The Acts of the Apostles, the history of the early church, by Luke the physician - Acts 2:1-4 comments : Pentecost

 

2:1 ¶  And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. 2  And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. 3  And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. 4  And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

 

Pentecost, or the fiftieth day, is the feast of harvest, the firstfruits, the second of the three great feasts under the Law celebrated at Jerusalem according to Strong. The Jews call it Shavout. It is the culmination, to modern Jews, of the entire Passover season and commemorates the giving of the Ten Commandments from Mount Sinai. It is a celebration of God’s covenant with the Jews and we find it here as fulfilled in Christ as Passover was fulfilled in Christ. The Jews are missing out on a great and wonderful thing here partly because of a hardened heart and partly because of the perfidy of Christians in history.

 

Exodus 23:16  And the feast of harvest, the firstfruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field: and the feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field.

 

There is; 1. Feast of Unleavened Bread or Passover. Hebrew Pesach or Greek Pascha. 2. Feast of Harvest or Pentecost. Hebrew Shavuot. 3. Feast of Ingathering or Feast of Booths or Tabernacles.

 

Leviticus 23:15 ¶  And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven sabbaths shall be complete: 16  Even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the LORD.

 

It was the fiftieth day after the offering of firstfruits after Passover and it was indeed, at this time in Acts, quite a harvest. The disciples were visited by a sound like a powerful wind (a simile which uses like or as to make a comparison between two different things to aid in understanding), tongues like as of fire (a figure of speech called a simile, not tongues of actual fire, but like as of fire) landed on each of them, and they were filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak in other languages, each as the Spirit gave them.

 

So, you have Passover, Christ the Passover Lamb, Pentecost, the harvest that creates the church, and Tabernacles, the gathering of the church at the end.

 

A tongue in verse 4, or glossae in Greek, is a distinct language or dialect spoken by a unique people. It is not gobbledygook. These figures of speech are similes, unlike things joined by as as in as of a rushing mighty wind and like as of fire as a physical description of the tongues that descended. Cloven tongues like as of fire is an expression of the appearance of the phenomenon in verse 3. Notice here how tongues is used from the same Greek word in two different ways, one for speech and one for how something looked. Think of ways we do that in our everyday speech. We can talk about our physical ceiling in a room and we can talk about the proverbial “glass ceiling” that we cannot pass through for promotion at work. We can even use both ceilings in a letter or email.