Acts 10:9-16 On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew near to the city, Peter went up on the housetop to pray about the sixth hour:… Doubtless Peter remembered that remarkable parable of Jesus (Mark 7:14-19) of which he and his brother disciples had once asked the explanation. Jesus in few words, but with both of the emphatic formulae which He adopted to arrest special attention, had said, "There is nothing from without a man entering into him which can defile him." What He had proceeded to say — that what truly defiles a man is that which comes out of him — was easy enough to understand, and was a truth of deep meaning, but so difficult had it been to grasp the first half of the clause that they had asked Him to explain a parable which seemed to be in direct contradiction to the Mosaic Law. Expressing His astonishment at their want of insight, He had shown them that what entered into a man from without did but become a part of his material organism, entering "not into the heart, but into the belly, and so passing into the draught." "This He said" — as now for the first times perhaps, flashed with full conviction into the mind of Peter — "making all meats pure," as he proceeded afterwards to develop those weighty truths about the inward character of all real pollution, and the genesis of all crime from evil thoughts, which convey so solemn a warning. To me it seems that it was the trance and vision of Joppa which first made Peter realise the true meaning of Christ in one of those few distinct utterances in which He had intimated the coming annulment of the Mosaic Law. It is doubtless due to the fact that Peter, as the informant of Mark in writing his Gospel, and the sole ultimate authority for this vision in the Acts, is the source of both narratives, that we owe the hitherto unnoticed circumstance that the two verbs "cleanse" and "profane" — both in a peculiarly pregnant sense — are the two most prominent words in the narrative of both events. (Archdeacon Farrar.) Parallel Verses KJV: On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour: |
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