Acts 26:8

Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you,.... You Heathens and Sadducees; for the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead was thought an incredible doctrine by the Heathens in general,

Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead? Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?

This St. Paul seems to have spoken in regard of Festus, and many others there present, who were heathens; or to any of the Sadducees, if any such were amongst them: as for Agrippa, He believed the prophets, , and had out of them learned and observed this promise, . However, God did not leave himself without a witness to testify so much unto all, as should make the doctrine of the resurrection credible, whensoever it should be revealed unto them. The works of creation evidence it; for he that can give life unto that which had it not, can restore it unto that which had it: and the works of providence attest it; in every spring there is a resurrection of such plants or trees as seemed dead; nay, the bread which we daily feed on, was made of that grain, which was not quickened except it died, .

8 Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead? Ver. 8. Why should it be thought a thing incredible?] Philosophy indeed is against it. A privatione ad habitum, &c. Et redit in nihilum, quod fuit ante nihil, as the epicure in Ecclesiastes concludeth. But first, many heathens believed a resurrection; as Zoroaster, Theopolupus, and Plato. And the Stoic’ s opinion was, that the world should be dissolved by fire or water; and all things brought to a better state, or to the first golden age again. Secondly, no article of the faith was more generally believed among the Jews than this, John 12:24; Acts 23:8. Hence they called their burying places Domus viventium, the houses of the living, αιϊηιεν the Greeks called them dormitories, or sleeping houses, κοιμητηρια, as holding that their dead should once awake again, and be filled with God’ s image, Psalms 17:15. The Germans call the churchyard God’ s Acre; because the bodies are sown there to be raised again. What if those profane popes (sons of perdition), Leo X and Julius II, jeer at the resurrection, as if anything were impossible with God? cannot he that made man at first of nothing make him up again of that substance of the body that is preserved after death, though never so dispersed? God knows where every part and parcal of it is, and can easily bring it together again. In the transfiguration, that body of Moses which was hidden in the valley of Moab, appeared glorious in the hill of Tabor; that we may know that these bodies of ours are not lost, but laid up, and shall as sure be raised in glory as they are laid down in corruption. Do we not see a resurrection of the creatures every spring? and the grain we sow, doth it not first rot and then revive? See we not men of ashes to make glass? and cannot a skilful gardener discern his different seeds when mixed together, and gather every one of them to their own kind? Have we not observed how those little balls of quicksilver dispersed, will not mix with any of another kind; but if any man gather them, they run together of their own accord into one mass? why then should it be thought a thing incredible with any, that God should raise the dead? Consentaneum est Phoenicem, saith Nyssen. It is probable enough, that that Phoenix that was found in the reign of Nero (and perhaps at this very time when St Paul was thus pleading for the resurrection) might signify the resurrection of Christ, and of all believers by him; according to that of the prophet, "Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead," Isaiah 26:19. Sen. Nat. Quaest. iii. 26, 27.

(8) Why should it be thought a thing incredible . . .?—Some MSS. give a punctuation which alters the structure of the sentence: What! is it thought a thing incredible . . . ? The appeal is made to Agrippa as accepting the sacred books of Israel, in which instances of a resurrection were recorded (1 Kings 17:17-23; 2 Kings 4:18-37), and which ought to have hindered him from postulating the incredibility of the truth which St. Paul preached, and which included (1) the doctrine of a general resurrection, and (2) the fact that Christ had risen. The Greek use of the present tense, that God raiseth the dead, gives prominence to the first thought rather than the second. Agrippa, as probably allied, as the rest of his kindred had been, with the Sadducean high priests, not a few of whom he had himself nominated, was likely to reject both.

Verse 8. That God should raise the dead?] As Agrippa believed in the true God, and knew that one of his attributes was omnipotence, he could not believe that the resurrection of the dead was an impossible thing; and to this belief of his the apostle appeals; and the more especially, because the Sadducees denied the doctrine of the resurrection, though they professed to believe in the same God. Two attributes of God stood pledged to produce this resurrection: his truth, on which his promise was founded; and his power, by which the thing could be easily affected, as that power is unlimited. Some of the best critics think this verse should be read thus: What! should it be thought a thing incredible with you, if God should raise the dead?

8. Why should it be thought a thing incredible … that God, &c.] More literally (with Rev. Ver.) “Why is it judged incredible with you if God doth raise the dead.” The last clause is not to be understood hypothetically, but “If God doth, as he hath done in the case of Jesus.” So that it is equivalent to “Why should you not believe that Jesus has been raised from the dead?”

Why should it be thought ... - The force of this question will be better seen by an exclamation point after why τί ti. “What! is it to be thought a thing incredible?” etc.