The Spirit Arrives Before the Boundary Is Settled

Caesarea Maritima, Herod’s harbour city, was the Roman governor’s seat in Judaea. A centurion commanded a century of about eighty men. The “band” is a speira, a cohort, and an inscription confirms a Second Italian Cohort of Roman citizens stationed in Syria by AD 69, which may be the unit meant.

“Feared God” is the phrase Acts uses for Gentiles who worshipped Israel’s God and attended the synagogue without being circumcised; Paul addresses such people in 13:16 and 26. “The people” is laos, the word Luke keeps for Israel, so Cornelius’s alms went to Jews. “Alway” is continually, at the set hours.

The ninth hour is about three in the afternoon, the hour of the evening sacrifice, when Peter and John went up to the temple to pray in 3:1. “Evidently” in 1611 meant clearly or plainly, the Greek phaneros; the vision was not dim or doubtful. The angel opens with his name, as God did with Saul’s.

“Memorial” is mnemosunon, a sacrificial term: in the Septuagint of Leviticus 2:2 it names the handful of the grain offering burned on the altar, whose smoke rose to God. Cornelius could offer nothing at the altar, yet his prayers and gifts are said to have gone up the same way.

Joppa lay about thirty miles south of Caesarea down the coast road. “Simon” was among the commonest Jewish names of the period, which is why the surname is needed; Peter is the Greek form of the Aramaic Cephas, “rock”, the name Jesus gave him (John 1:42).

The address is precise enough for strangers: a man’s name, his trade and a house on the shore. Tanning used a great deal of water for soaking and rinsing hides, and a house at the water’s edge could let the smell drift out to sea. Two Simons share the roof, the fisherman lodging with the tanner.

The two “household servants” are oiketai, domestic slaves. The soldier “waited on him continually”, the verb proskartereo of 2:42 and 8:13, so he is a personal attendant, and he too is “devout”, the reverence of the master shared in his household. An armed man on the road also made the thirty-mile journey safer.

“Declared” is exegeomai, to lead out a full account, the verb behind the word exegesis. Cornelius does not simply issue orders; he tells three men of lower rank everything that happened. They set out that afternoon and are nearing Joppa by noon of the next day.

Flat roofs served as extra rooms: people slept, stored produce and built booths there (Nehemiah 8:16), and a roof offered quiet for prayer. The sixth hour is noon, not one of the temple’s fixed hours, though Psalm 55:17 speaks of praying “evening, and morning, and at noon”.

“Trance” is ekstasis, literally a standing outside oneself, the word Paul uses of his own experience while praying in the temple (22:17). A trance that comes while food is being prepared, to a hungry man, is fitted to his body: the vision will be about eating.

“Vessel” is skeuos, the word used of Saul as a “chosen vessel” in 9:15, here a container. It hangs by its four corners, archai, which can also mean beginnings; some interpreters have seen the four corners of the earth in it, a reading the text does not claim.

The list runs like Genesis: fourfooted beasts, creeping things and fowls are the creatures of the sixth day (Genesis 1:24–25) and of the pairs entering the ark (6:20). Leviticus 11 sorts the same classes into clean and unclean. Here they come all together in one sheet, with no sorting.

Three commands, rise, kill, eat. “Kill” is thuo, which usually means to sacrifice, though it can mean simply to slaughter. Peter is named, so there is no doubt the order is his; the voice uses his Greek name, the one Jesus gave.

“Common” is koinos, which by this period meant ritually profane, the word Mark uses for “defiled” hands in Mark 7:2. The martyrs of 1 Maccabees 1:62 died rather than eat koina. Peter’s protest echoes Ezekiel 4:14, where the prophet says no abominable flesh has ever entered his mouth, and God relents.

“Cleansed” is katharizo, the verb Mark uses in his comment on Jesus’ teaching about food, “purging all meats” (Mark 7:19), which most modern translations take as Jesus declaring all foods clean. Early tradition, from Papias, links Mark’s Gospel to Peter’s own preaching.

Three times, and still Peter is given no explanation. “Received up” is analambano, the verb Acts uses for Jesus being taken up into heaven (1:2, 11, 22). The sheet returns where it came from, leaving nothing behind on the roof but the question.

“Doubted” is diaporeo, to be at a complete loss, the verb for the Pentecost crowd who “were in doubt” (2:12). The strangers have had to ask their way through town to find a tanner’s house. “Stood before the gate” means the gateway into the courtyard; they do not come in.

They “called”, raising their voices from the gateway rather than entering. Whether that was ordinary manners or awareness of Jewish scruples about Gentile visitors, the verse does not say. They ask for him by both names, Simon and Peter, exactly as the angel gave it.

“Three men” is the number in most manuscripts; Codex Vaticanus reads “two”, perhaps counting only the servants, and some texts give no number. The Spirit speaks while Peter is still turning the vision over, and the timing of verse 17 is made exact: the thought and the knock arrive together.

“Doubting nothing” is diakrino, which means both to hesitate and to make a distinction between. Peter uses it again when he reports this in 11:12, and again at the Jerusalem council: God “put no difference between us and them” (15:9). Go without wavering, and go without discriminating.

“Went down” from the roof. Peter names himself before they have finished asking, then puts the one question the vision left open: “what is the cause wherefore ye are come?” The word is aitia, the reason or ground, and the messengers’ answer will begin to supply what the sheet did not.

“Warned from God” is chrematizo, to receive a divine instruction, the verb for the wise men “warned of God in a dream” (Matthew 2:12) and for the revelation to Simeon (Luke 2:26). The good report “among all the nation of the Jews” recalls the centurion of Luke 7:5, who built Capernaum its synagogue.

“Lodged them” is xenizo, to receive as guests, the word of Hebrews 13:2: “some have entertained angels unawares.” The roof is the tanner’s, but Peter acts as host. The next morning’s thirty miles would take more than one day’s walking, which is why they arrive on the day after.

“Waited” is prosdokao, to wait in expectation, the word for the people watching for the Messiah in Luke 3:15. Cornelius does not wait alone: he assembles relatives and “near friends”, anankaioi, literally the necessary ones, the intimates he could not leave out. He expects the message to be for them too.

Prostration before a superior was common in the eastern Roman world, but here the order is reversed: an officer of Rome falls at the feet of a Galilean fisherman. “Worshipped” is proskuneo, the word used when people bow before Jesus in the Gospels, which is why Peter cannot let it stand.

Paul and Barnabas will say almost the same at Lystra when a crowd tries to sacrifice to them: “We also are men of like passions with you” (14:15). The angel in Revelation 19:10 refuses John’s worship with “See thou do it not”. Peter lifts Cornelius with his hands before correcting him with words.

“Talked with” is sunomileo, to converse together, used only here in the New Testament; they are walking and speaking as equals before they are through the door. Only then does Peter see how many are inside. He has entered a Gentile house, the step verse 28 is about to name.

“Unlawful” is athemitos, not a technical term for breaking a commandment but for what is contrary to custom or decency. “One of another nation” is allophulos, the word the Septuagint regularly uses for the Philistines. Peter draws the lesson straight: not any food now, but “any man”.

“Without gainsaying” means without raising objection, anantirretos. On the roof he had objected (verse 14); once the Spirit sent him, he raised none. He has heard the messengers’ version already, but he asks Cornelius to state his own reason, which gives the whole company a hearing.

“Four days ago” counts the days inclusively: the vision, the messengers’ journey, their day at Joppa and the day of arrival. Several of the earliest manuscripts lack “fasting”. The “man in bright clothing” is how Luke describes the angels at the tomb (Luke 24:4) and at the ascension (Acts 1:10).

The angel’s wording shifts from verse 4. There the prayers had “come up for a memorial”; here “thy prayer is heard”, in the singular, which may point to a particular request. The same words were spoken to Zechariah in the temple (Luke 1:13), where a specific prayer, for a son, was answered.

This is the third time the address is given, after 9:43 and 10:6, and every time the tanner is named. Cornelius repeats the angel’s instruction exactly as received, down to the house by the sea. The Book of Acts makes sure no one forgets under whose roof the answer was lodging.

“Thou hast well done that thou art come” is a Greek courtesy, kalos epoiesas, found in ordinary letters of the time as a way of saying thank you. “Before God” turns a centurion’s living room into a place of worship. Cornelius wants “all things” commanded, not a summary.

“Respecter of persons” is prosopolemptes, literally a receiver of faces, built on the Hebrew idiom of lifting someone’s face to show favour; Deuteronomy 10:17 says God “regardeth not persons”. The Greek noun is found nowhere in the New Testament but here, and is not known in Greek before Christian writers.

“Accepted” is dektos, the word Jesus read from Isaiah at Nazareth, “the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:19), before saying no prophet is “accepted” in his own country. In that same sermon he named Naaman the Syrian and the widow of Sarepta, two Gentiles. “In every nation” picks up the thread.

The Greek of verses 36 to 38 is famously tangled, and the King James parenthesis “(he is Lord of all:)” is a way of rescuing a broken sentence. “Preaching peace” echoes Isaiah 52:7, the feet of him “that publisheth peace”. To a Roman soldier, peace and a lord of all were imperial words; that echo is noted by many commentators.

“Word” here is rhema, which like the Hebrew davar can mean the thing that happened, the event itself. Peter assumes Cornelius already knows the outline; living in Caesarea, he could hardly have missed it. “Began from Galilee” echoes the accusation before Pilate, “beginning from Galilee to this place” (Luke 23:5).

“Anointed” is chrio, the verb behind the title Christ. “Went about doing good” is one Greek word, euergeton, being a benefactor, and Benefactor was a title kings gave themselves (Luke 22:25). “Oppressed” is katadunasteuo, to tyrannise, the verb James uses of the rich dragging the poor to court (James 2:6).

“Hanged on a tree” is the phrase Peter used before the council in 5:30, and it comes from Deuteronomy 21:22–23, which declares the hanged man accursed of God. Paul quotes that line in Galatians 3:13. A crucified man was, in the terms of the Law, under a curse, and Peter does not avoid the word.

“The third day” is the Gospels’ phrase for the resurrection and appears in the speeches of Acts only here. “Shewed him openly” is literally “gave him to become visible”, emphane genesthai: the appearing was God’s gift, not the witnesses’ discovery.

“Chosen before” is procheirotoneo, to elect in advance by a show of hands, a rare word found only here in the New Testament. Its simpler form is used in 14:23 for appointing elders. The meals after the resurrection include the broiled fish of Luke 24:42–43, and possibly 1:4, where “being assembled together” may mean eating together.

“Quick” is the old English for living, still heard in “cut to the quick”. “Ordained” is horizo, to mark out a boundary or to appoint, and Paul uses the same verb at Athens of “that man whom he hath ordained” to judge the world (17:31). The judge of Israel is also the judge of the centurion.

Peter names no prophet, only “all the prophets”. At Pentecost the call was “repent, and be baptized” for remission of sins (2:38); here the only condition named is belief, “whosoever believeth”, and it is the last thing he says. “Whosoever” is pas, everyone, and he is interrupted at that word.

“Fell on” is the verb used of the Spirit in 8:16, where he had fallen on none of the Samaritans. When Peter reports this in 11:15 he says it happened “as I began to speak”, as though he had barely started; the speech given here may be the outline, or the book may be telescoping.

“They of the circumcision” here simply means Jewish believers, though by 11:2 the phrase names a party. “Poured out” is ekcheo, the verb of Joel’s prophecy quoted at Pentecost: “I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh” (2:17). The six companions see “all flesh” widen in front of them.

“Magnify” is megaluno, the verb of Mary’s song, “My soul doth magnify the Lord” (Luke 1:46). The Gentiles’ praise matches what the crowd heard at Pentecost, “the wonderful works of God” (2:11). “Then answered Peter” is apt: he answers something that has happened, not a question.

The Greek has the article, “the water”, as if it were something within anyone’s power to hold back. “As well as we” is the argument’s hinge, and Peter repeats it in Jerusalem (11:17) and again at the council, “even as he did unto us” (15:8). The comparison with the apostles’ own experience does the work.

Peter “commanded” the baptism and seems to have left the water to his companions, as Paul says he baptized few himself (1 Corinthians 1:14–17); that is an inference. The best manuscripts read “in the name of Jesus Christ”. Staying “certain days” means eating at their table, the charge brought against Peter in 11:3.