Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Acts 10:14

Acts 10:14. Not so, Lord. This expostulation, so to speak, addressed by St. Peter to the Deity, is quite according to the analogy of Divine visions recorded in Scripture (comp. especially St. Paul's expostulation in the Temple (Acts 22:19), when he is required to quit Jerusalem).

I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean. St. Peter's own phrase, in the account of the transaction, given afterwards at Jerusalem, is, ‘Nothing common or unclean hath at any time entered into my mouth.' St. Peter had always lived as a conscientious and scrupulous Jew. The command was a contradiction to the whole previous tenor of his lite. No greater shock to this Hebrew apostle can be imagined than to be told to assuage his hunger by eating swine's flesh or foul reptiles. It is recorded in the Second Book of Maccabees (2Ma 6:18, 2Ma 7:1) that Hebrews submitted to death that they might escape such an indignity. And this distinction between clean and unclean beasts was correlative with, and representative of, the Jewish distinction between the Hebrew nation and all other nations. The two prejudices (if this term may be applied to what rested, in a great degree, on Divine appointment) might be expected to collapse together. At present, indeed, Peter was in a state of utter wonder and perplexity. A word, however, had been spoken to him, which, in the progress of subsequent instruction, was to become a revelation.

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Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Acts 10:14

Old Testament

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