Acts 1:13

And when they were come in i.e. into the city, from the open country where the Ascension had taken place.

they went up into an[the] upper room Probably the upper room which has been mentioned before (Mark 14:15; Luke 22:12) as used by our Lord and His disciples for the passover feast. The Greek word in the Gospels is not the same as here, but in both cases it is evident that it was some room which could be spared by the occupiers and which was let or lent to the Galilæan band and their followers. The next words indicate die temporary occupancy, and would be better rendered where they were abiding, namely Peter, &c. The eleven were the tenants of the upper room, to which the other disciples resorted for conference and communion.

Peter, &c. The names of the Apostles are again given, though they had been recorded for Theophilus in "the former treatise" (Luke 6:14-16), perhaps because it seemed fitting that the names of those who are now to be the leaders of the new teaching should be recited at the outset, that each one may be known to have taken his share in the labour, though it will not fall within the plan of the writer to give a notice of their several works; and secondly, as all the twelve had fled before the Crucifixion, this enumeration of them as again at their post, may shew that there had been in all of them, except Judas, only weakness of the flesh, and not unwillingness of the spirit.

It may be noticed that, whereas in the list of Apostles given in St Luke's Gospel the name of Andrew stands second in the first group of four and next after Peter, in this repeated list Andrew is placed fourth. The history gives no reason for this change, but we see in the Gospels, when important events occurred in Christ's ministry, such as the raising of the daughter of Jaïrus, the Transfiguration, and the Agony in Gethsemane, that the three disciples chosen to be present with Jesus are Peter, James and John, but not Andrew. Whatever may have been the reason for such an omission, the fact may in some degree explain the altered position of Andrew's name in the list of the twelve. It appears no more in Holy Writ.

The order of the next group of four differs from their arrangement in the Gospel, but as none of them are mentioned after this verse there is nothing to explain the variation in order. In the next group the A. V. is inconsistent in rendering James the sonof Alphæus, and afterwards a like construction by Judas the brotherof James. It is more common to find this dependent genitive in descriptions of a son, though the relationship of brother to brother is found so indicated. Judas is called the brotherof James here because it is assumed that he is the same person as the author of the Epistle of St Jude, who (Judges 1) calls himself brother of James. But as it is not certain that the writer of that Epistle was one of the twelve, it is better to render the two identical constructions standing so close together in the same way, and so to read Judas the son of James. James in that case would be the name of some otherwise unknown person, but it was a very common name among the Jews.

Simon Zelotes called Simon the Canaanite(Matthew 10:4; Mark 3:18). The last-named title is a corruption of an Aramaic word of like meaning with the Greek Zelotes, and signifying Zealot, a name applied in our Lord's time to those Jews who were most strict in their observance of the Mosaic ritual. Of this Simon we have no further mention in Scripture history.