Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Acts · About this commentary
A man attested by God, and death could not hold him
Acts 2:22-28
22 “Men of Israel, hear these words! Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved by God to you by mighty works and wonders and signs which God did by him among you, even as you yourselves know, · WEB
Peter's case rests on public facts his hearers already know, and on a claim that the resurrection was not a rescue but a necessity.
The argument turns to a person, and it opens with an appeal to public knowledge. Jesus of Nazareth was approved by God to you by mighty works and wonders and signs — and then the clause that gives the sentence its force: even as you yourselves know. Peter is not informing them. He is reminding them of events they witnessed and cannot deny, and building on ground they already share.
The death is stated in two registers at once, and neither cancels the other. He was delivered up by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God, and he was taken by the hand of lawless men, crucified and killed. The first clause makes the cross a plan rather than an accident. The second leaves the guilt exactly where it fell. Foreknowledge is not coercion, and a purpose God intended does not become innocent because he intended to use it. Peter says you have taken, to a crowd, seven weeks after the fact, and does not soften it.
Then the resurrection, with a reason attached: God raised him, because it was not possible that he should be held by it. That is a remarkable sentence. The claim is not that God was strong enough to reverse the death but that the death could not have held in the first place. Something about this man made the grave an impossible tenancy — and the rest of the paragraph goes to Scripture to show why.
The psalm quoted is David's, and Peter reads it as spoken about someone other than David. Its speaker declares that God is at his right hand, that his heart is glad and his flesh rests in hope, and that God will not abandon his soul to Hades nor let his Holy One see decay.
The two halves of that last line are a single Hebrew thought said twice, and reading them together is what unlocks the argument Peter is about to make. The soul in Hades stands parallel to the flesh seeing decay; Hades stands parallel to the corruption of a body. The psalm is speaking of a grave and of a man in it, and its confidence is that this particular occupant will not remain — not that some part of him was never there. Peter's own gloss in the next verses says exactly this, and he says it by pointing at a tomb.
settled What this mark means