Acts 2:31

προϊδών, cf. Galatians 3:8. The word ascribes prophetic consciousness to David in the composition of the Psalm, but, as we learn from St. Peter himself, that prophetic consciousness did not involve a distinct knowledge of the events foretold (1 Peter 1:10-12); that which the Holy Ghost presignified was only in part clear to the prophets, both as to the date of fulfilment and also as to historical shaping (Schmid, Biblische Theol. des N. T., p. 395, and Alford, in loco). ὅτι : introducing the words which follow as a fuller explanation, or simply as expressing a well-known fact. ἐγκατελείφθη … εἶδεν : aorists, not futures, because from St. Peter's standpoint the prophecy had been already fulfilled (Felten, Wendt). With this verse we naturally compare the mention of Christ's descent into Hades and His agency in the realms of the dead in St. Peter's First Epistle, Acts 3:19 (cf. Philippians 2:10; Ephesians 4:9; Romans 10:7; Zahn, Das Apost. Symbolum, pp. 71 74; but see also Schmid, ubi supra, p. 414). Thus while the words bore, as we have seen, a primary and lower reference to David himself, St. Peter was led by the Holy Ghost to see their higher and grander fulfilment in Christ. εἰς ᾅδου : on the construction see above on Acts 2:27, and on the Jewish view of Sheol or Hades in the time of our Lord as an intermediate state, see Charles, Book of Enoch, p. 168 and p. 94, and compare also the interesting although indirect parallel to 1 Peter 3:19, which he finds in The Book of the Secrets of Enoch, p. 45. ff.; Weber, Jüdische Theologie, pp. 163, 341.