Jesus had just promised the Holy Ghost. Gill says His resurrection, His talk of the kingdom of God, and His order to wait at Jerusalem revived the apostles' hopes. Barnes explains that they "had entertained the common opinions of the Jews about the temporal dominion of the Messiah," expecting Him to reign as a prince and free them from Rome. Gill notes that the kingdom had been taken from the Jews and "Judea was reduced to a Roman province." So their question was not whether, but when: "at this time." Matthew Henry finds "two things were amiss in this question": their expectation of the thing itself, and their enquiry concerning the time of it.

Jesus did not give them a date: "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power" (Acts 1:7). He turned them to what they would receive and do: "But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth" (Acts 1:8). Then, "while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight" (Acts 1:9).

"Restore again" is one Greek verb, apokathistemi, and the interlinear shows it in the present tense: "are you restoring." Barnes defines restore as "Bring back; put into its former situation," and explains that Judea was once governed by its own kings and laws but was now subject to the Romans.

Barnes distinguishes the two words in Jesus' reply: "times" denotes any time or period that is indefinite or uncertain, while "seasons" denotes a fixed, definite time. Together they seem, he says, to denote the periods of all classes of future events, and he points to Mark 13:32, where no man knows that day, "neither the Son, but the Father." Gill takes this as the time of the coming of the Son of man, when He will set up His kingdom in a more glorious manner, or when the kingdom shall be restored to Israel.

This question shows something about God's character: the Father holds the times "in his own power" (Acts 1:7). Matthew Henry writes, "The knowledge of it is reserved to God as his prerogative." Jesus answered the apostles, but He did not let their timetable set the agenda.

Barnes and Henry both see a mistaken hope here. Barnes calls it "prejudice in favour of erroneous opinions" and notes that Jesus' answer speaks only to the time, not to whether their views were correct. Henry is sharper: "Christ came to set up his own kingdom, and that a kingdom of heaven, not to restore the kingdom to Israel, an earthly kingdom." Either way, Jesus' answer moves their eyes from a date to a task. The power of the Holy Ghost and a witness reaching "unto the uttermost part of the earth" (Acts 1:8) is what the rest of Acts goes on to describe, beginning on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:4, 41).