Acts 2:31

He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(31) He seeing this before. . . .—In the vision of the future which St. Peter thus ascribes to David, the king had been led, as he interprets the words, not only or chiefly to speak out his own hopes, but to utter that which received its fulfilment in the fact of the resurrection. What was conspicuously not true of the historical David was found to be true of the Son of David according to the flesh.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

2:22-36 From this gift of the Holy Ghost, Peter preaches unto them Jesus: and here is the history of Christ. Here is an account of his death and sufferings, which they witnessed but a few weeks before. His death is considered as God's act; and of wonderful grace and wisdom. Thus Divine justice must be satisfied, God and man brought together again, and Christ himself glorified, according to an eternal counsel, which could not be altered. And as the people's act; in them it was an act of awful sin and folly. Christ's resurrection did away the reproach of his death; Peter speaks largely upon this. Christ was God's Holy One, sanctified and set apart to his service in the work of redemption. His death and sufferings should be, not to him only, but to all his, the entrance to a blessed life for evermore. This event had taken place as foretold, and the apostles were witnesses. Nor did the resurrection rest upon this alone; Christ had poured upon his disciples the miraculous gifts and Divine influences, of which they witnessed the effects. Through the Saviour, the ways of life are made known; and we are encouraged to expect God's presence, and his favour for evermore. All this springs from assured belief that Jesus is the Lord, and the anointed Saviour.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

He, seeing this before ... - By the spirit of prophecy. From this it appears that David had distinct views of the great doctrines pertaining to the Messiah.

Spake ... - See Psalm 16:1-11.

That his soul ... - See the notes on Acts 2:27.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

29-36. 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 of the apostle). The Psalm is then affirmed to have had its only proper fulfilment in Jesus, of whose resurrection and ascension they were witnesses, while the glorious effusion of the Spirit by the hand of the ascended One, setting an infallible seal upon all, was even then witnessed by the thousands who stood listening to Him. A further illustration of Messiah's ascension and session at God's right hand is drawn from Ps 110:1, in which David cannot be thought to speak of himself, seeing he is still in his grave.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

He seeing this before; by a prophetical eye, unto which any thing that was revealed was as certain and manifest, as aught could be to the eye of the body. By the same prophetical Spirit, and with the same certainty, which he space of the incarnation, he

spake also of the resurrection of Christ. Of the rest, see Acts 2:27.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

He seeing this before,.... Or by a spirit of prophecy foreseeing it, that according to God's promise and oath, the Messiah would be raised up, and spring from his seed; and also by the same Spirit foresaw that he would suffer and die, and be laid in the grave, the pit of corruption:

spake of the resurrection of Christ; from the dead, to the sense of the following words, in Psalm 16:10.

that his soul was not left in hell: neither his separate soul in Hades, nor his body in the grave,

neither his flesh did see corruption; or his body, or his "carcass", as the Syriac version renders it, did not lie so long in the grave as to rot and putrefy.

Geneva Study Bible

He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Expositor's Greek Testament

Acts 2:31. προϊδών, cf. Galatians 3:8. The word ascribes prophetic consciousness to David in the composition of the Psalm, but, as we learn from St. Peter himself, that prophetic consciousness did not involve a distinct knowledge of the events foretold (1 Peter 1:10-12); that which the Holy Ghost presignified was only in part clear to the prophets, both as to the date of fulfilment and also as to historical shaping (Schmid, Biblische Theol. des N. T., p. 395, and Alford, in loco).—ὅτι: introducing the words which follow as a fuller explanation, or simply as expressing a well-known fact.—ἐγκατελείφθη … εἶδεν: aorists, not futures, because from St. Peter’s standpoint the prophecy had been already fulfilled (Felten, Wendt). With this verse we naturally compare the mention of Christ’s descent into Hades and His agency in the realms of the dead in St. Peter’s First Epistle, Acts 3:19 (cf. Php 2:10, Ephesians 4:9, Romans 10:7; Zahn, Das Apost. Symbolum, pp. 71–74; but see also Schmid, ubi supra, p. 414). Thus while the words bore, as we have seen, a primary and lower reference to David himself, St. Peter was led by the Holy Ghost to see their higher and grander fulfilment in Christ.—εἰς ᾅδου: on the construction see above on Acts 2:27, and on the Jewish view of Sheol or Hades in the time of our Lord as an intermediate state, see Charles, Book of Enoch, p. 168 and p. 94, and compare also the interesting although indirect parallel to 1 Peter 3:19, which he finds in The Book of the Secrets of Enoch, p. 45. ff.; Weber, Jüdische Theologie, pp. 163, 341.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

31. spake of the resurrection of Christ] Better, of the resurrection of the Christ, i.e. the Messiah, the anointed of Jehovah.

that his soul was not left in hell, &c.] The words for his soul are not found in the best MSS. Read, that neither was he left in hell nor did his flesh, &c. This is an example of a kind of variation from the earliest MSS. which is very common and can be most easily understood and explained. On the margin of some early copy the words for his soul were written as an explanation of the shorter expression used in this verse by the more full language of the Psalm in Acts 2:27, and by some later scribe the words were brought into the text.

Bengel's Gnomen

Acts 2:31. Προΐδων, seeing before) in prophetical vision.—ἐλάλησε, he spake) in that 16th Psalm.—τοῦ Χριστοῦ, of Christ) Peter thus reasons: David did not speak of himself, as the fact shows; therefore he must have spoken of Christ, as being about to rise again from the dead. But how is the resurrection inferred from the promise concerning the kingdom? Answer—Because Christ had not heretofore entered upon the kingdom, and because the future kingdom was an eternal one. Therefore David recognised the inner nature (character) of the kingdom of Messiah.—ἡ ψυχὴ αὐτοῦ, His soul) The Latin Vulg. omits this. For it has “neque derelictus est in inferno;” where the masculine derelictus shows that the translator has purposely written it so (and not by an oversight). Other very ancient authorities accord with this. More modern authorities have supplied it from Acts 2:27.[15]

[15] Thence both, in this passage, the margin of Ed. 2, to which the Gnomon along with the Vers. Germ. corresponds, has advanced the briefer reading, which in the larger Ed. is rated at a lower estimate, to the mark β.—E. B.

Ee support ἡ ψυχὴ αὐτοῦ, with the Rec. Text. But ABC corrected, D Vulg. Memph. Theb. Syr. and Iren. omit the words.—E. and T.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 31. - Foreseeing this for seeing this before, A.V.; neither was he left in Hades for his soul was not left in hell, A.V. and T.R.; nor did his flesh for neither his flesh did, A.V. Acts 2:31