Acts 1:10

ἀτενίζοντες ἦσαν : this periphrasis of ἦν or ἦσαν with a present or perfect participle is very frequently found in St. Luke's writings (Friedrich, pp. 12 and 89, and compare the list in Simcox, u. s., pp. 130 134). The verb is peculiar to St. Luke and St. Paul, and is found ten times in Acts, twice in St. Luke's Gospel, and twice in 2 Cor.; it denotes a fixed, steadfast, protracted gaze: “and while they were looking steadfastly into heaven as he went,” R.V., thus expressing more clearly the longing gaze of the disciples watching the Lord as He was going (πορευομένου αὐτοῦ, the present participle denoting that the cloud was still visible for a considerable time), as if carrying their eyes and hearts with Him to heaven: “Ipse enim est amor noster; ubi autem amor, ibi est oculus et cor” (Corn, à Lapide). The word is also found in LXX 1Es 6:28 and 3Ma 2:26 (cf. Aquila, Job 7:8), and also in Josephus, B. J., v., 12, 3, and Polybius. Ramsay, St. Paul, 38, 39, gives a most valuable account of the use of the word in St. Luke, and concludes that the action implied by it is quite inconsistent with weakness of vision, and that the theory which makes Paul a permanent sufferer in the eyes, as if he could not distinctly see the persons near him, is hopelessly at variance with St. Luke; cf. too the meaning of the word as used by St. Paul himself in 2 Corinthians 3:7; 2 Corinthians 3:13, where not weak but strong sight is implied in the word. The verb thus common in St. Luke is frequently employed by medical writers to denote a peculiar fixed look (Zahn); so in Luke 22:56, where it is used for the servant-maid's earnest gaze at St. Peter, a gaze not mentioned at all by St. Matthew, and expressed by a different word in St. Mark 14:67; Hobart, Medical Language of St. Luke, p. 76. In LXX, as above, it is employed in a secondary sense, but by Aquila, u. s., in its primary meaning of gazing, beholding. καὶ ἰδοὺ : καὶ at the commencement of the apodosis is explained as Hebraistic, but instances are not wanting in classical Greek; cf. Blass, Grammatik des N. G., p. 257, and see also Simcox, ubi supra, p. 160 ff. For the formula καὶ ἰδοὺ cf. the Hebrew וְהִנֵּה, and on St. Luke's employment of it in sudden interpositions, see Hort, Ecclesia, p. 179. The use of καί (which in the most Hebraic books of the N.T. is employed much more extensively than in classical Greek) is most frequent in Luke, who also uses more frequently than other writers the formula καὶ ἰδού to introduce an apodosis; cf. Friedrich, ubi supra, p. 33. παρειστήκεισαν αὐτοῖς : in the appearance of angels which St. Luke often narrates there is a striking similarity between the phraseology of his Gospel and the Acts; cf. with the present passage Acts 10:30; Acts 12:7, and Luke 24:4; Luke 2:9. The description in the angels' disappearances is not so similar, cf. Acts 10:7 and Luke 2:15, but it must be remembered that there is only one other passage in which the departure of the angels is mentioned, Revelation 16:2; Friedrich, ubi supra, pp. 45, 52, and Zeller, Acts ii., p. 224 (E. T.). For the verb cf. Luke 1:19; Luke 19:24; Acts 23:2; Acts 23:4, and especially Acts 27:23. ἐν ἐσθῆτι λευκῇ : in R.V. in the plural, see critical notes and also Deissmann, Neue Bibelstudien, p. 90.