Acts 11:12

Acts 11:12. The Spirit bade me go with them (see note on Acts 10:19-20). The words ‘get thee down,' which we find in the direct narrative, are omitted here. This is consistent. St. Peter had said nothing of having gone up to the house-top.

Moreover these six brethren accompanied me. Here suddenly we learn for the first time two facts respecting these his companions and witnesses, first, that ‘they of the circumcision,' who accompanied him from Joppa to Cæsarea (Acts 10:23; Acts 10:45), were six in number; and secondly, that they had accompanied him also to Jerusalem. This second fact has extreme significance, and shows how deep an impression had been made by the recent events at Caesarea and Joppa, and how careful and deliberate was the course adopted by St. Peter, in order to bring conviction home to his brother apostles and the Christians at Jerusalem generally. The phrase ‘ these six brethren,' marking the vividness of his appeal to them at the moment of speaking, should not be unobserved (comp. Acts 20:34).

We entered into the man's house. He condenses into a very short space the account of the journey and the reception, which, in the other narrative, had been given at some length. Another point, too, we should not fail to remark. St. Peter simply terms Cornelius ‘the man.' There would have been nothing persuasive in his dwelling on the military rank of Cornelius, or his position at Caesarea, or on the honourable character of the corps to which he belonged. These particulars would have been positively distasteful to his Jewish listeners. Even as regards the personal character of Cornelius, his habit of prayer, his generous almsgiving, his faithful discharge of domestic duty, it would not have been politic in Peter to have laid stress on these points before an audience full of prejudice against the Heathen, and reluctant to recognise the existence of true religion except under Hebrew conditions; nor were these the circumstances which had brought Peter to his present conviction. On the other hand, there was much point in his saying, however briefly, that he ‘ entered into the man's house.' This was the very ground of the censure under which Peter had fallen (see Acts 11:3).