3 And when he saw that this was pleasing to the Jews he went on to take Peter in addition. This was at the time of the feast of unleavened bread.
And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread; for seven days let your food be unleavened bread. On the first day you will have a holy meeting; you may do no sort of field-work. And every day for seven days you will give a burned offering to the Lord; and on the seventh day there will be a holy meeting; you may do no field-work. And the Lord said to Moses, Say to the children of Israel, When you have come to the land which I will give you, and have got in the grain from its fields, take some of the first-fruits of the grain to the priest; And let the grain be waved before the Lord, so that you may be pleasing to him; on the day after the Sabbath let it be waved by the priest. And on the day of the waving of the grain, you are to give a male lamb of the first year, without any mark, for a burned offering to the Lord. And let the meal offering with it be two tenth parts of an ephah of the best meal mixed with oil, an offering made by fire to the Lord for a sweet smell; and the drink offering with it is to be of wine, the fourth part of a hin. And you may take no bread or dry grain or new grain for food till the very day on which you have given the offering for your God: this is a rule for ever through all your generations wherever you are living.
And Moses said to the people, Let this day, on which you came out of Egypt, out of your prison-house, be kept for ever in memory; for by the strength of his hand the Lord has taken you out from this place; let no leavened bread be used. On this day, in the month Abib, you are going out. And it will be that, when the Lord takes you into the land of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, the land which he made an oath to your fathers that he would give you, a land flowing with milk and honey, you will do this act of worship in this month. For seven days let your food be unleavened cakes; and on the seventh day there is to be a feast to the Lord. Unleavened cakes are to be your food through all the seven days; let no leavened bread be seen among you, or any leaven, in any part of your land.
And this day is to be kept in your memories: you are to keep it as a feast to the Lord through all your generations, as an order for ever. For seven days let your food be unleavened bread; from the first day no leaven is to be seen in your houses: whoever takes bread with leaven in it, from the first till the seventh day, will be cut off from Israel. And on the first day there is to be a holy meeting and on the seventh day a holy meeting; no sort of work may be done on those days but only to make ready what is necessary for everyone's food. So keep the feast of unleavened bread; for on this very day I have taken your armies out of the land of Egypt: this day, then, is to be kept through all your generations by an order for ever. In the first month, from the evening of the fourteenth day, let your food be unleavened bread till the evening of the twenty-first day of the month. For seven days no leaven is to be seen in your houses: for whoever takes bread which is leavened will be cut off from the people of Israel, if he is from another country or if he is an Israelite by birth. Take nothing which has leaven in it; wherever you are living let your food be unleavened cakes.
Take away, then, the old leaven, so that you may be a new mass, even as you are without leaven. For Christ has been put to death as our Passover. Let us then keep the feast, not with old leaven, and not with the leaven of evil thoughts and acts, but with the unleavened bread of true thoughts and right feelings.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Acts 12
Commentary on Acts 12 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 12
In this chapter we have the story,
Act 12:1-4
Ever since the conversion of Paul, we have heard no more of the agency of the priests in persecuting the saints at Jerusalem; perhaps that wonderful change wrought upon him, and the disappointment it gave to their design upon the Christians at Damascus, had somewhat mollified them, and brought them under the check of Gamaliel's advice-to let those men alone, and see what would be the issue; but here the storm arises from another point. The civil power, not now, as usual (for aught that appears) stirred up by the ecclesiastics, acts by itself in the persecution. But Herod, though originally of an Edomite family, yet seems to have been a proselyte to the Jewish religion; for Josephus says he was zealous for the Mosaic rites, a bigot for the ceremonies. He was not only (as Herod Antipas was) tetrarch of Galilee, but had also the government of Judea committed to him by Claudius the emperor, and resided most at Jerusalem, where he was at this time. Three things we are here told he did-
Act 12:5-19
We have here an account of Peter's deliverance out of prison, by which the design of Herod against him was defeated, and his life preserved for further service, and a stop given to this bloody torrent. Now,
Act 12:20-25
In these verses we have,