v. 14-20, where the image of the vintage and winepress, in
particular, is borrowed from Joel; see iv. 12, 13. The objects of
judgment are there the heathen nations on account of their hostility to
the people of God, who, by Christ, and by the outpouring of the Spirit
procured by Him, have fully attained to that dignity. Nor is the
judgment there an isolated one. On the contrary, all which, in history,
is realized in an entire series of judicial acts, to be at last
consummated in the final judgment, is there comprehended in one great
harvest--in one great vintage.

We have still to make a few remarks upon the quotation in Acts ii. 16
ff. Nothing but narrow-mindedness and prejudice could deny that Peter
found, in the miracle of Pentecost, an actual fulfilment of the
promise in vers. 1 and 2. This becomes probable, not only from the
circumstance, that the reference of this prophecy to the Messianic
time was the prevailing one among the Jews (compare the passages in
_Schoettgen_, S. 413), but also from the translation of [Hebrew:
aHri-kN] by [Greek: en tais eschatais hemerais], by which, in the New
Testament, the Messianic time is always designated. To this must
also be added the express declaration in ver. 39, that the promise
was unto the generation then present. How could Peter have uttered
such a declaration, [Pg 348] if his view had been that the promise had
found its fulfilment in a time long gone past? At the same time, it
is equally certain, that Peter was so far from considering all the
riches of the promise to be completely exhausted by that Pentecostal
miracle, that he rather considered it to be only a beginning of the
fulfilment,--a beginning, indeed, which implies the consummation, as
the germ contains the tree. This is quite obvious from ver. 38: [Greek:
metanoesate kai baaptistheto hekastos humon.... kai lepsesthe ten
dorean tou hagiou pneumatos]. How could Peter, referring to the
prophecy, promise the gift of the Holy Spirit, promised in the prophecy
to those who should be converted, if the prophecy was already
completely fulfilled? But it is still more apparent from ver. 39:
[Greek hUmin gar estin he epangelia kai tois teknois humon, kai pasi
tois eis makran, hosousan proskalesetai Kurios ho Theos hemon.] The
question is, who are to be understood by those [Greek: eis makran]? No
one could have doubted that the Gentiles are thereby to be understood,
unless two things altogether heterogeneous had been confoun