Acts 3:19-21

Repent ye therefore, &c.— Dr. Benson paraphrases these verses thus: "As there is great ground for hope and encouragement, let me intreat of you to repent, and immediately accept of Jesus as the Messiah; that your sins may be blotted out, and the happy and refreshing times may come upon you from the presence of the Lord. I speak not [merely] concerning the safety and consolation which the embracing Christianitywill at present afford you; but [also] of the approach of that glorious time, when God shall send again this same Jesus, who is appointed beforehand to be the judge of the world, and your Saviour, if you believe and obey him. I know you expect a temporal Messiah, to reign in this very age among you here upon earth, and to free you from your present subjection to the Romans; but in vain do you expect it: for the heavens have received him, and there he must continue till the grand time of the restoration of all things. Nor do I speak of things wholly new and unheard of; for these things run through the prophets in general, from the beginning of the Mosaic dispensation, unto the sealing up of prophesy at the death of Malachi." The phrase may be blotted out, Acts 3:19 alludes to the erasing of any thing which is committed to writing. Instead of when the times of refreshing shall come, the Greek should be rendered, according to the above paraphrase, that seasons of refreshment may come. As calamities are compared in scripture to drought and excessive heat; so likewise deliverance from them is represented under the image of a very cool and refreshing breeze. The word αποκαταστασις, rendered restitution, may be well and properly explained of regulating the present disorders in the moral world, and the seeming inequalities of providential dispensations. Since the world began, is in the original, απ αιωνος, that is, from the beginning, of what they usually called the age then present, that is, of the Jewish dispensation: in opposition to which the kingdom of Christ was called αιων μελλων, the age to come. See on 2 Timothy 4:16. To confirm this, it may be observed, that he here begins with Moses, and says nothing of the patriarchs before Moses, particularly nothing of Abraham; but when the writers of the New Testament run back as high as Abraham, the phrase then is προ χρονων αιωνιων, before the times under the law.