Translation
And a voice came to him, “After you have risen, PETER, kill and eat.”
Go to footnote numberParaphrase
Then a voice came to him [from heaven], “You, SOLID AS A ROCK, get up, kill any of these animals and eat them.”
Footnotes
1
The implication here is that he should kill and eat any of those in the sheet. Peter could have chosen just some of the clean animals because the sheet seemed to contain both clean and unclean, but the intent of the statement was that all these animals should be considered together, without distinctions.
SOLID-AS-A-ROCK WAS BEING ASKED TO BE SOLID IN A DIFFERENT WAY
Peter, which means “solid-as-a-rock”, was consistently faithful to this regulation of the Law and to the principle it taught about not mixing with Gentiles. He was probably faithful to most other regulations of the Law as well. But now God was asking him to make a change, a big change. It could have seemed that God was asking him to not be rock-like, but that was not the case. Simon means “one who hears”, so either of his names would have fit this situation. But God used the name Peter because He wanted to highlight Peter’s solidness and show that He was not asking him to stop being solid. What He was asking was that Peter be willing to be solid in a different way, to learn a new principle (see note after verse 16 about that new principle).