Acts 4:10

St. Peter does not hesitate to refer his judges to the same passage of Scripture which a few short weeks before Jesus of Nazareth had quoted to a deputation of the Sanhedrim. In that case too the question put to Jesus had been as to the authority by which He acted, Matthew 21:42; Mark 12:10; Luke 21:17. It is possible that the words from Psalms 118:22 were already regarded as Messianic, from the fact that the people had welcomed Jesus at His public entry into Jerusalem with part of a verse of the same Psalm, Acts 4:26, Edersheim, Jesus the Messiah, ii., 368. Moreover, the passage, Isaiah 28:16, which forms the connecting link between the Psalm and St. Peter's words, both here and in his First Epistle (1 Peter 2:7, cf. Romans 9:33; Romans 10:11), was interpreted as Messianic, apparently by the Targums, and undoubtedly by Rashi in his Commentary, cf. also Wetstein on Matthew 21:42; Edersheim, u. s., ii., 725. In the original meaning of the Psalm Israel is the stone rejected by the builders, i.e., by the heathen, the builders of this world's empires, or the expression may refer to those in Israel who despised the small beginnings of a dawning new era (Delitzsch); but however this may be, in the N.T. the builders are the heads and representatives of Israel, as is evident from our Lord's use of the verse, and also by St. Peter's words here, “ you the builders,” R.V. But that which the Psalmist had spoken of the second Temple, that which was a parable of the history of Israel, had its complete and ideal fulfilment in Him Who, despised and rejected of men, had become the chief corner-stone of a spiritual Temple, in whom both Jew and Gentile were made one (1 Corinthians 3:11; Ephesians 2:20). ἐσταυρώσατε : mentioned not merely to remind them of their fault, cf. Acts 2:36, but perhaps also that they might understand how vain it was to fight against God (Calvin). ἐν τούτῳ : “in him,” or “in this name” R. V. margin. For the former Wendt decides, although in the previous verse he takes ἐν τίνι as neuter; so too Page and Holtzmann. On the other hand Rendall (so De Wette, Weiss) adopts the latter rendering, while admitting that the reference to Jesus Himself is quite possible, as in Acts 4:12. ἐνώπ. ὑμῶν : Hebraism, characteristic of St. Luke in his Gospel and in the Acts. The expression is never used in Matthew and Mark, and only once in John, John 20:30, but thirty-one times in the Hebraistic Apocalypse frequent in LXX, but not found in classical or Hellenistic Greek, although τὰ ἐνώπια in Homer, Blass, in loco, and Grammatik des N. G., p. 125. The word is also found on papyri twice, so Deissmann, Neue Bibelstudien, p. 40.