Acts 2:1

Descent of the Holy Ghost on the Day of Pentecost, 1-4.

Acts 2:1. And when the day of Pentecost was fully come. The exact time when the great miracle took place is specified. The Holy Ghost fell on the apostles and their company in the course of the day of the feast of Pentecost. The word ‘Pentecost,' literally ‘the Fiftieth,' is a substantive, and was used by the Hellenistic Jews to denote the feast of Weeks and the feast of Harvest (Deuteronomy 16:10; Exodus 23:17). The assertion that the feast of Harvest was also considered in Israel as the anniversary of the giving of the law from Sinai, appears to be merely a late rabbinical tradition; it is never once noticed by Josephus or Philo. This feast lasted only one day, and was considered one of the three great annual festivals of Israel. Wordsworth gives the following calculation, according in all respects with the most ancient tradition, which speaks of the descent of the Holy Spirit as happening on a Sunday. This time was no doubt selected, as being the first opportunity after the resurrection, of appealing with power to a great concourse of the people assembled from far. Multitudes of the Jews from all parts of Palestine, and also from other countries, were in the habit of attending these great annual festivals:

Thursday, 14th day of the month Nisan, Christ institutes the Holy Eucharist.

Friday, 15th day of Nisan, He is crucified.

Saturday, 16th day of Nisan, He rests in the grave.

Sunday, 17th day of Nisan, He rises from the dead.

From the end of Saturday the 16th day of Nisan forty-nine days are counted, and fiftieth, or feast of Pentecost, falls on a Sunday.

They were all together. ‘ All' here certainly includes more than the twelve apostles, as when Peter (Acts 2:14), standing up with the eleven, evidently speaks of many others on whom the Spirit had fallen. Very possibly ‘all' refers to the ‘hundred and twenty mentioned in chap. Acts 1:15. Many modern commentators prefer to understand from this expression a still larger company, composed of all believers then assembled in Jerusalem. Augustine and Chrysostom assume that the assembly on whom the Spirit fell was composed of the ‘hundred and twenty' only.

Together. ‘Perhaps because it was the Lord's day' (Lightfoot quoted by Wordsworth).

In one place. Certainly not in a chamber of the temple, as has been suggested, as such a gathering would not have been, under any circumstances, permitted by the Jewish priests or rulers, who were generally hostile to the cause of Jesus. If the number was limited to the ‘hundred and twenty,' it was not improbably a private dwelling, and the same as that which previously afforded a place of meeting to the disciples on the solemn occasion of the election of Matthias into the number of the Twelve.

And suddenly. Although the disciples of Jesus believed that a crisis in their history was at hand, and that in some way or other the promise of their Master was very soon to be fulfilled, still the extraordinary event related in this and the following verses came upon them apparently without any previous intimation suddenly, unexpectedly.