Acts 8:10

To whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(10) To whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest.—The ready acceptance of the claims of the pretender, may, in part, be traced to the impression made by the presence of “the Christ, the Saviour of the world” (John 4:42). If One had come among them in whom they felt that there was a more than human greatness, why might there not be another manifestation of a like nature? The sorcerer appears as the earliest type of those who were to come with lying signs and wonders so as to deceive, if it were possible, even the elect (Matthew 24:24; 2Thessalonians 2:9).

This man is the great power of God.—The better MSS. give, “This is the Power of God that is called great.” The word “Powers” was used by the Samaritans of the angels or hosts of God, and they probably recognised Simon as one of these and as of special pre-eminence.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

8:5-13 As far as the gospel prevails, evil spirits are dislodged, particularly unclean spirits. All inclinations to the lusts of the flesh which war against the soul are such. Distempers are here named, the most difficult to be cured by the course of nature, and most expressive of the disease of sin. Pride, ambition, and desire after grandeur have always caused abundance of mischief, both to the world and to the church. The people said of Simon, This man is the great power of God. See how ignorant and thoughtless people mistake. But how strong is the power of Divine grace, by which they were brought to Christ, who is Truth itself! The people not only gave heed to what Philip said, but were fully convinced that it was of God, and not of men, and gave up themselves to be directed thereby. Even bad men, and those whose hearts still go after covetousness, may come before God as his people come, and for a time continue with them. And many wonder at the proofs of Divine truths, who never experience their power. The gospel preached may have a common operation upon a soul, where it never produced inward holiness. All are not savingly converted who profess to believe the gospel.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The great power of God - Probably this means only that they believed that he was "invested with" the power of God, not that they supposed he was really the Great God.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

10. To whom all gave heed … because of long time he had bewitched them—This, coupled with the rapidity with which they deserted him and attached themselves to Philip, shows the ripeness of Samaria for some religious change.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

From the least to the greatest; showing how general their mispersuasion was; and no condition is exempt from the grossest mistakes, if not prevented by the grace of God.

This man is the great power of God; it is said of this Simon, that he gave out himself to be that god, which any nation held to be the chiefest; and that he was the Messias of the Jews, and the God of the Gentiles.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

To whom they all gave heed,.... Were not only attentive to the strange things he did, and to the wonderful things he gave out concerning himself; but they believed what he said and did as real things, and were obedient to him: and that

from the least to the greatest; which does not so much respect age, though the Ethiopic version renders it, "from the younger of them to the eldest of them", as state and condition; persons of every rank and quality, high and low, rich and poor, magistrates and subjects, from the meanest to the greatest of them; and so the Syriac version renders it, "both great", or "noble, and mean"; he drew the attention, and commanded the regard, both of princes and peasants, of the learned and unlearned, of the great men, and of the common people, who one and all wondered at him, and applauded him:

saying, this man is the great power of God; or as the Alexandrian copy and some others, and the Vulgate Latin version read, "this is the power of God which is called great"; they took him for the supreme Deity, or as Justin Martyr (h) expresses it, they accounted him the first, or chief God, or they looked upon him to be the Messiah, "the great power of God": as the Syriac version renders it; and who should be great, and called the Son of the Highest, Luke 1:32.

(h) Ut supra. (Apolg. 2. p. 69.)

Geneva Study Bible

To whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Meyer's NT Commentary

Acts 8:10. Προσεῖχον] just as in Acts 8:6.

ἀπὸ μικροῦ ἕως μεγάλου] A designation of the whole body, from little and up to great, i.e. young and old. Comp. Hebrews 8:11; Acts 26:22; Bar 1:4; Jdt 13:4; Jdt 13:13; 1Ma 5:45; LXX. Genesis 19:11; Jeremiah 42:1, al.

οὗτός ἐστιν ἡ δύν. τ. Θεοῦ ἡ καλ. μεγ.] this is the God-power called great. The Samaritans believed that Simon was the power emanating from God, and appearing and working among them as a human person, which, as the highest of the divine powers, was designated by them with a specific appellation κατʼ ἐξοχήν as the μεγάλη. Probably the Oriental-Alexandrine idea of the world-creating manifestation of the hidden God (the Logos, which Philo also calls μητρόπολις πασῶν τῶν δυνάμεων τοῦ Θεοῦ) had become at that time current among them, and they saw in Simon this effluence of the Godhead rendered human by incarnation,—a belief which Simon certainly had been cunning enough himself to excite and to promote, and which makes it more than probable that the magician, to whom the neighbouring Christianity could not be unknown, designed in the part which he played to present a phenomenon similar to Christ; comp. Ewald. The belief of the Samaritans in Simon was thus, as regards its tenor, an analogue of the ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο, and hence served to prepare for the true and definite faith in the Messiah, afterwards preached to them by Philip: the former became the bridge to the latter. Erroneously Philastr. Haer. 29, and recently Olshausen, de Wette, and others put the words ἡ δύναμις κ.τ.λ. into the mouth of Simon himself, so that they are held only to be an echo of what the sorcerer had boastingly said of himself.[221] This is contrary to the text, which expressly distinguishes the opinion of the infatuated people here from the assertion of the magician himself (Acts 8:9). He had characterized himself indefinitely; they judged definitely and confessed (λέγοντες) the highest that could be said of him; and in doing so, accorded with the intention of the sorcerer.

[221] According to Jerome on Matthew 24, he asserted of himself: “Ego sum sermo Dei, ego sum speciosus, ego paracletus, ego omnipotens, ego omnia Dei.” Certainly an invention of the later Simonians, who transferred specifically Christian elements of faith to Simon. But this and similar things which were put into the mouth of Simon (that he was ἀνωτάτη τις δύναμις καὶ αὐτοῦ τοῦ τὸν κόσμον κτίσαντος Θεοῦ, Clem. Hom. ii. 22, 25; that he was the same who had appeared among the Jews as the Son, but had come among the Samaritans as the Father, and among other nations as the Holy Spirit, Iren. i. 23), and were wonderfully dilated on by opponents, point back to a relation of incarnation analogous to the incarnation of the Logos, under which the adherents of Simon conceived him. De Wette incorrectly denies this, referring the expression: “the great power of God,” to the notion of an angel. This is too weak; all the ancient accounts concerning Simon, as well as concerning his alleged companion Helena, the all-bearing mother of angels and powers, betoken a Messianic part which he played; to which also the name ὁ Ἑστώς, by which he designated himself according to the Clementines, points. This name (hardly correctly explained by Ritschl, altkath. Kirche, p. 228 f., from ἀναστήσει, Deuteronomy 18:15; Deuteronomy 18:18) denotes the imperishable and unchangeable. See, besides, concerning Simon and his doctrine according to the Clementines, Uhlhorn, die Homil. u. Recognit. des Clemens Rom. p. 281 ff.; Zeller, p. 159 ff.; and concerning the entire diversified development of the old legends concerning him, Müller in Herzog’s Encykl. XIV. p. 391 ff.; concerning his doctrine of the Aeons and Syzygies, Philosoph. Orig. vi. 7 ff. According to Baur and Zeller, the magician never existed at all; and the legend concerning him, which arose from Christian polemics directed against the Samaritan worship of the snn-god, the Oriental Hercules (Baal-Melkart), is nothing else than a hostile travestie of the Apostle Paul and his antinomian labours. Comp. also Hilgenfeld, d. clement. Recognit. p. 319 f.; Volckmar in the theol. Jahrb. 1856, p. 279 ff. The Book of Acts has, in their view, admitted this legend about Simon, but has cut off the reference to Paul. Thus the state of the case is exactly reversed. The history of Simon Magus in our passage was amplified in the Clementines in an anti-Pauline interest. The Book of Acts has not cut off the hostile reference to Paul; but the Clementines have added it, and accordingly have dressed out the history with a view to combat Paulinism and Gnosticism, indeed have here and there caricatured Paul himself as Simon. We set to work unhistorically, if we place the simple narratives of the N. T. on a parallel with later historical excrescences and disfigurements, and by means of the latter attack the former as likewise fabulous representations. Our narrative contains the historical germ, from which the later legends concerning Simon Magus have luxuriantly developed themselves; the Samaritan worship of the sun and moon has nothing whatever to do with the history of Simon.

Expositor's Greek Testament

Acts 8:10. ἡ δύναμις το͂υ Θεοῦ ἡ μεγάλη: in R.V. the power of God which is called (καλουμένη) Great, see above, critical notes. T.R. may have omitted the word because it appeared unsuitable to the context; but it could not have been used in a depreciatory sense by the Samaritans, as if to intimate that the person claimed was the so-called “Great,” since they also gave heed to Simon. On the other hand it has been argued that the title “Great” is meaningless in this relation, for every divine power might be described by the same epithet (so Wendt, in loco, and Blass: “mirum maxime ἡ καλ. quasi δύναμις Θ. μικρά quoque esse possit”. This difficulty leads Blass in his notes to introduce the solution proposed by Klostermann, Problem im Aposteltexte, pp. 15–20 (1883), and approved by Wendt, Zöckler, Spitta, and recently by Zahn, Einleitung in das N. T., ii. 420; see also Salmon’s remarks in Hermathena, xxi., p. 232), vix., that μεγάλη is not a translation of the attribute “great” רב, but rather a transcription of the Samaritan word מגלי or מגלא meaning qui revelat (cf. Hebrew גָּלָה, Chaldean גְּלָא גְּלַה, to reveal). The explanation would then be that in contrast to the hidden essence of the Godhead, Simon was known as its revealing power. Nestle however (see Knabenbauer in loco) objects on the ground that καλουμένη is not read at all in many MSS. But apart from Klostermann’s explanation the revised text might fairly mean that amongst the “powers” of God (cf. the N.T. use of the word δυνάμεις in Romans 8:38, 1 Peter 3:22, and cf. Book of Enoch lxi. 10) Simon was emphatically the one which is called great, i.e., the one prominently great or divine. The same title was assigned to him in later accounts, cf. Irenæus, i., 23 (Clem. Hom., ii., 22; Clem. Recog., i., 72; ii, 7; Tertullian, De Præscr., xlvi.; Origen, c. Celsum, v.). But whatever the claims made by Simon himself, or attributed to him by his followers, we need not read them into the words before us. The expression might mean nothing more than that Simon called himself a great (or revealing) angel of God, since by the Samaritans the angels were regarded as δυνάμεις, powers of God (cf. Edersheim, Jesus the Messiah, i., 402, note 4, and De Wette, Apostelgeschichte, p. 122, fourth edition). Such an explanation is far more probable than the attribution to the Samaritans of later Gnostic and philosophical beliefs, while it is a complete answer to Overbeck, who argues that as the patristic literature about Simon presupposes the emanation theories of the Gnostics so the expression in the verse before us must be explained in the same way, and that thus we have a direct proof that the narrative is influenced by the Simon legend. We may however readily admit that Simon’s teaching may have been a starting-point for the later Gnostic developments, and so far from Acts 8:10 demanding a Gnostic system as a background, we may rather see in it a glimpse of the genesis of the beliefs which afterwards figure so prominently in the Gnostic schools (Nösgen, Apostelgeschichte, in loco, and p. 186, and see McGiffert, Apostolic Age, p. 99, and “Gnosticism,” Dict. of Christ. Biog., ii., 680). On the close connection between the Samaritans and Egypt and the widespread study of sorcery amongst the Egyptian Samaritans see Deissmann, Bibelstudien, pp. 18, 19. In Hadrian’s letter to Servianus we find the Samaritans in Egypt described, like the Jews and Christians there, as all astrologers, sooth sayers and quacks (Schürer, Jewish People, div. ii., vol. ii., p. 230 E.T.): no doubt an exaggeration, as Deissmann says, but still a proof that amongst these Egyptian Samaritans magic and its kindred arts were widely known. In a note on p. 19 Deissmann gives an interesting parallel to Acts 8:10, ἐπικαλοῦμαί σε τὴν μεγίστην δύναμιν τὴν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ (ἄλλοι· τὴν ἐν τῇ ἄρκτῳ) ὑπὸ Κυρίου Θεοῦ τεταγμένην (Pap. Par. Bibl. nat., 1275 ff.; Wessely, i., 76) (and he also compares Gospel of Peter, Acts 8:19, ἡ δύναμίς μου (2)). The expression according to him will thus have passed from its use amongst the Samaritans into the Zauber-litteratur of Egypt.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

10. This man is the great power of God] The A. V. translates the Tex. Rec., but the best MSS. give, This man is the power of God that is called great. We can see from the language of the N. T. that “powers” was a word current to express angelic or heavenly influences (Romans 8:38; 1 Peter 3:22); and without assuming such a partition of the celestial host as is seen in the later Alexandrine writings we can understand the thought of these Samaritans that in Simon they had an incarnation of Divine power, which deserved the title of great preeminently.

Bengel's Gnomen

Acts 8:10. Ἀπὸ μικροῦ ἓως μεγάλου, from the least to the greatest) In ordinary cases the sense of the common people and that of the upper classes are different. The proverbial phrase, from small to great, is wide extended in meaning; according to the materials that form the substratum, it is contracted to this or that kind of the great and the small.—λέγοντες, saying) in their acclamations.—ἡ δύναμις, Power) The abstract, and that, with the article.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 10. - That power of God which is called Great for the great power of God, A.V. and T.R. That power of God, etc. The revised text inserts καλουμένη before μεγάλη. Origen says of Simon that his disciples, the Simoniaus, called him "The Power of God." ('Contra Cels.,' lib. 5:62, where see Delarue's note). According to Tertullian ('De Anima'), he gave himself out as the supreme Father, with other blasphemies. According to St. Jerome on Matthew 24:5, he speaks of himself in different writings as the Word of God, as the Paraclete, the Almighty, the Fullness of God. Acts 8:10

Vincent's Word Studies

The great power of God

The best texts add ἡ καλουμένη, which is called, and render that power of God which is called great. They believed that Simon was an impersonated power of God, which, as the highest of powers, they designated as the great.