Acts 4: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Priests, the temple guard captain, and Sadducees arrest Peter and John for teaching that Jesus rose from the dead, and hold them overnight; still, the number of men who believed reaches about five thousand. The next day the rulers question them, and Peter says the lame man was healed by the name of Jesus of Nazareth, whom they crucified and God raised. The council orders them to stop speaking in that name, but the two refuse and are released, and the believers pray for boldness and are filled with the Holy Spirit. The chapter closes by describing how the believers shared everything they owned, and names Barnabas, who sold a field and gave the money to the apostles.

Claim by Claim

1. 4:1
   • Peter and John were speaking to the people.
   • The priests came upon them.
   • The captain of the temple came upon them.
   • The Sadducees came upon them.
2. 4:2
   • Those who came upon them were greatly annoyed.
   • They were annoyed because the apostles were teaching the people.
   • They were annoyed because the apostles proclaimed in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.
3. 4:3
   • They laid hands on the apostles.
   • They put the apostles in custody until the next day.
   • It was already evening.
4. 4:4
   • Many of those who heard the word believed.
   • The number of the men came to be about five thousand.
5. 4:5
   • On the next day their rulers gathered together.
   • Their elders gathered together.
   • Their scribes gathered together.
   • The gathering was in Jerusalem.
6. 4:6
   • Annas the high priest was there.
   • Caiaphas was there.
   • John was there.
   • Alexander was there.
   • As many as were of the high priest's family were there.
7. 4:7
   • They set the apostles in the midst.
   • They asked by what power the apostles had done this.
   • They asked by what name the apostles had done this.
8. 4:8
   • Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit.
   • Peter spoke to them.
   • Peter addressed them as rulers of the people.
   • Peter addressed them as elders of Israel.
9. 4:9
   • Peter said they were being examined that day concerning a good deed done to an infirm man.
   • The examination concerned by what means the man was made whole.
10. 4:10
    • Peter said let it be known to all of them.
    • Peter said let it be known to all the people of Israel.
    • The man was made whole by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
    • They crucified Jesus.
    • God raised Jesus from the dead.
    • By that name this man stands before them whole.
11. 4:11
    • Jesus is the stone that was set at nought by the builders.
    • Peter said his hearers were the builders.
    • That stone has become the head of the corner.
12. 4:12
    • There is no salvation in any other.
    • There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.
13. 4:13
    • They saw the boldness of Peter and John.
    • They perceived that Peter and John were unlearned men.
    • They perceived that Peter and John were ordinary men.
    • They marvelled.
    • They recognized that Peter and John had been with Jesus.
14. 4:14
    • They saw the man who had been healed standing with the apostles.
    • They could say nothing against it.
15. 4:15
    • They commanded the apostles to go out of the council.
    • They conferred among themselves.
16. 4:16
    • They asked what they should do to these men.
    • A notable sign has been done through the apostles.
    • The sign is manifest to all who dwell in Jerusalem.
    • They cannot deny it.
17. 4:17
    • They wanted it to spread no further among the people.
    • They proposed to threaten the apostles.
    • They proposed to forbid the apostles to speak to any man in this name any longer.
18. 4:18
    • They called the apostles.
    • They commanded the apostles not to speak at all in the name of Jesus.
    • They commanded the apostles not to teach in the name of Jesus.
19. 4:19
    • Peter and John answered them.
    • Peter and John told them to judge whether it is right in God's sight to listen to them rather than to God.
20. 4:20
    • Peter and John said they cannot stop speaking the things they have seen and heard.
21. 4:21
    • They threatened the apostles further.
    • They let the apostles go.
    • They found no way to punish them.
    • They found no way to punish them because of the people.
    • All the people glorified God for what had happened.
22. 4:22
    • The man was more than forty years old.
    • This miracle of healing was done on that man.
23. 4:23
    • Having been released, they went to their own company.
    • They reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them.
24. 4:24
    • The company heard the report.
    • They lifted up their voice to God with one accord.
    • They addressed God as Sovereign Master.
    • They said God is God.
    • They said God made heaven.
    • They said God made the earth.
    • They said God made the sea.
    • They said God made all that is in them.
25. 4:25
    • They said God spoke by the mouth of his servant David.
    • The words spoken were: Why did the nations rage?
    • The words spoken were: Why did the peoples imagine vain things?
26. 4:26
    • The kings of the earth stood up.
    • The rulers were gathered together against the Lord.
    • The rulers were gathered together against his Christ.
27. 4:27
    • Herod was gathered together against Jesus.
    • Pontius Pilate was gathered together against Jesus.
    • The Gentiles were gathered together against Jesus.
    • The people of Israel were gathered together against Jesus.
    • Jesus is God's holy servant.
    • God anointed Jesus.
    • This gathering happened in truth.
28. 4:28
    • They gathered to do whatever God's hand had determined beforehand to be done.
    • They gathered to do whatever God's counsel had determined beforehand to be done.
29. 4:29
    • They asked the Lord to look upon their enemies' threatenings.
    • They asked God to grant his servants to speak his word with all boldness.
30. 4:30
    • They asked God to stretch forth his hand to heal.
    • They asked that signs and wonders be done by the name of God's holy servant Jesus.
31. 4:31
    • They prayed.
    • The place where they were assembled was shaken.
    • They were all filled with the Holy Spirit.
    • They spoke the word of God with boldness.
32. 4:32
    • The multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul.
    • Not one of them said that any of his possessions was his own.
    • They had all things in common.
33. 4:33
    • The apostles gave witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus with great power.
    • Great grace was upon them all.
34. 4:34
    • There was no one among them who lacked anything.
    • As many as were owners of lands or houses sold them.
    • They brought the prices of the things sold.
35. 4:35
    • They laid the proceeds at the apostles' feet.
    • Distribution was made to each one according as he had need.
36. 4:36
    • There was a man named Joses.
    • The apostles surnamed him Barnabas.
    • That name means Son of consolation.
    • He was a Levite.
    • He was from the country of Cyprus.
37. 4:37
    • He had land.
    • He sold the land.
    • He brought the money.
    • He laid the money at the apostles' feet.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

4:1

The captain of the temple guard commanded the Levite police force that kept order in the temple courts; he ranked just below the high priest. The Sadducees were the wealthy, largely priestly party that controlled the temple. They treated only the five books of Moses as fully authoritative and denied that the dead would ever rise.

4:2

The Sadducees' anger has a specific cause: they rejected any resurrection of the dead. The Greek behind "preached through Jesus the resurrection" can mean either "announced in Jesus' case that the dead rise" or "announced, on Jesus' authority, the resurrection of the dead." Both senses are live.

4:3

"Put them in hold" is 1611 English for put in custody, and "eventide" simply means evening. The detail matters legally: Jewish practice did not conduct serious hearings after dark, so an evening arrest meant a night in custody and a hearing the next morning.

4:4

The Greek word counts adult males specifically, so the figure may not include women and children. It is also unclear whether five thousand is the number of new believers or the running total of the community.

4:5

The rulers, elders and scribes are the membership of the Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish council in Jerusalem, about seventy men presided over by the high priest. "Scribes" were not copyists here but professional experts in the law of Moses.

4:6

Annas had held the high priesthood from about AD 6 until Rome removed him in AD 15. He kept the title and the influence, and five of his sons plus his son-in-law Caiaphas, the man actually holding the office at this time, held it after him. That is why the chapter can speak of "the kindred of the high priest" as a bloc. John and Alexander are otherwise unknown.

4:7

"By what name" is not a request for a label. In the ancient world a healer or exorcist worked by invoking a name, and the name named the power standing behind the act. The council is asking whose authority Peter and John claim.

4:8

Where the King James says "Holy Ghost," ghost in 1611 English meant spirit, with none of the modern sense of a haunting.

4:9

"Impotent" in the King James means powerless, here specifically unable to walk; it carries none of its later sexual sense. "Made whole" translates a Greek verb that means both healed and saved, the same root that appears as "saved" in verse 12.

4:10

"Christ" is not a surname. It is the Greek word for "anointed one," the equivalent of the Hebrew word Messiah, and it is a title.

4:11

Peter is quoting Psalm 118:22, a line about builders discarding a stone as unusable. "The head of the corner" is ambiguous in the Greek: it can mean the cornerstone set at the foundation, which fixes the lines of the whole building, or the capstone set at the top to finish it.

4:12

"Saved" here is the same Greek root translated "made whole" in verse 9. Peter is playing on the double sense: the man was made well, and the word for that also means rescued or delivered.

4:13

"Unlearned and ignorant" does not mean stupid. The first word means lacking formal schooling in the law, the kind a scribe received. The second is the Greek word idiotes, meaning a private individual, a layman with no official standing or professional expertise. "Boldness" translates parrhesia, the freedom to say everything openly, the frank speech of a citizen who is not afraid.

4:15

Sending the accused out while the judges deliberated was normal procedure. The council chamber is the Sanhedrin's own meeting place.

4:16

The King James word "notable" means remarkable, and "manifest" means plain for everyone to see.

4:17

"Straitly threaten" is 1611 English for warn sternly or strictly. "In this name" means on Jesus' authority, invoking him, the same sense the council used in its question in verse 7.

4:22

According to the previous chapter this man had been unable to walk from birth and had begged daily at a temple gate. Over forty years of that made him a familiar face in Jerusalem, which is why the council cannot simply dispute the story.

4:24

The word translated "Lord" here is not the usual one. It is despotes, the master or owner of a household, an address to someone with absolute authority over everything in his charge. The opening line of the prayer follows a standard Jewish form drawn from Exodus 20:11 and Psalm 146:6.

4:25

The quotation is Psalm 2:1-2. The King James "heathen" translates a word simply meaning the nations, that is, the non-Jewish peoples. "Imagine vain things" means to plot or scheme to no purpose. The Greek of this verse is notoriously tangled, and translators differ on how the words about David and the Spirit fit together.

4:26

"His Christ" is "his anointed one." In Psalm 2 the anointed one was the reigning king of Israel, anointed with oil at his coronation; the Hebrew word is mashiach, from which Messiah comes, and the Greek word is christos.

4:27

Herod is Herod Antipas, Rome's client ruler of Galilee, who according to Luke 23 questioned Jesus during his trial. Pontius Pilate was the Roman governor of Judea from about AD 26 to 36. "Gentiles" means non-Jews, here the Romans, and it is the same Greek word rendered "heathen" in the psalm just quoted. The King James "thy holy child Jesus" translates pais, a word that means either child or servant; the servant sense links it to the servant figure of Isaiah.

4:28

"Counsel" in the King James means a settled plan or decision, not advice. "Thy hand" is a standard Hebrew figure for power in action.

4:29

"Boldness" is again parrhesia, outspokenness, saying everything without holding back, which is precisely what the council has just forbidden.

4:30

"Signs and wonders" is a fixed pair of words carried over from the Old Testament, where it is used again and again of what God did in Egypt and at the exodus. "Stretching forth thine hand" is the matching figure for God's power at work.

4:31

A building shaking was a widely recognized sign, in both Jewish and Greek accounts, that a prayer had been heard and that God was present.

4:32

"Ought" is the old spelling of aught, meaning anything at all. "They had all things common" renders a Greek phrase that was a familiar proverb about friendship: friends hold everything in common. Luke is describing the community in terms his Greek readers would recognize.

4:33

"Gave witness" is courtroom language: the apostles testified as eyewitnesses. "Great grace was upon them all" is ambiguous in the Greek. The word can mean God's favor resting on the community, or the goodwill they enjoyed from everyone around them.

4:34

The Greek verb tenses suggest a repeated practice rather than a single act: people sold property as needs arose. The King James "the prices of the things that were sold" means the proceeds of the sales.

4:35

Laying something at another person's feet was a formal gesture of handing it over, placing it entirely at their disposal. It is the act of transferring control, not just setting money on the floor.

4:36

A Levite was a member of the tribe of Levi, which assisted in the temple but was given no tribal territory in Israel, so landholding by a Levite is worth noting even though Cyprus lies outside the land. Cyprus is a large island in the eastern Mediterranean with a substantial Jewish population. "Surnamed" in the King James means given an additional name or nickname. Some manuscripts call him Joses, others Joseph. The meaning Luke gives for Barnabas, son of consolation or encouragement, is not an obvious reading of the Aramaic, which is probably why he explains it.

4:37

Under the law of Moses the tribe of Levi received no share of tribal land in Israel, but by this period Levites could and did own property, and land outside Israel such as on Cyprus was never covered by that rule in any case. Luke names Barnabas and prices his gesture because the next chapter opens with a couple who imitate it dishonestly.