Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Acts 21:39
But Paul said, I am a man [which] [am] a Jew of Tarsus, [a city] in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city: and, I beseech thee, suffer me to speak unto the people.
39. But Paul said, I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus ] The A. V. does not often follow the Greek so closely as this. And here it is better to read with the Rev. Ver., “ I am a Jew of Tarsus in Cilicia ” (see Act 6:9, notes).
a citizen of no mean city ] Tarsus was the metropolis of Cilicia, and a city remarkable for its culture, and the zeal of its inhabitants for philosophic studies.
and people ] An objection has been here raised that it is extremely improbable that the chief captain could have held this conversation with St Paul amid the tumult, and also that he would have granted permission to speak to a man whom he had just taken as his prisoner, and whom he afterwards arranges to examine by scourging (Act 22:24). But we have only to remember that the Apostle and his interlocutor were high up above the crowd, and so away from the noise; that the staircase crowded with soldiers, who could not rapidly be withdrawn because they were restraining the multitude, made some delay absolutely unavoidable, and that, added to this was the surprise of the chief captain that his prisoner could speak Greek, and we have enough warrant for accepting the story as it is here told. Moreover the Greek which the Apostle used was of a very polished character, shewing the education and refinement of the speaker, and making good his claim to respect.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
A Jew of Tarsus – A Jew by birth.
Of no mean city – Not obscure, or undistinguished. He could claim an honorable birth, so far as the place of his nativity was concerned. See the notes on Act 9:11. Tarsus was much celebrated for its learning, and was at one time the rival of Alexandria and Athens. Xenophon calls it a great and flourishing city. Josephus (Antiq., book 2, chapter 6, section 6) says that it was the metropolis, and most renowned city among them (the Cilicians).
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Act 21:39
Paul said, I am a man which am a citizen of no mean city.
Citizenship
1. Paul might well be proud of his birthplace, for historically, geographically, intellectually, and commercially it was no mean city. All that could be said about Tarsus can be said of many a modern town, and if as much cannot be said about that in which we live, still surely there are some features which may fill us with honourable pride. If this pride is at times chastened by the thought of its evils, let it be no fault of ours that we cannot claim to be citizens of no mean city.
2. This love of city has characterised and been the inspiration of some of the noblest of minds. Think how Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, were loved, and what this love wrought in their citizens–not to speak of modern instances.
3. We owe much to our city. It provides us with a home, means of subsistence, society, culture; all its trade, thought, and activity, in one way or another make for our good. Let us pay our debt–
I. By knowing our city. The crass ignorance of the average citizen of the place in which he lives is proverbial. Features which strike a stranger at once, names which challenge curiosity, historical facts which have contributed to the making of the nation, the great men who have lived or died in the vicinity–of all this he usually knows next to nothing. Of facts which have transpired, men who have flourished, things which command attention elsewhere, he has read and perhaps has seen in his travels. He can tell you what is worth seeing and what has happened in a continental city–but you inquire in vain about these if they lie within a few yards of his own door. This is not fair to our city, nor ourselves, nor our friends who come to visit us. Let us explore our city, study its history, inspect its ecclesiastical or secular monuments or institutions, examine into its relations past and present with other places, trace the origin of its customs, and thus many an evening will, without much effort, be spent in a pleasant and profitable way.
II. By working for our city.
1. By industry in our own business. Every article we sell enlarges by so much the area of its trade. This may not be a very powerful motive, since there is already one sufficiently strong. But it is an elevating one, and will lift trade out of the sordid selfishness into which it is so prone to sink.
2. By encouraging its trade. The habit of sending for nearly everything elsewhere is not a commendable one. Our fellow citizens have to live, and it is only by dealing with them that they can live. But things are dearer. Let there be more buyers at home and that will make them cheaper.
3. By interesting ourselves in its government. The number of citizens who fail here is appalling. No wonder, then, that the management of our towns falls into incompetent or unworthy hands. Not everyone, of course, can aspire to civic honours, but everyone can help to prevent those honours falling where they will be abused. Just think what depends on apathy or interest, on an unintelligent or enlightened public opinion–disease or health through bad or good drainage and water supply; inconvenience or comfort through the state of the roads, domestic appointments, etc.; heavy or light rates through waste or economy in finance.
4. By the support of intellectual or humanitarian institutions. Libraries, art galleries, baths, hospitals, etc.
III. By promoting religion in our city. This is the salt without which every other improvement will be but as a covering for corruption. We may promote this–
1. By personal piety, without which all religious effort will be deprived of a good deal of its value. The mere example which a Christian citizen sets at home, behind the counter, in the council chamber or elsewhere, is of incalculable worth.
2. By the godly upbringing of the citizens of the future. What is seen and heard in the nursery today will determine the character of our town five-and-twenty years hence.
3. By cordial support of and cooperation, with our own Church. Here principles are inculcated, the adoption of which makes our city mean or noble; and here bad citizens may be influenced for good.
4. By generous union with other Churches. It is the combined force of Christianity in any given town that tells. There should be no isolated or discordant voices when flagrant wrong is to be rectified, or obvious good to be encouraged. (J. W. Burn.)
Pauls birthplace
Caesar boasted of his native Rome; Lycurgus of Sparta; Virgil of Andes; Demosthenes of Athens; Archimedes of Syracuse; and Paul of Tarsus. I should suspect a man of base heartedness who had no feeling of complacency in regard to the place of his residence; who gloried not in its arts, behaviour, prosperity, embellishments, and its scientific attainments. Men never like a place where they have not behaved well. Swarthout did not like New York; nor Dr. Webster, Boston. Men who have free rides in prison vans never like the city that furnishes the vehicle. When I see in history Argos, Rhodes, Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, and several other cities claiming Homer, I conclude that Homer behaved well. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 39. I am a man which am a Jew] A periphrasis for, I am a Jew. See Clarke on Ac 7:2.
Of Tarsus – no mean city] In Clarke’s notes on “Ac 9:11“, I have shown that Tarsus was a city of considerable importance, and in some measure a rival to Rome and Athens; and that, because of the services tendered to the Romans by the inhabitants, Julius Caesar endowed them with all the rights and privileges of Roman citizens. When St. Paul calls it no mean city, he speaks a language that was common to those who have had occasion to speak of Tarsus. XENOPHON, Cyri Anabas. i., calls it, , a great and flourishing city. JOSEPHUS, Ant. lib. i. cap. 6, sec. 6, says that it was ‘ , the metropolis and most renowned city among them (the Cilicians.) And AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS, xiv. 8, says, Ciliciam Tarsus nobilitat, urbs perspicabilis: “Tarsus, a very respectable city; adorns Cilicia.”
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
No mean city; it being the metropolis, or chief city, in Cilicia, built by Perseus, as some think; howsoever, having the privilege of the Roman freedom; as Act 22:28.
I beseech thee: St. Paul begs leave to speak unto the people, that he might not seem to affect popularity, or to be guilty of any insurrection or tumult. Thus he had leave also of Agrippa, before that he made that famous apology, Act 26:1.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
39. a citizen of no mean city(Seeon Ac 16:37).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
But Paul said, I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus,…. And not that Egyptian; he was not of that country, much less that man; but a Jew, both by birth and religion; he was born of Jewish parents, and brought up in the Jewish religion; though his native place was Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, where it is placed by Pliny n, Ptolomy o, and Mela p; and is by some thought to be the same with the Tarshish of the Old Testament:
a citizen of no mean city; Pliny q calls it a free city, and Solinus r says it is the mother, or chief of cities, and Curtius s speaks of it as a very opulent one; which when Alexander drew near to with his army, the inhabitants of it set fire to, that he might not possess their riches; which he understanding, sent Parmenio to prevent it: through this city, as the same historian, in agreement with Pliny and others, observes, ran the river Cydnus; and it being summer time when Alexander was here, and very hot weather, and being covered with dust and sweat, he put off his clothes, and cast himself into the river to wash himself; but as soon as he was in, he was seized with such a numbness of his nerves, that had he not been immediately taken out by his soldiers, and for the extraordinary care of his physician, he had at once expired. Josephus t calls this city the most famous of the cities in Gallicia; and derives it, and the whole country, from Tarshish, the grandson of Japheth, Ge 10:4 his words are,
“Tharsus gave name to the Tharsians, for so Cilicia was formerly called, of which this is an evidence; for the most famous of the cities with them, and which is the metropolis, is called Tarsus; Theta being changed into Tau for appellation sake.”
Though some say it was built by Perseus, the son of Jupiter and Danae, and called Tharsus, of the hyacinth stone, which is said to be found about it: others think it was so called, , because the places of this country were first dried up after the flood: it was not only a city of stately buildings, as it was repaired by Sardanapalus, and increased after the times of Alexander; but there was a famous academy in it, which, for men of learning, exceeded Athens and Alexandria u; though these exceeded that in number of philosophers: here it is thought lived Aratus the poet, from whom the apostle cites a passage, in Ac 17:28 and of this place was the famous Chrysippus, who is called , “a Tarsian” w, as the apostle is here. Hermogenes, a very celebrated rhetorician, some of whose works are still extant, came from hence x. Jerom y reports it as a tradition, that the parents of the Apostle Paul were of Giscalis, a town in Judea; which with the whole province being destroyed by the Romans, they removed to Tarsus, a city of Cilicia, whither Paul when a young man followed them; but certain it is, that the apostle was born there, as he himself says, in Ac 22:3. Ignatius, in z the “second” century, writing to the church at Tarsus, calls them citizens and disciples of Paul; citizens, because he was of this city; and disciples, because of the same faith with him; and very likely the first materials of the church in this place were converts of his; since it is evident that he went hither after he was a preacher; see Ac 9:30.
And I beseech thee suffer me to speak unto the people; first he desired to speak with the captain, and that was in order to obtain leave to speak to the people; and which he asks in a very handsome and submissive manner, and hopes to have his request granted him, since he was not the person he took him for, but was a Jew by birth, and a citizen of a very considerable Roman city; and was not a mean, sordid, vagabond creature, nor need he fear that he would sow any discord and sedition among the people.
n Nat. Hist. l. 5. c. 27. o Geograph. l. 5. c. 8. p De orbis situ, l. 1. c. 13. q Ib. ut supra. (Nat. Hist. l. 5. c. 27.) r Polyhist. c. 51. s Hist. l. 3. c. 4. t Antiqu. l. 1. c. 6. sect. 1. u Strabo, Geograph. l. 14. w Laert. Vit. Philosoph. l. 7. x Vid. Fabricii Bibl. Graec. l. 4. c. 31. sect. 4. 5. y Catalog. Script. Eccles. sect. 15. fol. 90. G. & Comment. in Philemon. ver. 23. Tom. 9. fol. 116. L. z Ep. ad Tarsenses, p. 75.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
I am ( ). In contrast with the wild guess of Lysias Paul uses and . He tells briefly who he is:
a Jew () by race,
of Tarsus in Cilicia ( ) by country, belonging to Tarsus (this adjective only here and Ac 9:11), and proud of it, one of the great cities of the empire with a great university.
A citizen of no mean city ( ). Litotes again, “no mean” (, old adjective, unmarked, privative and , mark, insignificant, here only in the N.T.). This same litotes used by Euripides of Athens (Ion 8). But Paul calls himself a citizen () of Tarsus. Note the “effective assonance” (Page) in . Paul now () makes his request () of Lysias.
Give me leave ( ). First aorist active imperative of , old and common verb to turn to, to permit, to allow. It was a strange request and a daring one, to wish to speak to this mob howling for Paul’s blood.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
Mean [] . Lit., without a mark or token [] . Hence used of uncoined gold or silver : of oracles which give no intelligible response : of inarticulate voices : of disease without distinctive symptoms. Generally, as here, undistinguished, mean. There is a conscious feeling of patriotism in Paul ‘s expression.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) “But Paul said, I am a man which am a Jew,” (eipen de ho Paulos ego anthropos men eimi loudoios) “Then Paul responded, I am indeed a man (who is) a Jew,” of the stock of Israel and tribe of Benjamin, Php_3:5. He described himself as an Hebrew of the Hebrews,” racially and nationally, Rom 9:1-3; Rom 10:1-4; Rom 11:1. He was a Jew, not an Egyptian.
2) “Of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia,” (Tarseus, tes Kilikias) “A Tarsian of Cilicia,” Act 9:11; Act 9:30; Act 11:25; Act 22:3. It was remarkable for its culture, a renowned center of philosophic studies, a free city that chose its own magistrates and was governed by its own laws. It is now a city called Tersous, of some 30,000 people, a filthy, ruinous ill kept center.
3) “A citizen of no mean city: (ouk asemou poleos poletes) “A citizen not of (a mean or low class) city;” It afforded Paul emphatic civil rights and liberty that had been granted to the city under Mark Anthony, And Cilicia had been given the title of a metropolis (under Augustus) with special privileges.
4) “And I beseech thee,” (deomai de sou) “And I beg of or appeal to you,” captain Lysias. Having specifically identified himself in such a manner as to establish that he had certain rights of Roman granted civil liberties, Paul then appealed to Lysias for the liberty of speaking.
5) “Suffer me to speak unto the people.” (epitrepson moi lalesai pros ton laon) “Permit or allow me to speak to the people,” to the rabble crowd of Jews in the outer temple area.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
(39) A citizen of no mean city.The boast was quite a legitimate one. In addition to all its fame for culture, the town of Tarsus bore on its coins the word METROPOLIS-AUTONOMOS (Independent).
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
39. A citizen Implying a full possession of all the civil rights of a great free city.
No mean city The metropolis of Cilicia, rich by commerce, and noted for its schools of philosophy. It was open by good roads, to the north by the Cilician Gates, and into Palestine by the Syrian Gates. The graceful Greek, the honourable origin, and the impressive manner of the apostle, are producing their effect upon the chiliarch. He doubts his first impression that a criminal or culprit is before him; and, by the very boldness of Paul’s request, put with the unconscious air of conscious power, he is inspired with the idea that the prisoner may be able to appease and sway the angry mob, and explain his own mysterious case.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘But Paul said, “I am a Jew, of Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city, and I beg you, give me leave to speak to the people.”
Paul then informed him of who he really was, and did so with the intention of impressing him, for he wanted an opportunity to speak ‘A citizen of no mean city.’ This was an expression of pride in the importance of the city from which he came, and of which he was a respected citizen. Tarsus was famed for its university and its prominence. Thus as a responsible person he asked permission to speak to the crowds. Paul could never turn down an opportunity of proclaiming the Good News (it would be to both the crowds and the arresting soldiers).
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Act 21:39. A Jew of Tarsus, The inhabitants of Tarsus, (which city seems to have taken its name from Tarshish, the son of Javan, (Gen 10:4.) boasted extremely of their antiquity; and Strabo tells us, that they were so considerable on account of learning, as well as commerce, wealth, and grandeur, that they might dispute the prize with Athens and Alexandria. Tarsus was the metropolis of Cilicia.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Act 21:39-40 . I am indeed ( ) not the Egyptian, but a Jew from Tarsus (and so apprehended by thee through being confounded with another), yet I pray thee , etc.
] In his speech to the people Paul used the more honourable word (Schaefer, ad Long . p. 408). See Act 22:3 .
] See examples of this litotes in the designation of important cities, in Wetstein ad loc . Comp. Jacobs, ad Achill. Tat . p. 718. A conscious feeling of patriotism is implied in the expression.
. . .] See on Act 12:17 .
.] “Conticuere omnes intentique ora tenebant,” Virgil. Aen . ii. 1.
. .] thus not likewise in Greek, as in Act 21:37 , but in the Syro-Chaldaic dialect of the country (Act 1:9 ), in order, namely, to find a more favourable hearing with the people .
We may add, that the permission to speak granted by the tribune is too readily explainable from the unexpected disillusion which he had just experienced, Act 21:39 , to admit of its being urged as a reason against the historical character of the speech (Baur, Zeller), just as the silence which set in is explainable enough as the effect of surprise in the case of the mobile vulgus . And if the following speech, as regards its contents , does not enter upon the position of the speaker towards the law, it was, in presence of the prejudice and passion of the multitude, a very wise procedure simply to set forth facts , by which the whole working of the apostle is apologetically exhibited.
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
XV
PAUL’S EARLY LIFE BEFORE HE ENTERS THE NEW TESTAMENT STORY
Act 21:39
This discussion does not make much headway in the text book, but it covers an immense amount of territory in its facts and significance. This section is found in Goodwin’s Harmony of the Life of Paul, pages 15-17, and the theme is Paul’s history up to the time that he enters the New Testament story. Saul, now called Paul, a Jew, of the tribe of Benjamin, of the sect of the Pharisees, yet a freeborn Roman citizen, by occupation a tentmaker, by office a rabbi, and a member of the Sanhedrin, was born in the city of Tarsus, in the province of Cilicia, about the time of our Lord’s birth. Tarsus was situated on the narrow coast line of the eastern part of the Mediterranean, just under the great Taurus range of mountains, and on the beautiful river Cydnus, which has a cataract just before it reaches the city, and a fall, beautiful then and beautiful now, coming down into that fertile plain where the city goes into a fine harbor, which opens the city to the commerce of the world through the Mediterranean Sea. It was on the great Roman thoroughfare, which was one of the best roads in the world. There were two of these mountain ranges, one of them right up above the city through the Taurus range into the coast of Asia Minor, the other following the coast line, which leads into Syria. This is the way that the mountains came down close to the sea, making a certain point very precipitous, and there was a typical beach between those mountains and the sea. That road into Syria was called the Oriental way. Over the Roman thoroughfare passed the land traffic, travel and marching armies for centuries. It was in that pass that Alexander fought his first great battle against the Persians, and thus obtained an entrance into the East. It was through that pass that, marching westward, and before Alexander’s time, Xerxes the Great, the husband of Esther (mentioned in the Bible), marched his 5,000,000 men to invade Greece. I could mention perhaps fifty decisive battles in ancient history that were set and were successful conquests by preoccupation of that pass. That shows the strategical position of this city that it commanded the passes of the Taurus into Asia Minor, and the pass into Syria, and through its fine harbor came in touch with the commerce of the world on the Mediterranean Sea.
Paul says that it was “no mean city,” in size or in population. It was notable, (1) for its manufacture, that of weaving, particularly goat’s hair, for on that Taurus range lived goats with very long hair, and this was woven into ropes, tents, and things of that kind; (2) because it was the capital of the province of Cilicia; (3) because, under Rome, it was a free city, i.e., it had the management of its own internal affairs, which constituted a city a free city, like the free city of Bremer in the early history of Germany. Other cities would be under the feudal lords, but there were a number of cities free, and these elected their own burghers, and governed their own municipal matters a tremendous advantage.
Tarsus received from the Roman Emperor the privilege of being a free city. Keep these facts well in mind, especially and particularly as regards the land and sea commerce. (4) Because it possessed one of the three great world-famous universities. There were just three of them at that time: One at Tarsus; one at Alexandria, at the mouth of the Nile; and one at Athens. It was not like some other cities, remarkable for its great buildings, its public games and its works of art. You could see more fine buildings in Athens or in Ephesus or in Corinth than you had any right to look for in Tarsus. It celebrated no such games as were celebrated in the May festivals at Ephesus, and in the great Greek amphitheater in that city, or in such games as the Isthmian, celebrated in Corinth. It was not remarkable for any of these. Its popular religion was a low and mixed order of Oriental paganism. There is this difference between the Oriental and Occidental heathen the former in the East, and the latter at Rome, and the West. Ephesus had an Oriental religion, though it was a Greek city. Tarsus, too, was a Greek city, but was partly Phoenician and partly Syrian. There were more arts and intellectuality in western paganism than in the Oriental, which was low, bestial, sensual, in every way brutal, shameful, immodest, and outrageous. The Phoenicians, who had a great deal to do with establishing the city of Tarsus, had that brutal, low form of paganism. That infamous emperor, Sargon, celebrated in the Bible, the Oriental king of the original Nineveh, was worshiped in that city. There never lived a man that devoted himself more than he to luxury in its fine dress, gorgeous festivals, its gluttony, its drunkenness, its beastiality. Paul was born in that city, and he could look out any day and see the heathen that he has so well described in chapter 1 of the letter to the Romans.
Citizenship in a free city under Rome did not make one a Roman citizen, as did citizenship in Philippi, a colony. To be born in a free city did not make one a Roman citizen. It conferred upon its members, its own citizens, the right to manage their own municipal affairs. To be born in Philippi would make one a Roman citizen, because Philippi was a colony. The name of its citizens were still retained on the muster roll in the city of Rome. They had all the privileges of Roman citizenship. Their officers were Roman officers. They had processions, with the magistrates, and the lictors and with the bundles of rods. But there was nothing like that in Tarsus. The question came up in Paul’s lifetime, when the commander of a legion heard Paul claiming that be was a Roman citizen. This commander says that with a great sum of money he did purchase his citizenship in Rome. Paul says, “But I was freeborn.” If freeborn, how then could he have obtained it? In one of two ways: Before Christ was born, Pompey invaded Jerusalem, and took it. He was one of the first great triumvirate, with Julius Caesar and Marcus L. Crassus. Pompey’s field of labor was in the East, Caesar’s was in the West, and he (Pompey) took Jerusalem and led into slavery many Jews of the best families. When these slaves were brought to Rome, if they showed culture, social position, educational advantages, they were promoted to a high rank or office, among slaves; and if they particularly pleased their owners they were manumitted, either during the lifetime of their owner, or by will after his death. In this way many noble captives from all parts of the world were carried as slaves to Rome. They were first set free and then had conferred upon them the rights of Roman citizenship. It could have been that Cassius, who with Brutus, after the killing of Julius Caesar, combined against Mark Anthony, and Octavius (Augustus), who became the emperor and was reigning when Christ was born, captured this city of Tarsus and led many of its citizens into Rome as slaves. Paul’s grandfather, therefore, or his father, might have been led away captive to Rome, and through his high social position and culture may have been manumitted, and then received as a citizen. Necessarily it occurred before this boy’s time, because when he was born, he was born a Roman citizen. It could be transmitted, but he had not acquired it.
There is a difference between the terms Jew, Hebrew, Israelite, Hellenist, and a “Hebrew of the Hebrews.” All these are used by Paul and Luke in Acts. We get our word, “Hebrew” from Heber, an ancestor of Abraham. Literature shows that the descendants of Heber were Hebrews, and in the Old Testament Abraham is called “the Hebrew.” That was not the meaning of the word in New Testament times. We come to the New Testament meaning in Act 6 , which speaks of the ordination of deacons, and uses the word “Hebrew” in distinction from “Hellenist.” They both, of course, mean Jews. While a Hebrew in the New Testament usually lived in Palestine, but not necessarily, he was one who still spoke or was able to read the original Hebrew language and who practiced the strict Hebrew cult. A “Hellenist” was a Jew who had either been led into exile, or who, for the sake of trade, had gone into other nations, and settled among those people and had become liberalized, lost the use of the Hebrew tongue entirely, and neither spoke nor wrote the Hebrew language, but who spoke and wrote mainly in Greek. “Hellenist” is simply another term for “Greek.” Whether used in the New Testament Greek or the Hellenistic Greek, it means Jews living among Greek people, and who had acquired the language, and in the many respects had followed more liberal Greek customs. Then a Hebrew living in Palestine would not allow himself to be liberalized.
Paul lived out of Judea. He, his father, and indeed his grandfather, adhered strictly to all the distinguishing characteristics of the Hebrews. The “Israelite” and the “Jew” mean anybody descended from Jacob. “Israelite” commenced lower down in the descent. “Hebrew” gets its name from the ancestor of Abraham, but an Israelite was a descendant of Jacob. The distinction of “Jew” came a little later to those descendants of Jacob living in Judea. The “Hebrew of the Hebrews” means a Jew-who went to the greatest possible extreme in following the Hebrew language, cult, habits, training, and religion. He was an extremist among them.
Some people would suppose from Paul’s occupation tentmaking (he worked at that occupation, making tents with Aquila and Priscilla) that from this unskilled labor his family were low in the social position, and poor. The inference is wholly untenable. In the first place, every Jew had to have a trade, even though he were a millionaire, and Paul’s old teacher, Gamaliel, used this language: “Any kind of learning without a useful trade leads to sin.” Paul took up this trade because he lived at Tarsus. There anybody could go out and learn the trade of weaving ropes and check-cloth made out of the long hair of Mount Taurus goats. The trade would not simply satisfy the Jewish requirement, but a man could make his living by it. We see Paul a little later making his living just that way. Well for Paul that he knew something besides books.
I am more and more inclined to follow an industrial idea in systems of education. We have our schools and universities where the boys and girls learn a great deal about books, and the girl goes home and does not know how to make bread. She does not know how to rear a brood of chickens; she does not know how a house is to be kept clean, nor how to keep windows clean. The floors in the corners and in places under the beds and sofas are unswept. Boys come home that cannot make a hoe handle. They have no mechanical sense, no trade. They can neither make a pair of shoes nor a hat nor a pair of socks, nor anything they wear. And thus graduates of universities stand with their fingers in their mouths in the great byways of the world practically beggars not knowing how to do anything.
The Jews guarded against that. Let Paul fall on his feet anywhere, and withdraw from him every outside source of financial support, and he would say, “With these hands did I minister to my necessities.” He could go out and get a piece of work. He knew how to do it. All this is bearing on the social and financial position of Paul’s family. Everything indicates the high social position of his family, and that it occupied a high financial position. They did not take the children of the lowest abode and give them such an ecclesiastical training as Paul had. They did not educate them for the position of rabbi, nor let them take a degree in the highest theological seminary in the world. Paul’s family, then, was a good one.
Paul’s religious and educational advantages were on two distinct lines: Purely ecclesiastical or religious, and I can tell just exactly what it was. A little Hebrew boy five years old had to learn the Ten Commandments, and the hallelujah psalms. When six, he advanced to other things which could be specified particularly. His education commenced in the home and went on until he entered the synagogue, which trained him in all the rudiments of biblical education. When he was twelve or thirteen years old he was called “a son of the commandments.” Just like the occasion suggests when Jesus was twelve years old he had them take him to Jerusalem, and he was allowed to go into the Temple and to be with the great doctors there.
When Paul was twelve or thirteen his influential father sent him to the great theological seminary. There were two of these seminaries. One had a greater influence than the other in the city of Jerusalem. Therefore, he says, “I was brought up in this city. I was born in Tarsus, but brought up in the city of Jerusalem, at the feet of Gamaliel.” He was a very noble character. The opposite seminary differed from this one. It was the Shammai Seminary, differing from the other on this point: The Shammai Seminary was very narrow; did not allow its pupils to know anything about literature whatsoever except religious literature. But the aged Gamaliel said to Paul and to all his other students, “There are certain classical lines along which you may study and learn.” This is the kind which Paul attended, the school of Gamaliel, graduating there and becoming a doctor of divinity, or a rabbi. He studied profoundly. This religious part of his education he got in the original Hebrew. When he and Jesus met at the time of his conversion, they spoke in the Hebrew tongue to each other. “There came a voice which said in the Hebrew [the old Hebrew tongue], Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” And he answered in the Hebrew. Then, of course, he spoke and wrote in the Aramaic, which was the common dialect in Judea, and different from the Hebrew, since the Hebrew had gone altogether out of use in the ordinary speech, and almost in the ordinary reading.
The New Testament abounds in evidence of Paul’s general educational advantages. The city of Tarsus possessed one of the three great universities of the world. Did Paul take a course in that? There is no evidence that he did, and no probability that he did. For the universities in that day did not mean as much as they do today in a certain line, though I am sorry to say that the great universities of the present day are dropping back and adopting the old utterly worthless studies of the universities of that day; that is, speculative philosophy about the origin of things, and they do not know anything more when they get through than when they began. Also the Epicurean philosophy, which we now call “Darwinism,” making a speculative study of biology, botany, geology, etc., trying to prove that everything came from a primordial germ, and that man not only developed from a monkey, but from a jellyfish, and that the jellyfish developed from some vegetable, and that the vegetable is a development of some inorganic and lifeless matter.
There never was at any time in the world one particle of truth in the whole business. None of it can ever be a science. It does not belong to the realm of science.
Saul never had a moment’s time to spend in a heathen university, listening to their sophistries, and to these philosophical speculations, or vagaries. If he were living now he would be made president of some university. We learn from the Syrians that one of these universities, the one in Tarsus, had a professor who once stole something, and was put in “limbo.” Their university professors were also intensely jealous. They had all sorts of squabbles, one part in a row with another part; so that after all there was not much to be learned in the universities of those times, and after a while there will not be much in ours, if we go on as we are now going. I am not referring to any university, particularly, but I am referring to any and all, where philosophical speculations are made thee basis of botany, zoology, natural history of any kind, geology, or any kindred thing. Paul struck it in the city of Athens, its birthplace, and smote it hip and thigh.
I do not suppose at all that Paul was a student in the university of Tarsus, but that while he was at Jerusalem, and under the teaching of Gamaliel, he did study such classics as would be permitted to a Jewish mind. Hence we find in his letters expressions like this: “One of themselves, a prophet of their own said, Cretans are always liars,” and when at Athena he says, “Certain, even of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.” How could he become acquainted with those classical allusions if he had never studied such things? That chiliarch, who commanded a thousand men a legion said to Paul, “Do you speak Greek?” He had heard him speaking Greek. Of course he spoke Greek, and wrote Greek, All of his letters were written in Greek. He had learned that Greek language somewhere. He had not learned it in that university at Tarsus, but in the Seminary at Jerusalem. Take his letters and see his profound acquaintance with the Greek games of every kind. Some of them he may have attended, but he certainly knew all about them as though he had witnessed them. He may have seen only an occasional game. So he must have learned it from the literature, for he discusses every phase of it, especially the foot-racing, the combats in the arena between the gladiators, and the wrestling with the lions in the arena. His letters are full of allusions that indicate his acquaintance with the Greek literature. At Alexandria there was one of the other universities, a much greater one in its Greek literature than the university of Tarsus. Alexandria was founded by a Greek, Alexander the Great. One of the Ptolemies had a great library, the greatest library in the world, which was destroyed by the Saracens. But notice also how Paul puts his finger right upon the very center and heart of every heathen philosophy, like that of Epicureanism our Darwinism; that he debated in Athens; and note the Stoics whom he met while there, and the Platonians, or the Peripatetics. You will find that that one little speech of his, which he delivered in the city of Athens, contains an allusion which showed that he was thoroughly and profoundly acquainted with every run and sweep of the philosophic thought of the day, and anybody not thus acquainted could not have delivered that address. This is to show the general culture of his mind.
Take the mountain torrent of his passion in the rapid letter to the Galatians. Take the keen logic, the irresistibility of its reasoning, which appears in the letter to the Romans, or take that sweetest language that ever came from the lips or pen of mortal man, that eulogy on love in 1Co 13 . Then take the letter to Philemon, which all the world has considered a masterpiece in epistolary correspondence. It implies that he was scholarly. Look at these varieties of Saul’s education. He was a man whose range of information swept the world. He was the one scholar in the whole number of the apostles the great scholar and I do not see how any man can read the different varieties of style or delicacy of touch, the analysis of his logic or reasoning, which appear in Paul’s letters, and doubt that he had a broad, a deep, a high, and a grand general education.
As to Paul’s family the New Testament tells us in Act 23:16 that he had a married sister living in Jerusalem, and that that sister had a son, Paul’s nephew, who intervened very heroically to help Paul in a certain crisis of his life. And in Rom 16:7-11 are some other things that give light as to his family: “Salute Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen, and my fellow-prisoners . . . who also have been in Christ before me.” Here are a man and a woman, Andronicus and Junias, Paul’s kinsfolk, well known to the apostles in Jerusalem, for he says, “Who are of note among the apostles.” They were influential people, and they had become Christians before Paul was a Christian. Take Rom 16:11 : “Salute Herodion my kinsman,” and Rom 16:21 : “Timothy, my fellow worker saluteth you; and Lucius and Jason and Sosipater, my kinsmen.” So here we have found six individuals who are kinspeople to Paul, and who were all members of the church at Rome. We know that much of his family, anyhow.
The things which distinguished a Pharisee from a Sadducee were of several kinds: (1) The latter were materialists, whom we would call atheists. They believed in no spirit; that there was nothing but matter; that when a man died it was the last of him. (2) There were Epicureans: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die,” they said. (3) Also in their political views they differed from the Pharisees. The Pharisees were patriotic, and wanted the freedom of their nation. The Sadducees were inclined to the Roman government, and wanted to keep up the servitude to the Romans. (4) The Pharisees also cared more about a ritualistic religion. They were Puritans stern, and knew no compromise, adhering strictly to the letter of the law, in every respect. If they tithed, they would go into the garden and tithe the cummin and the anise. The phrase, “Pharisee of the Pharisees,” means one who would whittle all that down to a very fine point, or an extremist on that subject. He said (Gal 1:14 ), “I advanced in the Jews’ religion beyond many of mine own age among my countrymen, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers.” They were just Pharisees he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. He went all the lengths that they would go, and he topped them. It meant something like this: “I am a son of Abraham; I am freeborn; I have never sinned; I need no vicarious expiation for me; I need no Holy Spirit; I was never in that bunch; you need not talk or present regeneration to me; I am just as white as snow.” It followed that they were not drunkards, they were not immoral; they were chaste, and did not have any of the brutal vices.
Paul had perhaps never met Jesus. They were about the same age. Paul went to Jerusalem when he was thirteen years old, and stayed there until he graduated in the same city. Some contend from certain expressions, as, “I have known Christ after the flesh; henceforth I will know him . . . no more,” that he had known Jesus in the flesh. It will be remembered that in the public ministry of Christ he was very seldom in Jerusalem. He stayed there a very short time when he did go. His ministry was mainly in Galilee. Even in that last mighty work of his in Jerusalem there is a big account of it but it just lasted a week. And Saul may have been absent at Tarsus during that time. I think when he saw Jesus the fact that he did not recognize him is proof enough, for if he had known him in the flesh he would have recognized him. But he said, “Who art thou?” when he saw him after he arose from the dead.
Paul, before conversion, was intensely conscientious in whatever he did free from all low vice, drunkenness and luxurious gluttony and sensuality of every kind. He was a very chaste man, a very honest man, a very sincere man, a very truthful man, and all this before conversion. I take it for granted that he was a married man. An orthodox Jew would not have passed the age of twenty unmarried. He could not be a member of the Sanhedrin without marrying; and in that famous passage in Corinthians he seems to intimate clearly that he was a married man. Speaking to virgins (that means unmarried men and women and includes both of them that had never married) he says so and so; and to widows and widowers, “I wish they would remain such as I am.” It seems to me that the language very clearly shows that at that time he was a widower. Luther says that no man could write about the married state like Paul writes if he was an old bachelor. I think Luther is right; his judgment is very sound. Paul did not marry again; he remained a widower, and in the stress of the times advised other widowers and widows to remain in that state; but if they wanted to marry again to go ahead and do so; that it was no sin; but the stress of the times made it unwise; and he boldly took the position that he had a right to lead about a wife as much as Peter had, and Peter had a wife.
QUESTIONS
1. What the theme of this section?
2. What Saul’s name, nation, tribe, sect, citizenship, occupation, office, birthplace, and date of birth?
3. Give an account of Tarsus as to its political, strategical, commercial, manufacturing, educational advantages, and its popular religion.
4. Did citizenship in a free city under Rome make one a Roman citizen as did citizenship in Philippi, a colony?
5. How, then, could one obtain it?
6. Distinguish the difference between these terms: Jew, Hebrew, Israelite, Hellinist, and a “Hebrew of the Hebrews.”
7. What the social and financial position of Paul’s family, particularly in view of his occupation?
8. What Paul’s religious and educational advantages?
9. What New Testament evidences are there of Paul’s general educational advantages?
10. What do we know about Paul’s family as seen in the New Testament?
11. Was Paul a rabbi? If so, where did he probably exercise his functions as a rabbi?
12. What is the meaning of the phrase, “Pharisee of the Pharisees?”
13. Did Paul ever meet Jesus before his death? If not, how account for it in view of the interest and publicity of the last week of our Lord’s life?
14. What was Paul’s character before conversion?
15. Was he a married man, and what the proof?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
39 But Paul said, I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city: and, I beseech thee, suffer me to speak unto the people.
Ver. 39. Of no mean city ] And yet more ennobled by Paul than Paul was by it; like as Hippo was better known by Austin than Austin was by Hippo, whereof he was bishop; the island Cos by Hippocrates than Hippocrates by Cos; King Archelaus by his friend Euripides than Euripides by Archelaus.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
39. ] Our indeed , implying ‘not the Egyptian, but,’ exactly renders it: I indeed am: so Aristoph. Plut. 355, . See Hartung, Partikellehre, ii. 413.
.] See note, ch. Act 9:11 .
The expression is an elegant one, and very common. Wetst. gives many examples, and among them one from Eurip. Ion 8, .
There was distinction in his being a of an urbs libera . “Many of the coins of Tarsus bear the epigraphs and .” Wordsw. from Akermann, p. 56.
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Act 21:39 . . : there is no strict antithesis, “I am indeed a Jew of Tarsus” (and therefore free from your suspicion); but without speaking further of this, and proceeding perhaps to demand a legal process, the Apostle adds “but I pray you,” etc. Mr. Page explains, from the position of : “I ( ) as regards your question to me, am a man ( ), etc., but, as regards my question to you, I ask ( ),” see reading in [363] . On St. Paul’s citizenship see note below on Act 22:28 . St. Paul uses here, but , the more dignified term, Act 22:3 , in addressing his fellow-countrymen; but according to Blass, “vix recte distinguitur quasi illud ( ) ut ap. att. sit humilius,” cf. Mat 18:23 ; Mat 22:2 . : Blass has a striking note on Paul’s hopefulness for his people, and the proof apparent here of a man “qui populi sui summo amore imbutus nunquam de eo desperare potuit,” Romans 9-11 . not only ., which would have distinguished him from ., but ., otherwise the chiliarch from his speaking Greek might have regarded him as no Jew, and so guilty of death for profaning the Temple. : litotes , Act 20:29 , on Tarsus see Act 9:11 . The city had on its coins the titles . For , cf. Mal 3:1Mal 3:1 , and in classical Greek, Eurip., Ion. , 8. . , i.e. , Athens (Wetstein), see further Act 22:27 . Hobart (so too Zahn) mentions as one of the words which show that Luke, when dealing with unprofessional subjects, shows a leaning to the use of professional language; is the technical term for “a disease without distinctive symptoms,” and Hippocrates, just as Luke, says, , Epis. , 1273. So again in Act 23:13 , , a word applied to the distribution of nourishment throughout the body, or of blood throughout the veins, is used by Hippocrates, as by Luke, l.c. , of a messenger delivering a letter, Epis. , 1275 (see Hobart and Zahn); but it must be admitted that the same phrase is found in Polybius and Plutarch. Still the fact remains that the phraseology of St. Luke is here illustrated by a use of two similar expressions in Hippocrates, and it should be also remembered that the verb with which St. Luke opens his Gospel, , was frequently used by medical men, and that too in its secondary sense, just as by St. Luke, e.g. , Hippocrates begins his treatise De Prisca Med. , (see J. Weiss on Luk 1:1 ); so too Galen uses the word similarly, although it must be admitted that the same use is found in classical Greek and in Josephus, c. Apion. , 2
[363] R(omana), in Blass, a first rough copy of St. Luke.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
of Tarsus = a Tarsean. Greek. Tarseus. See note on Act 9:11.
in = of.
citizen. Greek. polites. Only here and Luk 15:15; Luk 19:14.
mean = without mark. Greek. asemos. Only here. Used of disease without definite symptoms. In the medical writer, Hippocrates, the very expression “no mean city” occurs. Figure of speech Tapeinosis. App-6.
beseech. Greek. deomai. App-134.
speak. Greek. laleo. App-121.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
39. ] Our indeed,-implying not the Egyptian, but,-exactly renders it: I indeed am: so Aristoph. Plut. 355, . See Hartung, Partikellehre, ii. 413.
.] See note, ch. Act 9:11.
The expression is an elegant one, and very common. Wetst. gives many examples, and among them one from Eurip. Ion 8, .
There was distinction in his being a of an urbs libera. Many of the coins of Tarsus bear the epigraphs and . Wordsw. from Akermann, p. 56.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Act 21:39. ) imparts to the beginning of a speech: ch. Act 22:3, .-[, to speak) With what great prudence did the apostle forthwith avail himself of the opportunity afforded by circumstances! Wheresoever he beheld a multitude, the desire of speaking took possession of him: ch. Act 19:30.-V. g.]
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
I am: Act 9:11, Act 9:30, Act 22:3, Act 23:34
Cilicia: Act 6:9, Act 15:23, Act 15:41
a citizen: Act 16:37, Act 22:25-29, Act 23:27
suffer: Act 21:37, 1Pe 3:15, 1Pe 4:15, 1Pe 4:16
Reciprocal: Act 11:25 – to Tarsus Act 18:14 – when Act 19:30 – Paul Act 27:5 – Cilicia Gal 1:21 – Cilicia
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
9
Act 21:39. Paul did not answer the captain with a direct “no,” but stated in brief his identity. Instead of being an Egyptian he was a Jew. Tarsus was no mean city which means it was no insignificant place. Paul’s nativity, then, was an honorable and noted one. On that basis he again asked permission to speak to the people.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Act 21:39. But Paul said, I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city of Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city. If he were indeed a citizen of Tarsus, he would have real claims upon the Roman authorities for protection. Tarsus as a city stood high in public estimation. It was not only famous as a university and seat of learning, but was the most important centre in that part of the Empire, and possessed many privileges. It bore on its coins the proud title of METROPOLIS AUTONOMOS, the independent capital city.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
See notes on verse 35
Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)
Paul explained that he was a Jew and so had a right to be in the temple court of Israel. He was not a resident of Egypt but of the respected Roman city of Tarsus. Tarsus was one of the three chief centers of learning in the ancient world, along with Athens and Alexandria. It had several hundred thousand inhabitants and was noted for its textile industry. [Note: Bock, Acts, p. 658.] It was also the capital of Cilicia and a free city in the empire.
"It is important to recognize that to a great extent in antiquity people were judged by the importance of the place where they were born. Their own personal honor and dignity was in part derived from the honor rating of the place from which they came." [Note: Witherington, p. 663.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
elete_me Act 21:17
Chapter 17
A PRISONER IN BONDS.
Act 21:2-3; Act 21:17; Act 21:33; Act 21:39-40; Act 22:22; Act 22:30; Act 24:1; Act 26:1
THE title we have given to this chapter, “A Prisoner in Bonds,” expresses the central idea of the last eight chapters of the Acts. Twenty years and more had now elapsed since St. Pauls conversion on the road to Damascus. These twenty years had been times of unceasing and intense activity. Now we come to some five years when the external labours, the turmoil and the cares of active, life, have to be put aside, and St. Paul was called upon to stand apart and learn the lesson which every-day experience teaches to all, -how easily the world can get along without us, how smoothly Gods designs fulfil themselves without our puny assistance. The various passages we have placed at the head of this chapter cover six chapters of the Acts, from the twenty-first to the twenty-sixth. It may seem a large extent of the text to be comprised within the limits of one of our chapters, but it must be remembered that a great deal of the space thus included is taken up with the narrative of St. Pauls conversion, which is twice set forth at great length, first to the multitude from the stairs of the tower of Antonia, and then in his defence which he delivered before Agrippa and Bernice and Festus, or else with the speeches delivered by him before the assembled Sanhedrin and before Felix the governor, wherein he dwells on points previously and sufficiently discussed. We have already considered the narrative of the Apostles conversion at great length, and noted the particular directions in which St. Pauls own later versions at Jerusalem and Caesarea throw light upon St. Lukes independent account. To the earlier chapters of this book we therefore would refer the reader who wishes to discuss St. Pauls conversion, and several of the other subjects which he introduces. Let us now, however, endeavour, first of all, to gather up into one connected story the tale of St. Pauls journeys, sufferings, and imprisonments from the time he left Miletus after his famous address till he set sail for Rome from the port of Caesarea, a prisoner destined for the judgment-seat of Nero. This narrative will embrace from at least the summer of A.D. 58, when he was arrested at Jerusalem, to the autumn of 60, when he set sail for Rome. This connected story will enable us to see the close union of the various parts of the narrative which is now hidden from us because of the division into chapters, and will enable us to fix more easily upon the leading points which lend themselves to the purposes of an expositor.
I. St. Paul after parting from the Ephesian Church, embarked on board his ship, and then coasted along the western shore of Asia Minor for three days, sailing amid scenery of the most enchanting description, specially in that late spring or early summer season at which the year had then arrived. It was about the first of May, and all nature was bursting into new life, when even hearts the hardest and least receptive of external influences feel as if they were living a portion of their youth over again. And even St. Paul, rapt in the contemplation of things unseen, must have felt himself touched by the beauty of the scenes through which he was passing, though St. Luke tells us nothing but the bare succession of events. Three days after leaving Miletus the sacred company reached Patara, a town at the southwestern corner of Asia Minor, where the coast begins to turn round towards the east. Here St. Paul found a trading ship sailing direct to Tyre and Palestine, and therefore with all haste transferred himself and his party into it. The ship seems to have been on the point of sailing, which suited St. Paul so much the better, anxious as he was to reach Jerusalem in time for Pentecost. The journey direct from Patara to Tyre is about three hundred and fifty miles, a three days sail under favourable circumstances for the trading vessels of the ancients, and the circumstances were favourable. The northwest wind is to this day the prevailing wind in the eastern Mediterranean during the late spring and early summer season, and the northwest wind would be the most favourable wind for an ancient trader almost entirely depending on an immense mainsail for its motive power. With such a wind the merchantmen of that age could travel at the rate of a hundred to a hundred and fifty miles a day, and would therefore traverse the distance between Patara and Tyre in three days, the time we have specified. When the vessel arrived at Tyre St. Paul sought out the local Christian congregation. The ship was chartered to bring a cargo probably of wheat or wine to Tyre, inasmuch as Tyre was a purely commercial city, and the territory naturally belonging to it was utterly unable to finish it with necessary provisions, as we have already noted on the occasion of Herod Agrippas death. A week, therefore, was spent in unloading the cargo, during which St. Paul devoted himself to the instruction of the local Christian Church. After a weeks close communion with this eminent servant of God, the Tyrian Christians, like the elders of Ephesus and Miletus, with their wives and children accompanied him till they reached the shore, where they commended one another in prayer to Gods care and blessing. From Tyre he sailed to Ptolemais, thirty miles distant. There again he found another Christian congregation, with whom he tarried one day, and then leaving the ship proceeded by the great coast road to Caesarea, a town which he already knew right well, and to which he was so soon to return as a prisoner in bonds. At Caesarea there must now have been a very considerable Christian congregation. In Caesarea Philip the Evangelist lived and ministered permanently. There too resided his daughters, eminent as teachers, and exercising in their preaching or prophetical functions a great influence among the very mixed female population of the political capital of Palestine. St. Paul and St. Luke abode in Caesarea several days in the house of Philip the Evangelist. He did not wish to arrive in Jerusalem till close on the Feast of Pentecost, and owing to the fair winds with which he had been favoured he must have had a week or more to stay in Caesarea. Here Agabus again appears upon the scene. Fourteen years before he had predicted the famine which led St. Paul to pay a visit to Jerusalem when bringing up the alms of the Antiochene Church to assist the poor brethren at Jerusalem, and now he predicts the Apostles approaching captivity. The prospect moved the Church so much that the brethren besought St. Paul to change his mind and not enter the Holy City. But his mind was made up, and nothing would dissuade him from celebrating the Feast as he had all along proposed; He went up therefore to Jerusalem, lodging with Mnason, “an early disciple,” as the Revised Version puts it, one therefore who traced his Christian convictions back probably to the celebrated Pentecost a quarter of a century earlier, when the Holy Ghost first displayed His supernatural power in converting multitudes of human souls. Next day he went to visit James, the Bishop of Jerusalem, who received him warmly, grasped his position, warned him of the rumours which had been industriously and falsely circulated as to his opposition to the Law of Moses, even in the case of born Jews, and gave him some prudent advice as to his course of action. St. James recommended that St. Paul should unite himself with certain Christian Nazarites, and perform the Jewish rites usual in such cases. A Nazarite, as we have already mentioned, when he took the Nazarite vow for a limited time after some special deliverance vouchsafed to him, allowed his hair to grow till he could cut it off in the Temple, and have it burned in the fire of the sacrifices offered up on his behalf. These sacrifices were very expensive, as will be seen at once by a reference to Num 6:13-18, where they are prescribed at full length, and it was always regarded as a mark of patriotic piety when any stranger coming to Jerusalem offered to defray the necessary charges for the poorer Jews, and thus completed the ceremonies connected with the Nazarite vow. St. James advised St. Paul to adopt this course, to unite himself with the members of the local Christian Church who were unable to defray the customary expenses, to pay their charges, join with them in the sacrifices, and thus publicly proclaim to those who opposed him that, though he differed from them as regards the Gentiles, holding in that matter with St. James himself and with the apostles, yet as regards the Jews, whether at Jerusalem or throughout the world at large, he was totally misrepresented when men asserted that he taught the Jews to reject the Law of Moses. St. Paul was guided by the advice of James, and proceeded to complete the ceremonial prescribed for the Nazarites. This was the turning-point of his fate. Jerusalem was then thronged with strangers from every part of the world. Ephesus and the province of Asia, as a great commercial centre, and therefore a great Jewish resort, furnished a very large contingent. To these, then, Paul was well known as an enthusiastic Christian teacher, toward whom the synagogues of Ephesus felt the bitterest hostility. They had often plotted against him at Ephesus, as St. Paul himself told the elders in his address at Miletus, but had hitherto failed to effect their purpose. Now, however, they seemed to see their chance. They thought they had a popular cry and a legal accusation under which he might be done to death under the forms of law. These Ephesian Jews had seen him in the city in company with Trophimus, an uncircumcised Christian belonging to their own city, one therefore whose presence within the temple was a capital offence, even according to Roman law. They raised a cry therefore that he had defiled the Holy Place by bringing into it an uncircumcised-Greek; and thus roused the populace to seize the Apostle, drag him from the sacred precincts, and murder him. During the celebration of the Feasts the Roman sentinels, stationed upon the neighbouring tower of Antonia which overlooked the Temple courts, watched the assembled crowds most narrowly, apprehensive of a riot. As soon therefore as the first symptoms of an outbreak occurred, the alarm was given, the chief captain Lysias hurried to the spot, and St. Paul was rescued for the moment. At the request of the Apostle, who was being carried up into the castle, he was allowed to address the multitude from the stairs. They listened to the narrative of his conversion very quietly till he came to tell of the vision God vouchsafed to him in the Temple some twenty years before, warning him to leave Jerusalem, when at the words “Depart, for I will send thee forth far hence unto the Gentiles,” all their pent-up rage and prise and national jealousy burst forth anew. St. Paul had been addressing them in the Hebrew language, which the chief captain understood not, and the mob probably expressed their rage and passion in the same language. The chief captain ordered St. Paul to be examined by flogging to know why they were so outrageous against him. More fortunate, however, on this occasion than at Philippi, he claimed his privilege as a Roman citizen, and escaped the torture. The chief captain was still in ignorance of the prisoners crime, and therefore be brought him the very next day before the Sanhedrin, when St. Paul by a happy stroke caused such a division between the Sadducees and Pharisees that the chief captain was again obliged to intervene and rescue the prisoner from the contending factions. Next day, however, the Jews formed a conspiracy to murder the Apostle, which his nephew discovered and revealed to St. Paul and to Claudius Lysias, who that same night despatched him to Caesarea.
All these events, from his conference with James to his arrival under guard at Caesarea, cannot have covered more than eight days at the utmost, and yet the story of them extends from the middle of the twenty-first chapter to the close of the twenty-third, while the record of twelve months hard work preaching, writing, organising is embraced within the first six verses of the twentieth chapter, showing how very different was St. Lukes narrative of affairs, according as he was present or absent when they were transacted.
From the beginning of the twenty-fourth chapter to the close of the twenty-sixth is taken up with the account of St. Pauls trials, at first before Felix, and then before Festus, his successor in the procuratorship of Palestine. Just let us summarise the course of. events and distinguish between them. St. Paul was despatched by Claudius Lysias to Felix, accompanied by a letter in which he contrives to put the best construction on his own actions, representing himself as specially anxious about St. Paul because he was a Roman citizen, on which account indeed he describes himself as rescuing him from the clutches of the mob. After the lapse of five days St. Paul was brought up before Felix and accused by the Jews of three serious crimes in the eyes of Roman law as administered in Palestine. First, he was a mover of seditions among the Jews; second, a ringleader of a new sect, the Nazarenes, unknown to Jewish law; and third, a profaner of the Temple, contrary to the law which the Romans themselves had sanctioned. On all these points Paul challenged investigation and demanded proof, asking where were the Jews from Asia who had accused him of profaning the Temple. The Jews doubtless thought that Paul was a common Jew, who would be yielded up to their clamour by the procurator, and knew nothing of his Roman citizenship. Their want of witnesses brought about their failure, but did not lead to St. Pauls release. He was committed to the custody of a centurion, and freedom of access was granted to his friends. In this state St. Paul continued two full years, from midsummer 58 to the same period of A.D. 60, when Felix was superseded by Festus. During these two years Felix often conversed with St. Paul. Felix was a thoroughly bad man. He exercised, as a historian of that time said of him, “the power of a king with the mind of a slave.” He was tyrannical, licentious, and corrupt, and hoped to be bribed by St. Paul, when he would have set him at liberty. At this period of his life St. Paul twice came in contact with the Herodian house, which thenceforth disappears from sacred history. Felix about the period of St. Pauls arrest enticed Drusilla, the great-granddaughter of Herod the Great, from her husband through the medium, as many think, of Simon Magus. Drusilla was very young and very beautiful, and, like all the Herodian women, very wicked. Felix was an open adulterer, therefore, and it is no wonder that when Paul reasoned before the guilty pair concerning righteousness, temperance, and the judgment to come, conscience should have smitten them and Felix should have trembled. St. Paul had another opportunity of bearing witness before this wicked and bloodstained family. Festus succeeded Felix as procurator of Palestine about June, A.D. 60. Within the following month Agrippa II, the son of the Herod Agrippa who had died the terrible death at Caesarea of which the twelfth chapter tells, came to Caesarea to pay his respects unto the new governor. Agrippa was ruler of the kingdom of Chalcis, a district north of Palestine and about the Lebanon Range. He was accompanied by his sister Bernice, who afterwards became the mistress of Titus, the conqueror of Jerusalem in the last great siege. Festus had already heard St. Pauls case, and had allowed his appeal unto Caesar. He wished, however, to have his case investigated before two Jewish experts, Agrippa and Bernice, who could instruct his own ignorance on the charges laid against him by the Jews, enabling him to write a more satisfactory report for the Emperors guidance. He brought St. Paul therefore before them, and gave the great Christian champion another opportunity of bearing witness for his Master before a family which now for more than sixty years had been more or less mixed up, but never for their own blessing, with Christian history. After a period of two years and three months detention, varied by different public appearances, St. Paul was despatched to Rome to stand his trial and make his defence before the Emperor Nero, whose name has become a synonym for vice, brutality, and self-will.
II. We have now given a connected outline of St. Pauls history extending over a period of more than two years. Let us omit his formal defences, which have already come under our notice, and take for our meditation a number of points which are peculiar to the narrative.
We have in the story of the voyage, arrest, and imprisonment of St. Paul, many circumstances which illustrate Gods methods of action in the world, or else His dealings with the spiritual life. Let us take a few instances. First, then, we direct attention to the steady though quiet progress of the Christian faith as revealed in these chapters. St. Paul landed at Tyre, and from Tyre he proceeded some thirty miles south to Ptolemais. These are both of them towns which have never hitherto occurred in our narrative as places of Christian activity. St. Paul and St. Peter and Barnabas and the other active leaders of the Church must often have passed through these towns, and wherever they went they strove to make known the tidings of the gospel. But we hear nothing in the Acts, and tradition tells us nothing of when or by whom the Christian Church was founded in these localities.
We get glimpses, too, of the ancient organisation of the Church, but only glimpses; we have no complete statement, because St. Luke was writing for a man who lived amidst it, and could supply the gaps which his informant left. The presbyters are mentioned at Miletus, and Agabus the prophet appeared at Antioch years before, and now again he appears at Caesarea, where Philip the Evangelist and his daughters the prophetesses appear. Prophets and prophesying are not confined to Palestine and Antioch, though the Acts tells us nothing of them as existing elsewhere. The Epistle to Corinth shows us that the prophets occupied a very important place in that Christian community. Prophesying indeed was principally preaching at Corinth; but it did not exclude prediction, and that after the ancient Jewish method, by action as well as by word, for Agabus took St. Pauls girdle, and binding his own hands and feet declared that the Holy Ghost told him, “So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that own-eth this girdle, and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.” But how little we know of the details of the upgrowth of the Church in all save the more prominent places! How entirely ignorant we are, for instance, of the methods by which the gospel spread to Tyre and Ptolemais and Puteoli! Here we find in the Acts the fulfilment of our Lords words as reported in Mar 4:26 : “So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed upon the earth; and the seed should spring up and grow, he knoweth not how.” It was with the last and grander temple of God as it was with the first. Its foundations were laid, and its walls were built, not with sound of axe and hammer, but in the penitence of humbled souls, in the godly testimony of sanctified spirits, in the earnest lives of holy men hidden from the scoffing world, known only to the Almighty.
Again, we notice the advice given by James and the course actually adopted by St.. Paul when he arrived at Jerusalem. It has the appearance of compromise of truth, and yet it has the appearance merely, not the reality of compromise. It was in effect wise and sound advice, and such as teaches lessons useful for our own guidance in life. We have already set forth St. Pauls conception of Jewish rites and ceremonies. They were nothing in the world one way or another, as viewed from the Divine standpoint. Their presence did not help on the work of mans salvation; their absence did not detract from it. The Apostle therefore took part in them freely enough, as when he celebrated the passover and the days of unleavened bread at Philippi, viewing them as mere national rites. He had been successful in the very highest degree in converting to this view even the highest and strictest members of the Jerusalem Church. St. James, in advising St. Paul how to act on this occasion, when such prejudices had been excited against him, clearly shows that he had come round to St. Pauls view. He tells St. Paul that the multitude or body of the Judaeo-Christian Church at Jerusalem had been excited against him, because they had been informed that he taught the Jews of the Dispersion to forsake Moses, the very thing St. Paul did not do. St. James grasped, however, St. Pauls view that Moses and the Levitical Law might be good things for the Jews, but had no relation to the Gentiles, and must not be imposed on them. St. James had taught this view ten years earlier at the Apostolic Council. His opinions and teaching had percolated downwards, and the majority of the Jerusalem Church now held the same view as regards the Gentiles, but were as strong as ever and as patriotic as ever so far as the Jews were concerned, and the obligation of the Jewish Law upon them and their children. St. Paul had carried his point as regards Gentile freedom. And now there came a time when he had in turn to show consideration and care for Jewish prejudices, and act out his own principle that circumcision was nothing and uncircumcision was nothing. Concessions, in fact, were not to be all on one side, and St. Paul had now to make a concession. The Judaeo-Christian congregations of Jerusalem were much excited, and St. Paul by a certain course of conduct, perfectly innocent and harmless, could pacify their excited patriotic feelings, and demonstrate to them that he was still a true, a genuine, and not a renegade Jew. It was but a little thing that St. James advised and public feeling demanded. He had but to join himself to a party of Nazarites and pay their expenses, and thus Paul would place himself en rapport with the Mother Church of Christendom. St. Paul acted wisely, charitably, and in a Christlike spirit when he consented to do as St. James advised. St. Paul was always eminently prudent. There are some religious men who seem to think that to advise a wise or prudent course is all the same as to advise a wicked or unprincipled course. They seem to consider success in any course as a clear evidence of sin, and failure as a proof of honesty and true principle. Concession, however, is not the same as unworthy compromise. It is our duty in life to see and make our course of conduct as fruitful and as successful as possible. Concession on little points has a wondrous power in smoothing the path of action and gaining true success. Many an honest man ruins a good cause simply because he cannot distinguish, as St. Paul did, things necessary and essential from things accidental and trivial. Pigheaded obstinacy, to use a very homely but a very expressive phrase, which indeed is often only disguised pride, is a great enemy to the peace and harmony of societies and churches. St. Paul displayed great boldness here. He was not afraid of being misrepresented, that ghost which frightens so many a popularity hunter from the course which is true and right. How easily his fierce Opponents, the men who had gone to Corinth and Galatia to oppose him, might misrepresent his action in joining himself to the Nazarites! They were the extreme men of the Jerusalem Church. They were the men for whom the decisions of the Apostolic Council had no weight, and who held still as of old that unless a man be circumcised he could not be saved. How easily, I say, these men could despatch their emissaries, who should proclaim that their opponent Paul had conceded all their demands and was himself observing the law at Jerusalem. St. Paul was not afraid of this misrepresentation, but boldly took the course which seemed to him right and true, and charitable, despite the malicious tongues of his adversaries. The Apostle of the Gentiles left us an example which many still require. How many a man is kept from adopting a course that is charitable and tends to peace and edification, solely because he is afraid of what opponents may say, or how they may twist and misrepresent his action. St. Paul was possessed with none of this moral cowardice which specially flourishes among so-called party-leaders, men who, instead of leading, are always led and governed by the opinions of their followers. St. Paul simply determined in his conscience what was right, and then fearlessly acted out his determination.
Some persons perhaps would argue that the result of his action showed that he was wrong and had unworthily compromised the cause of Christian freedom. They think that had he not consented to appear as a Nazarite in the Temple no riot would have occurred, his arrest would have been avoided, and the course of history might have been very different. But here we would join issue on the spot. The results of his action vindicated his Christian wisdom. The great body of the Jerusalem Church were convinced of his sincerity and realised his position. He maintained his influence over them, which had been seriously imperilled previously, and thus helped on the course of development which had been going on. Ten years before the advocates of Gentile freedom were but a small body. Now the vast majority of the local church at Jerusalem held fast to this idea, while still clinging fast to the obligation laid upon the Jews to observe the law. St. Paul did his best to maintain his friendship and alliance with the Jerusalem Church. To put himself right with them he travelled up to Jerusalem, when fresh fields and splendid prospects were opening up for him in the West. For this purpose he submitted to several days restraint and attendance in the Temple, and the results vindicated his determination. The Jerusalem Church continued the same course of orderly development, and when, ten years later, Jerusalem was threatened with destruction, the Christian congregations alone rose above the narrow bigoted patriotism which bound the Jews to the Holy City. The Christians alone realised that the day of the Mosaic Law was at length passed, and, retiring to the neighbouring city of Pella, escaped the destruction which awaited the fanatical adherents of the Law and the Temple.
Another answer, too, may be made to this objection. It was not his action in the matter of the Nazarites that brought about the riot and the arrest and his consequent imprisonment. It was the hostility of the Jews of Asia; and they would have assailed him whenever and wherever they met him. Studying the matter too, even in view of results, we should draw the opposite conclusion. God Himself approved his course. A Divine vision was vouchsafed to him in the guard-room of Antonia, after he had twice experienced Jewish violence, and bestowed upon him the approbation of Heaven: “The night following the Lord stood by him, and said, Be of good cheer; for as thou hast testified concerning Me at Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome.” His courageous and at the same time charitable action was vindicated by its results on the Jerusalem Church, by the sanction of Christ Himself, and lastly, by its blessed results upon the development of the Church at large in leading St. Paul to Rome, in giving him a wider and more influential sphere for his efforts, and in affording him leisure to write epistles like those to Ephesus, Philippi, and Colossae, which have been so instructive and useful for the Church of all ages.
Another point which has exercised mens minds is found in St. Pauls attitude and words when brought before the Sanhedrin on the day after his arrest. The story is told in the opening verses of the twenty-third chapter. Let us quote them, as they vividly present the difficulty: “And Paul, looking steadfastly on the council, said, Brethren, I have lived before God in all good conscience until this day. And the high priest Ananias commanded them that stood by him to smite him on the mouth. Then said Paul unto him, God shall smite thee, thou whited wall: and sittest thou to judge me according to the law, and commandest me to be smitten contrary to the law? And they that stood by said, Revilest thou Gods high priest? And Paul said, I wist not, brethren, that he was high priest: for it is written, Thou shalt not speak evil of a ruler of thy people.”
Two difficulties here present themselves.
(a) There is St. Pauls language, which certainly seems wanting in Christian meekness, and not exactly modelled after the example of Christ, who, when He was reviled, reviled not again, and laid down in His Sermon on the Mount a law of suffering to which St. Paul does not here conform. But this is only a difficulty for those who have formed a superhuman estimate of St. Paul against which we have several times protested, and against which this very book of the Acts seems to take special care to warn its readers. If people will make the Apostle as sinless and as perfect as our Lord, they will of course be surprised at his language on this occasion. But if they regard him in the light in which St. Luke portrays him, as a man of like passions and infirmities with themselves, then they will feel no difficulty in the fact that St. Pauls natural temper was roused at the brutal and illegal command to smite a helpless prisoner on the mouth because he had made a statement which a member of the court did not relish. This passage seems to me not a difficulty, but a divinely guided passage witnessing to the inspiring influence of the Holy Ghost, and inserted to chasten our wandering fancy, which would exalt the Apostle to a position equal to that which rightly belongs to his Divine Master alone.
(b) Then there is a second difficulty. Some have thought that St. Paul told a lie in this passage, and that, when defending himself from the charge of unscriptural insolence to the high priest, he merely pretended ignorance of his person, saying, “I wist not, brethren, that he was high priest.” The older commentators devised various explanations of this passage. Dr. John Lightfoot, in his “Horae Hebraicae,” treating of this verse, sums them all up as follows. Either St. Paul means that he did not recognise Ananias as high priest because he did not lawfully occupy the office, or else because Christ was now the only high priest; or else because there had been so many and so frequent changes that as a matter of fact he did not know who was the actual high priest. None of these is a satisfactory explanation. Mr. Lewin offers what strikes me as the most natural explanation, considering all the circumstances. Ananias was appointed high priest about 47, continued in office till 59, and was killed in the beginning of the great Jewish war. He was a thoroughly historical character, and his high priesthood is guaranteed for us by the testimony of Josephus, who tells us of his varied fortunes and of his tragic death. But St. Paul never probably once saw him, as he was absent from Jerusalem, except for one brief visit, all the time while he enjoyed supreme office.
Now the Sanhedrin consisted of seventy-one judges, they sat in a large hall with a crowd of scribes and pupils in front of them, and the high priest, as we have already pointed out, was not necessarily president or chairman. St. Paul was very short-sighted, and the ophthalmia under which he continually suffered was probably much intensified by the violent treatment he had experienced the day before. Could anything be more natural than that a short-sighted man should not recognise in such a crowd the particular person who had uttered this very brief, but very tyrannical command, “Smite him on the mouth”? Surely an impartial review of St. Pauls life shows him ever to have been at least a man of striking courage, and therefore one who would never have descended to cloak his own hasty words with even the shadow of an untruth!
Again, the readiness and quickness of St. Paul in seizing upon every opportunity of escape have important teaching for us. Upon four different occasions at this crisis he displayed this characteristic. Let us note them for our guidance. When he was rescued by the chief captain and was carried into the castle, the captain ordered him to be examined by scourging to elicit the true cause of the riot; St. Paul then availed himself of his privilege as a Roman citizen to escape that torture. When he stood before the council he perceived the old division between the Pharisees and the Sadducees to be still in existence, which he had known long ago when he was himself connected with it. He skilfully availed himself of that circumstance to raise dissension among his opponents. He grasped the essential principle which lay at the basis of his teaching, and that was the doctrine of the Resurrection and the assertion of the reality of the spiritual world. Without that doctrine Christianity and Christian teaching were utterly meaningless, and in that doctrine Pharisees and Christians were united. Dropping the line of defence he was about to offer, which probably would have proceeded to show how true to conscience and to Divine light had been his course of life, he cried out, “I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees: touching the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question.” Grotius, an old and learned commentator, dealing with Act 23:6, has well summed up the principles on which St. Paul acted on this occasion in the following words: “St. Paul was not lacking in human prudence, making use of which for the service of the gospel, he intermingled the wisdom of the serpent with the gentleness of the dove, and thus utilised the dissensions of his enemies,” Yet once more we see the same tact in operation. After the meeting of the Sanhedrin and his rescue from out of its very midst, a plot was formed to assassinate him, of which he was informed by his nephew. Then again St. Paul did not let things slide, trusting in the Divine care alone. He knew right well that God demanded of men of faith that they should be fellow-workers with God and lend Him their co-operation. He knew too the horror which the Roman authorities had of riot and of all illegal measures; he despatched his nephew therefore to the chief captain, and by his readiness of resource saved himself from imminent danger. Lastly, we find the same characteristic trait coming out at Caesarea. His experience of Roman rule taught him the anxiety of new governors to please the people among whom they came. He knew that Festus would be anxious to gratify the Jewish authorities in any way he possibly could. They were very desirous to have the Apostle transferred from Caesarea to Jerusalem, sure that in some way or another they could there dispose of him. Knowing therefore the dangerous position in which he stood, St. Pauls readiness and tact again came to his help. He knew Roman law thoroughly well. He knew that as a Roman citizen he had one resource left by which in one brief sentence he could transfer himself out of the jurisdiction of Sanhedrin and Procurator alike, and of this he availed himself at the critical moment, pronouncing the magic words. Caesarem Appello (“I appeal unto Caesar”). St. Paul left in all these cases a healthy example which the Church urgently required in subsequent years. He had no morbid craving after suffering or death. No man ever lived in a closer communion with his God, or in a more steadfast readiness to depart and be with Christ. But he knew that it was his duty to remain at his post till the Captain of his salvation gave a clear note of withdrawal, and that clear note was only given when every avenue of escape was cut off. St. Paul therefore used his knowledge and his tact in order to ascertain the Masters will and discover whether it was His wish that His faithful servant should depart or tarry, yet awhile for the discharge of his earthly duties. I have said that this was an example necessary for the Church in subsequent ages. The question of flight in persecution became a very practical one as soon as the Roman Empire assumed an attitude definitely hostile to the Church. The more extreme and fanatical party not only refused to take any measures to secure their safety or escape death, but rather rushed headlong upon it, and upbraided those as traitors and renegades who tried in any. way to avoid suffering. From the earliest times, from the days of Ignatius of Antioch himself, we see this morbid tendency displaying itself; while the Church in the person of several of its greatest leaders-men like Polycarp and Cyprian, who themselves retired from impending danger till the Roman authorities discovered them-showed that St. Pauls wiser teaching and example were not thrown away. Quietism was a view which two centuries ago made a great stir both in England and France, and seems embodied to some extent in certain modern forms of thought. It taught that believers should lie quite passive in Gods hands and make no effort for themselves. Quietism would never have found a follower in the vigorous mind of St. Paul, who proved himself through all those trials and vicissitudes of more than two years ever ready with some new device wherewith to meet the hatred of his foes.
III. We notice lastly in the narrative of St. Pauls imprisonment his interviews with and his testimony before the members of the house of Herod. St. Peter had experience of the father of Herod Agrippa, and now St. Paul comes into contact with the children, Agrippa, Drusilla, and Bernice. And thus it came about. Felix the procurator, as we have already explained, was a very bad man, and had enticed Drusilla from her husband. He doubtless told her of the Jewish prisoner who lay a captive in the city where she was living. The Herods were a clever race, and they knew all about Jewish hopes and Messianic expectations, and they ever seem to have been haunted by a certain curiosity concerning the new sect of the Nazarenes. One Herod desired for a long time to see Jesus Christ, and was delighted when Pilate gratified his longing. Drusilla, doubtless, was equally curious, and easily persuaded her husband to gratify her desire. We therefore read in Act 24:24, “But after certain days, Felix came with Drusilla, his wife, which was a Jewess, and sent for Paul, and heard him concerning the faith in Christ Jesus.”
Neither of them calculated on the kind of man they had to do with. St. Paul knew all the circumstances of the case. He adapted his speech thereto. He made a powerful appeal to the conscience of the guilty pair. He reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and the judgment to come, and beneath his weighty words Felix trembled. His convictions were roused. He experienced a transient season of penitence, such as touched another guilty member of the Herodian house who feared John and did many things gladly to win his approval. But habits of sin had grasped Felix too firmly. He temporised with his conscience. He put off the day of salvation when it was dawning on him, and his words, “Go thy way for this time, and when I have a convenient season I will call thee unto me,” became the typical language of all those souls for whom procrastination, want of decision, trifling with spiritual feelings, have been the omens and the causes of eternal ruin.
But Felix and Drusilla were not the only members of the Herodian house with whom Paul came in contact. Felix and Drusilla left Palestine when two years of St. Pauls imprisonment had elapsed. Festus, another procurator, followed, and began his course as all the Roman rulers of Palestine began theirs. The Jews, when Festus visited Jerusalem, besought him to deliver the prisoner lying bound at Caesarea to the judgment of their Sanhedrin. Festus, all-powerful as a Roman governor usually was, dared not treat a Roman citizen thus without his own consent, and when that consent was asked Paul at once refused, knowing right well the intentions of the Jews, and appealed unto Caesar. A Roman governor, however, would not send a prisoner to the judgment of the Emperor without stating the crime imputed to him. Just at that moment Herod Agrippa, king of Chalcis and of the district of Ituraea, together with his sister Bernice, appeared on the scene. He was a Jew, and was well acquainted therefore with the accusations brought against the Apostle, and could inform the procurator what report he should send to the Emperor. Festus therefore brought Paul before them, and gave him another opportunity of expounding the faith of Jesus Christ and the law of love and purity which that faith involved to a family who ever treated that law with profound contempt. St. Paul availed himself of that opportunity. He addressed his whole discourse to the king, and that discourse was typical of those he addressed to Jewish audiences. It was like the sermon delivered to the Jews in the synagogue of Antioch in Pisidia in one important aspect. Both discourses gathered round the resurrection of Jesus Christ as their central idea. St. Paul began his address before Agrippa with that doctrine, and he ended with the same. The hope of Israel, towards which their continuous worship tended, was the resurrection of the dead. That was St. Pauls opening idea. The same note lay beneath the narrative of his own conversion, and then he turned back to his original statement that the Risen Christ was the hope of Israel and of the world taught by Moses and proclaimed by prophets. But it was all in vain as regards Agrippa and Bernice. The Herods were magnificent, clever, beautiful. But they were of the earth, earthy. Agrippa said indeed to Paul, “With but little persuasion thou wouldest fain make me a Christian.” But it was not souls like his for whom the gospel message was intended. The Herods knew nothing of the burden of sin or the keen longing of souls desirous of holiness and of God. They were satisfied with the present transient scene, and enjoyed it thoroughly. Agrippas father when he lay a-dying at Caesarea consoled himself with the reflection that though his career was prematurely cut short, yet at any rate he had lived a splendid life. And such as the parent had been, such were the children. King Agrippa and his sister Bernice were true types of the stony-ground hearers, with whom “the care of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word.” And they choked the word so effectually in his case, even when taught by St. Paul, that the only result upon Agrippa, as St. Luke reports it, was this: “Agrippa said unto Festus, This man might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed unto Caesar.”