Atos 2

1 When the day of Pentecost had come,*This was no more than eight days after the Ascension. In John 14:18 the Lord had said, "I will not leave you orphans"—they only had to wait one week for the Holy Spirit; albeit on resurrection night Jesus had breathed on them at least a portion of the Holy Spirit (John 20:22). they were all together with one purpose.*See 1:14 above. What was that ‘purpose’? I assume that they were obeying the Lord’s command, they were waiting for ‘the promise of the Father’, the baptism with Holy Spirit. 4 And they were all filled with Holy Spirit and began to speak different languages,*These are human languages, spoken somewhere on earth, as the following context makes clear. as the Spirit was granting to them to speak out.*"Speak out" translates a different word than the "speak" in the middle of the verse; the idea is to proclaim or project the voice. Notice that the speaking was controlled by the Spirit. The Text is emphatic that they were all filled, but they did not all start spouting languages; the languages were directed to specific hearers, as the following context makes clear. As the crowd began to gather the Spirit presumably sent the disciples (probably the same 120, at least) out to mingle with the people, and the Spirit proclaimed ‘the great works of God’ to each one in his mother tongue, using the mouths of the disciples. But there would also need to be a miracle in the ear of each hearer, to filter his own language out from the welter of sound (many languages being proclaimed at the same time). I would imagine that this activity lasted at least 10 or 15 minutes.