Peter's Vision

11 He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. 12 It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air. 13 Then a voice told him, "Get up, Peter. Kill and eat."

14 "Surely not, Lord!" Peter replied. "I have never eaten anything impure or unclean."

15 The voice spoke to him a second time, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean."





Act 10:14
Surely not, Lord, [meedamoos, kurie]—The negative meedamoos calls for the optative eiee, "may it not be," or the imperative estoo, let it be." It is not oudamoos, a blunt refusal ("I shall not do it."). And yet it is more than a mild protest as Page and Furneaux argue. It is a polite refusal with a reason given. Peter recognizes the invitation to kill thuson the unclean animals as from the Lord kurie, but Peter declines it three times.

I have never eaten anything, [hoti oudepote efagon pan]—Second aorist active indicative, "I never did anything like this and I shall not do it now." The use of pan, "everything," with oudepote, "never," is like the Hebrew lo' . . . kol, though a similar idiom appears in the vernacular Koine (Robertson, Grammar, p. 752).

Robertson's New Testament Word Pictures

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of International Bible Society.

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