Acts 4:25

By the mouth. The earliest manuscripts of this passage present a difficult Greek text that appears to have been garbled. Later manuscripts contain a number of variants that apparently were attempts by scribes to repair the text. The earliest extant text is probably best translated, “Who through the mouth of our father David, thy servant, through the Holy Spirit, said ... or perhaps, “Who through our father David, thy servant, the mouth of the Holy Spirit, said ...”

The heathen rage. The quotation in vs. 25, 26 is from Ps. 2:1, 2, which doubtless had its primary application to some revolt against a king of Israel. During David’s reign mention is made of such conflicts with Syrians, Moabites, Ammonites, and others engaging in vain revolt (2 Sam. 8). Here the psalm is presented as a parallel to the Jewish leaders’ fighting against the Lord of the church. An ancient Jewish application of Ps. 2:1, probably at least from the 2d century A.D., interprets the “heathen” as Gog and Magog, who in Jewish thinking were to oppose the Messiah when He should come (Talmud ‘Abodah Zarah 3b, Soncino ed., pp. 8, 9). If such an application of this verse was current in the apostles’ day, as it well may have been, it is understandable that Ps. 2:1 might appropriately be applied by the apostles to those who already were opposing the Messiah.