Section 2:1–13
The Holy Spirit came and empowered Jesus’ followers
In this section, Jews from many other countries had gathered in Jerusalem for the feast and holy day of Pentecost. They had grown up speaking the languages of those countries. At the feast, the Holy Spirit came to be with the believers and enabled them to immediately speak the languages of those countries, praising God. The people who heard the believers speaking those languages reacted in various ways. Some were amazed and some mocked the believers.
Here are some other possible headings for this section:
The Holy Spirit Comes (New Living Translation (2004))
-or-
The Holy Spirit and the Day of Pentecost (NET Bible)
-or-
The first Pentecost for the young Church (Phillips’ New Testament in Modern English)
Paragraph 2:1–4
2:1a
When the day of Pentecost came: The word Pentecost refers to the Jewish Feast of Weeks (Exodus 34:22), which is also called the Harvest Feast (Exodus 23:16). Many Jews came to Jerusalem each year to celebrate this festival. The word itself means “fiftieth,” because this feast occurred fifty days after the Passover Feast. This day, the day of Pentecost, also became the Christian name for the events described in 2:2–13.
When the day…came: This phrase refers to some time during the day.
2:1b
they were all together in one place: The words they and all probably refer to the entire group of believers. In 1:15, Luke stated that the number of believers at that meeting was about one hundred and twenty. So it is possible that there were more than one hundred and twenty believers.
together in one place: The word place refers to a house or large room. It may have been the upstairs room of 1:13. However, you should translate this phrase to refer generally to any house or large room. For example:
together in one location/house
-or-
together (New Jerusalem Bible)
© 2001, 2021 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.