Howbeit, many of them which heard the word
The doctrine of the Gospel, preached by Peter and John:
believed;
the report of it, and in Christ, as risen from the dead, which
was the sum and substance of it: and this they did,
notwithstanding the opposition made by the priests, the captain
of the temple, and the Sadducces, and the violence they used to
the apostles; for though they kept their persons in hold, they
could not stop the free course of the word, which ran and was
glorified:
and the number of the men was about five
thousand;
or "was five thousand", as the Alexandrian copy, the Vulgate
Latin, and Ethiopic versions read; that is the number, not of the
hearers, but "of them that believed", was so many; and so read
the Arabic and Ethiopic versions: there were so many persons
converted at this time; for this number does not include the
three thousand that were converted under the first sermon, but
regards those who now became true believers, and were added to
the church; so that there were now eight thousand persons added
to it; a great increase indeed! now had Christ the dew of his
youth, and now were these fishermen fishers of men indeed: that
our Lord's feeding five thousand men with five barley loaves and
two fishes, should have any regard to the conversion of these
five thousand men, is but a conceit.
