of Jehovah, His Anointed, which the Jews could not understand (hence their ἄγνοια), was solved for St. Peter in the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus. On the suffering Messiah, see note Acts 26:23. ἐπλήρωσεν οὕτω : “He thus fulfilled,” i.e., in the way described, Acts 3:14-15. On πληρόω, see Acts 1:16. “In the gardens of the Carthusian Convent … near Dijon … is a beautiful monument.… It consists of a group of Prophets and Kings from the O.T., each holding in his hand a scroll of mourning from his writings each with his own individual costume and gesture and look, each distinguished from each by the most marked peculiarities of age and character, absorbed in the thoughts of his own time and country. But above these figures is a circle of angels, as like each to each as the human figures are unlike. They, too, as each overhangs and overlooks the Prophet below him, are saddened with grief. But their expression of sorrow is far deeper and more intense than that of the Prophets, whose words they read. They see something in the Prophetic sorrow which the Prophets themselves see not: they are lost in the contemplation of the Divine Passion, of which the ancient saints below them are but the unconscious and indirect exponents:” Stanley's Jewish Church, pref. to vol. ii.

[144] Westcott and Hort's The New Testament in Greek: Critical Text and Notes.