Acts 2:2

ἄφνω : only in Acts, here, and in Acts 16:26; Acts 28:6; Klostermann's Vindiciæ Lucanæ, p. 55; several times in LXX, but also in classical Greek in Thuc., Dem., Eur. ἦχος ὥσπερ φερομ. πν. βιαίας, lit [115], “a sound as if a violent gust were being borne along”. St. Chrysostom rightly emphasises the ὡς, so that the sound is not that of wind, but as of the rushing of a mighty wind (so too the tongues are not of fire, but as of fire). The words describe not a natural but a supernatural phenomenon, as Wendt pointedly admits. Wind was often used as a symbol of the divine Presence, 2 Samuel 5:24; Psalms 104:3; 1 Kings 19:11; Ezekiel 43:2, etc.; cf. Josephus, Ant., iii., 5, 2; vii., 4; here it is used of the mighty power of the Spirit which nothing could resist. St. Luke alone of the N.T. writers uses ἦχος Hebrews 12:19 being a quotation, and it is perhaps worth noting that the word is employed in medical writers, and by one of them, Aretæus, of the noise of the sea (cf. ἤχους θαλάσσης, Luke 21:25). ὅλον τὸν οἶκον. If the Temple were meant, as Holtzmann and Zöckler think, it would have been specified, Acts 3:2; Acts 3:11; Acts 5:21.

[115] literal, literally.