Peter’s Vision Explained by Peter

In Genesis, Pharaoh dreams of seven fat cows and seven thin ones coming up out of the Nile, and Joseph tells him what the dream means: “The seven good cows are seven years” (Genesis 41:26). Nobody in Egypt concluded that the dream was about cattle. Pharaoh did not reform his herds. He stored grain, because the cows stood for something else, and the man God gave to interpret the dream said what that was.

Keep Joseph in mind as we climb onto a rooftop in Joppa. Here is the claim.

“Peter was told in a vision to kill and eat unclean animals. God told him that what He has cleansed is no longer unclean. After Acts 10, the food laws were over.”

This time we read the whole account, and we let Peter tell us what it meant.

The Vision

Acts 10:9-16 On the next day, as they were on their way and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hora ὥρα ho'-rah(that-hour) to pray. But he became hungry and was desiring to eat; but while they were making preparations, he fell into a trance; and he saw the sky opened up, and an object like a great sheet coming down, lowered by four corners to the ground, and there were in it all kinds of four-footed animals of the earth and wild beasts and crawling creatures and birds of the air. A voice came to him, "Get up, Peter, kill and eat!" But Peter said, "By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything koinos κοινός koy-nos'(common, worldly) or akathartos ἀκάθαρτος ak-ath'-ar-tos(impure, unclean)." Again a voice came to him a second time, "What God has cleansed, no longer consider koinos(common, worldly)." This happened three times, and again the object was taken up into the sky.

“Get up, Peter, kill and eat!” If you read only that line, the meaning seems obvious.

Peter’s answer, however, was “By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything koinos(common, worldly) or akathartos(impure, unclean).” He said this years after the resurrection, years after the Spirit came at Pentecost, and years after he himself had asked Yeshua to explain Mark 7. If Mark 7 had made all animals food, Peter could not have said “never.”

Both words we examined in Chapter 21 are here. One is koinos, common, the word the elders’ tradition used for unwashed hands and for Gentiles. The other is akathartos, what the Torah itself declares unclean. Peter names both.

The voice, however, replies with only one of them: “What God has cleansed, no longer consider koinos(common, worldly).” It speaks about koinos and says nothing about akathartos. Three times the sheet came down, three times the same exchange took place, and three times the voice spoke only of what is common.

The Meaning Arrives at the Gate

Peter did not decide on his own what the vision meant, and he did not get up and go looking for something to eat. He was puzzled, and while he was still thinking it over, the meaning came knocking.

Acts 10:17-20 Now while Peter was greatly perplexed in himself as to what the vision which he had seen might mean, behold, the men who had been sent by Cornelius had asked directions to Simon's house and appeared at the gate; and calling out, they were asking whether Simon who was also called Peter was staying there. While Peter was reflecting on the vision, the pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit) said to him, "Behold, men are looking for you. But get up, go downstairs and accompany them diakrino διακρίνω dee-ak-ree'-no(middle, passive: without-wavering), for I have sent them Myself."

While Peter was still perplexed, the men sent by Cornelius, a Roman centurion, stood at the gate, and the Spirit told him to go down and accompany them. When Peter told the story later, he put the timing plainly: “at that moment three men appeared at the house” (Acts 11:11). Three times the sheet came down, and at that moment three men arrived.

God was not teaching Peter about his meal. He was sending him to a house.

Peter Interprets His Own Vision

At Cornelius’s house Peter does what Joseph did in Egypt: he says what the vision meant.

Acts 10:28 And he said to them, "You yourselves know how athemitos ἀθέμιτος ath-em'-ee-tos(lawless) it is for a man who is a Jew to associate with a foreigner or to visit him; and yet God has shown me that I should not call any man koinos(common, worldly) or akathartos(impure, unclean).

He says “any man,” not any animal. The vision was about people.

Look, too, at the rule Peter had grown up with. It was “athemitos(lawless),” he says, for a Jew “to associate with a foreigner or to visit him.” The Greek word athemitos (ἀθέμιτος) speaks of what is not permitted, a taboo. That rule is not found in the Torah. The ban on entering a Gentile’s house was a tradition of men, of the same kind we met in Mark 7. God took it down, and Peter says so.

Then he says what the vision meant.

Acts 10:34-35 Opening his mouth, Peter said, "I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears Him and works dikaiosyne δικαιοσύνη dik-ah-yos-oo'-nay(righteousness) is welcome to Him.

That is the lesson of the sheet. It was not a new menu but a door opened to the nations.

Back in Jerusalem

When Peter returned to Jerusalem, the believers there raised a complaint, and its wording matters.

Acts 11:2-3 And when Peter came up to Jerusalem, those who were circumcised took issue with him, saying, "You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them."

The objection was not about what Peter ate. It was about whom he ate with.

Peter answered by explaining the whole story to them “in orderly sequence” (Acts 11:4), including his own reply to the voice: “nothing koinos(common, worldly) or akathartos(impure, unclean) has ever entered my mouth” (Acts 11:8). He does not add, “and then I learned to eat it.” He tells them that the Holy Spirit fell on the Gentiles “just as He did upon us at the beginning” (Acts 11:15). And this is how the church in Jerusalem understood it.

Acts 11:18 When they heard this, they quieted down and glorified God, saying, "Well then, God has granted to the Gentiles also the metanoia μετάνοια met-an'-oy-ah(repentance, spiritual domain) that leads to zoe ζωή dzo-ay'(life)."

They did not say, “God has changed what we eat.” They said that the Gentiles had been let in.

Years later, at the council in Jerusalem, Peter said exactly what God had cleansed. God “made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their kardia καρδία kar-dee'-ah(heart, soul-domain)s by faith” (Acts 15:9). In the words of the man who saw the vision, what God cleansed were the hearts of the nations.

At Antioch

One more verse is often read alongside Peter’s vision. Paul tells the Galatians what happened when Peter came to Antioch.

Galatians 2:12 For prior to the coming of certain men from James, he used to eat with the nations; but when they came, he began to withdraw and hold himself aloof, fearing the party of the circumcision.

Some take “he used to eat with the nations” to mean that Peter had started eating what the nations ate. The verse, however, tells us with whom Peter ate, not what he ate. It also tells us what changed when the men from James arrived: “he began to withdraw and hold himself aloof.” The issue was the table and the people around it, Jews and Gentile believers eating together.

Two verses later comes a sentence quoted even more often.

Galatians 2:14 But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the aletheia ἀλήθεια al-ay'-thi-a(truth) of the good news, I said to Peter in front of all, "If you, being a Jew, live like the nations and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the nations to live like Jews?"

Some read “If you, being a Jew, live like the nations and not like the Jews” as proof that Peter had given up the food laws, since to live like the nations, they say, is to eat what the nations eat. But verse 14 is Paul’s answer to what verse 12 describes, and verse 12 has already told us what Peter was doing: “he used to eat with the nations.” The Greek verb is synesthio συνεσθίω soon-es-thee'-o, to eat with. Then, when the men from James came, he drew back from that table. And Paul’s charge concerns what Peter’s drawing back did to the believers from the nations: “how is it that you compel the nations to live like Jews?”

Not one verse of Galatians 2:12-14 says what was on the table. No animal is named, pork or any other. Chapter 30 of Book 2 looked at this same scene to see what Paul meant by what he tore down (Galatians 2:18).

Eating with the nations was the very thing the vision had taught Peter to do. In Caesarea he had walked into a Gentile’s house. At Antioch, out of fear, he drew back from the same fellowship, and Paul opposed him for it.

Two Readings

Joseph said that the cows were years, and Peter said that the animals were people. In both cases the one who received the meaning told us what it was, and in neither case did anyone change what was on the table.

Peter’s two words stay with us a little longer. One of them, koinos, appears three times in a single verse of Paul’s letter to the Romans, in a chapter where the other word never appears at all. And the question in that chapter is not pig or sheep. It is meat or vegetables.