What Does Acts 2:27 Mean?

(27) **Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell.**—Literally, *in Hades.* (See Note on Matthew 11:23.) As interpreted by St. Peter’s words in his Epistle (1Peter 3:19), the words conveyed to his mind the thought which has been embodied in the article of the “Descent into Hell,” or *Hades, *in the Apostle’s Creed. The death of Christ was an actual death, and while the body was laid in the grave, the soul passed into the world of the dead, the *Sheol* of the Hebrews, the *Hades* of the Greeks, to carry on there the redemptive work which had been begun on earth. (Comp. Acts 13:34-37, and Ephesians 4:9.) Here again we have an interesting coincidence with St. Peter’s language (1Peter 3:19), as to the work of Christ in preaching to the “spirits in prison.” **Neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.**—The word for “holy” is different from that commonly so rendered, and conveys the idea of personal piety and godliness rather than consecration. As the Psalmist used the words, we may think of them as expressing the confidence that he himself, as loving, and beloved of, God, would be delivered from destruction, both now and hereafter. St. Peter had learnt to interpret the words as having received a higher fulfilment. Christ was, in this sense, as well as in that expressed by the other word, “the Holy One” of God (Mark 1:24; Luke 4:34). In Hebrews 7:26; Revelation 15:4; Revelation 16:5, this very word is applied to Christ. The Hebrew text of Psalm 16:10 presents the various reading of “the holy ones,” as if referring to the “saints that are upon the earth,” of Acts 2:3. The LXX., which St. Peter follows, gives the singular, which is indeed essential to his argument, and this is also the reading of the Masoretic text. The Greek word for “corruption” ranges in its meaning from “decay” to “destruction.” The Hebrew to which it answers is primarily the “pit” of the grave, and not “corruption,” or “wasting away.”