Acts 2:33 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Acts 2:33
Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear.
to look at (literally or figuratively) · verb — present active indicative, 2nd person plural
and
καὶkai
G2532
and · conjunction
hear
ἀκούετε.akouete
G191
to hear (in various senses) · verb — present active indicative, 2nd person plural
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Acts 1:4 And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father,…
Acts 5:31 Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.
Acts 2:17 And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall p…
John 14:26 But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to you…
John 16:7-15 Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but i…
1 Peter 3:22 Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.
Matthew 28:18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
Mark 16:19 So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Acts 2:14-36
We have here the first-fruits of the Spirit in the sermon which Peter preached immediately, directed, not to those of other nations in a strange language (we are not told what answer he gave to those that were amazed, and said, What meaneth this?) but to the Jews in the vulgar language, even to those that mocked; for he begins with the notice of that (Act 2:15), and addresses his discourse (Act 2:14) to the men of Judea and the inhabitants of Jerusalem; but we have reason enough to think that the other disciples continued to speak to those who understood them (and therefore flocked about them), in the languages of their respective countries, the wonderful works of God. And it was not by Pete…
David . . . is . . . dead and buried, &c.--Peter, full of the Holy Ghost, sees in this sixteenth Psalm, one Holy Man, whose life of high devotedness and lofty spirituality is crowned with the assurance, that though He taste of death, He shall rise again without seeing corruption, and be admitted to the bliss of God's immediate presence. Now as this was palpably untrue of David, it could be meant only of One other, even of Him whom David was taught to expect as the final Occupant of the throne of Israel. (Those, therefore, and they are many, who take David himself to be the subject of this Psalm, and the words quoted to refer to Christ only in a more eminent sense, nullify the whole argument…
By the right hand of God exalted - Raised by omnipotence to the highest dignity in the realms of glory, to sit at the right hand of God, and administer the laws of both worlds.
The promise of the Holy Ghost - This was the promise that he had made to them a little before he suffered, as may be seen in Joh 14:16, etc., Joh 16:7, etc., and after he had risen from the dead. Luk 24:49, and which as the apostle says was now shed forth.
John Gill on Acts 2:33
The Church Fathers
Exalted therefore by the right hand of God, because the Psalm had said: "Because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved." And having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He poured out this, which you both see and hear. You see the fiery tongues, you hear in our speech. But that which He says, that He received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father and poured it out, shows both natures of the same Christ, because He received as man, and poured out as God.
Who then was exalted? The lowly or the most high? And what is the lowly if it be not the human? And what is the most high save the divine? But God being most high needs no exaltation, and so the apostle says that the human is exalted, exalted that is in being "made both Lord and Christ." Therefore the apostle does not mean by this term "he made" the everlasting existence of the Lord but the change of the lowly to the exalted that took place on the right hand of God. By this word he declares the mystery of religion, for when he says "by the right hand of God exalted" he plainly reveals the ineffable economy of the mystery that the right hand of God, which created all things, which is the Lord by whom all things were made and without whom nothing consists of things that were made, through the union lifted up to its own exaltation the manhood united to it.
And having received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father, He has poured out this which you see and hear. In Greek it is translated thus: He has poured out this gift which you now see and hear. Indeed, concerning Jesus, whom the Jews crucified and whom God raised, He taught that He is the Christ; but now gradually leading the listeners to higher belief, He signifies that this is the true God, by confirming that He has poured out the gift of the Holy Spirit, which any wise person recognizes to be of divine power alone. And fittingly, He used the same word 'pouring,' which the prophetic statement previously mentioned has the Lord say, to teach them from this that it is the same Lord Jesus Christ who both before taking flesh was accustomed to speaking in the prophets; who disposed the future ages according to His will; who gave signs and wonders in the heaven and on earth; who would save all invoking His name, and fulfill the other things described in prophetic discourse as the Son of God and true God.
Dictionary and topics
Apostle — A person sent by another; a messenger; envoy. This word is once used as a descriptive designation of Jesus Christ, the Sent of the Father (Heb. 3:1; John 20:21). It is, however, generally used as…
Covenant — A contract or agreement between two parties. In the Old Testament the Hebrew word berith is always thus translated. Berith is derived from a root which means “to cut,” and hence a covenant is a…
Joel — Jehovah is his God. (1.) The oldest of Samuel’s two sons appointed by him as judges in Beersheba (1 Sam. 8:2). (See VASHNI.) (2.) A descendant of Reuben (1 Chr. 5:4, 8). (3.) One of David’s famous…
Messiah — (Heb. mashiah), in all the thirty-nine instances of its occurring in the Old Testament, is rendered by the LXX. “Christos.” It means anointed. Thus priests (Ex. 28:41; 40:15; Num. 3:3), prophets (1…
Pentecost — I.e., “fiftieth”, found only in the New Testament (Acts 2:1; 20:16; 1 Cor. 16:8). The festival so named is first spoken of in Ex. 23:16 as “the feast of harvest,” and again in Ex. 34:22 as “the day…
Ascension Of Christ, The · To send the Holy Spirit — To send the Holy Spirit
Confessing Christ · Exemplified: Peter — Exemplified: Peter
Preaching · .By Peter and other apostles — .By Peter and other apostles
Promises Of God, The · Subjects of: The Holy Spirit
Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted,.... After his resurrection he ascended to heaven, and was exalted in human nature; "to the right hand of God", as the Ethiopic version; and the Arabic version used by De Dieu read; an honour that never was conferred on any creature, angels or men, besides: or he was exalted and raised to the high honour and dignity of a Prince and Saviour, of Lord, Head, and King, so as to have a name, dominion, and authority over all, by the mighty power of God, which is sometimes called his right hand; see Psalm 118:15.
and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost; which the Father had promised to pour forth in the last days, Isaiah 44:3…
Acts 2:32-36
32. This Jesus hath God raised up; whereof we all are witnesses. 33. He being therefore exalted by the right hand of God, and having received the promise of the Holy Ghost of the Father, he hath now shed forth that which ye now see and hear. 34. For David is not ascended into heaven: But he saith, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit at my right hand, 35. Until I make thine enemies thy footstool. 36. Therefore, let all the house of Israel know for a surety, that God hath made this Jesus Lord, and the same Christ, whom ye have crucified.
32. This Jesus After that he had proved by the testimony of David, that it was most requisite that Christ should rise again, he saith, that he and…
God raised Jesus from the dead, and we are all witnesses of this: The witness theme is often repeated in Acts (e.g., 3:15; 4:33; 5:32; 10:39-43). The capstone of this message is that God the Father, as he had promised, was now pouring out his Holy Spirit on the church through the risen Jesus. All Israel was called upon to recognize that God had acted decisively to make the crucified Jesus both Lord and Messiah!
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
— Subjects of: The Holy Spirit
Revivals · .At Pentecost, and times after Pentecost — .At Pentecost, and times after Pentecost
Tongue · Gift of — Gift of
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
