Acts 2:8

Hear we every man. Obviously a composite statement, in which the writer embodies numerous remarks from representatives of the various nationalities next enumerated. The fact stated by these amazed listeners was both a foretaste and a pledge of the giving of the gospel to all the world, despite the fact of the many languages involved.

Wherein we were born. Many of those present, although Jews by religion, had been born in other lands and had grown up speaking the languages of their various birthplaces. The list that follows reveals the trained historian, who had inquired carefully as to the nations represented at this great occasion, who himself later attended at least one Pentecost (ch. 21:15), and who therefore knew the kind of crowd that gathered at the Pentecostal season. Luke follows a sequence of sorts in naming the nations, as though he were taking a mental bird’s-eye view of the Roman Empire. With Palestine as his center he looks first at the east, then passes north, west, and south in that order. In this way the reference to “every nation under heaven” (ch. 2:5) is justified. The Jews of the Dispersion (see Vol. V, pp. 59, 60; John 7:35; Acts 6:1) seem generally to have been divided into four classes. These classes, together with some of their component parts to which Luke refers, are: (1) those from Babylonia and other eastern areas: Parthians, Medes, Elamites; dwellers in Mesopotamia; (2) those from Syria and Asia Minor: Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia; (3) those from northern Africa: Egypt, parts of Libya about Cyrene; (4) those from Rome: strangers of Rome. It appears, therefore, that the list is given according to a generally known scheme. For the geographical positions of the various peoples referred to see, The Roman World at the Birth of Jesus; The Diaspora.