Acts 25:14

‘And as they tarried there many days, Festus laid Paul's case before the King.'

Festus saw Agrippa as a Godsend. Agrippa was seen by the Romans as an expert on Jewish affairs. Who better then to sort out these problems about the charges brought against Paul?

So while Agrippa and Bernice were staying with him ‘many days' he took the opportunity of laying the case before the king. His words to Agrippa reveal his puzzlement and the dilemma he found himself in. He wanted to behave justly but he could not understand either party. He had been left by his predecessor with a prisoner that he was finding it difficult to make anything of. On the one hand all the Jews could accuse Paul of were religious matters. On the other Paul, for some reason, did not want to be judged in Jerusalem, and thus had appealed to Caesar. And as he did not really understand what the charges were against the man, he did not know what on earth he was going to give Caesar as the reason why he had sent him to him.

We must appreciate that he had not been in his position long enough to understand all the intricacies of current Jewish politics, nor to understand their depth of religious feeling and bigotry. He was a plain, relatively honest man out of his depth.