Acts 4:1

λαλούντων δὲ αὐτῶν : the speech was interrupted, as the present participle indicates, and we cannot treat it as if we had received it in full. It is no doubt possible to infer from αὐτῶν that St. John also addressed the people. ἐπέστησαν αὐτοῖς : commonly used with the notion of coming upon one suddenly, so of the coming of an angel, Acts 12:7; Acts 23:11; Luke 2:9; Luke 24:4, sometimes too as implying a hostile purpose, cf. Acts 6:12; Acts 17:5, and St. Luke (Acts 10:40), Acts 20:1. For its use in the LXX cf. Wis 6:5; Wis 6:8; Wis 19:1. οἱ ἱερεῖς : “the priests,” so A. and R.V., but the latter, margin, “the chief priests,” see critical note. ἀρχιερεῖς would comprise probably the members of the privileged high-priestly families in which the high-priesthood was vested (Schürer, Jewish People, div. ii., vol. i., pp. 203 206, E.T.), Jos., B. J., vi., 2, 2. That the members of these families occupied a distinguished position we know (cf. Acts 4:6), and there is nothing improbable in the supposition that the description ἀρχιερεῖς would include them as well as the ex-high-priests, and the one actually in office; this seems justified from the words of Josephus in the passage referred to above (Derenbourg, Histoire de la Palestine, p. 231). ὁ στρατηγὸς τοῦ ἱεροῦ : the captain of the Temple (known chiefly in Jewish writings as “the man of the Temple Mount”). He had the chief superintendence of the Levites and priests who were on guard in and around the Temple, and under him were στρατηγοί, who were also captains of the Temple police, although subordinate to the στρατηγός as their head. The στρατ. τοῦ ἱεροῦ was not only a priest, but second in dignity to the high-priest himself (Schürer, u. s., pp. 258, 259, 267, and Edersheim, u. s., and History of the Jewish Nation, p. 139), Acts 5:24; Acts 5:26, Jos., Ant., xx., 6, 2, B. J., vi, 5, 3. For the use of the term in the LXX, see Schürer, u. s., p. 258. In 2MMalachi 3:4 the “governor of the Temple” is identified by some with the officer here and in Acts 5:24, but see Rawlinson's note in loco in Speaker's Commentary. καὶ οἱ Σαδδουκαῖοι : at this time, as Josephus informs us, however strange it may appear, the high-priestly families belonged to the Sadducean party. Not that the Sadducees are to be identified entirely with the party of the priests, since the Pharisees were by no means hostile to the priests as such, nor the priests to the Pharisees. But the Sadducees were the aristocrats, and to the aristocratic priests, who occupied influential civil positions, the Pharisees were bitterly opposed. Jos., Ant., xvii., 10, 6, xviii., 1, 4, xx., 9, 1. Schürer, u. s., div. ii., vol. ii., pp. 29 43, and div. ii., vol. i., p. 178 ff. The words οἱ Σαδδ. and ἡ οὖσα αἴρεσις τῶν Σ., Acts 4:17, are referred by Hilgenfeld to his “author to Theophilus,” as also the reference to the preaching of the Resurrection as the cause of the sore trouble to the Sadducees; but the mention of the Sadducees at least shows (as Weizsäcker and Holtzmann admit) that the author of Acts had correct information of the state of parties in Jerusalem: “The Sadducees were at the helm, and the office of the high-priest was in Sadducean hands, and the Sadducees predominated in the high-priestly families” (Weizsäcker, Apostolic Age, i., 61, E.T.).