Acts 24:1

πρεσβυτέρων τινῶν for τῶν πρεσβυτέρων with אABE. Vulg. ‘cum senioribus quibusdam.’

1. μετὰ δὲ πέντε ἡμέρας, and after five days. Most naturally this means after St Paul’s arrival in Cæsarea, and the events narrated at the end of chap. 23. But it may mean five days after the departure of the Apostle from Jerusalem. The chief captain would give notice to the high priest of what he had done as soon as it was safe to do so. After learning that they must go to Cæsarea with their accusation, the enemies of St Paul would spend some little time in preparing their charge for the hearing of Felix, and in providing themselves with an advocate. And as they would not probably travel with as much haste as St Paul’s convoy did, five days is not a long interval to elapse before they arrived in Cæsarea.

κατέβη ὁ�, Ananias the high priest came down. He would be sure to be hot against St Paul after that speech about the ‘whited wall.’

The verb καταβαίνω is used because the journey was from inland towards the seashore.

μετὰ πρεσβυτέρων τινῶν, with certain elders. It would only be a portion of the elders who came. Those of the Pharisees’ party would rather have spoken in favour of the Apostle. The persons likely to take the journey to Cæsarea would be the Sadducees.

καὶ ῥήτορος Τερτύλλου τινός, and with an orator, one Tertullus. This man, as we may judge from his name, which is a modification of the Latin Tertius, was a Roman, and would be chosen because of his knowledge of Roman law, and his ability to place the case before Felix in such a light as to make it seem that Paul was dangerous to the Roman power, and not merely a turbulent and renegade Jew. We see below that he endeavoured to do this.

οἵτινες ἐνεφάνισαν, and they informed. On the breaking up of the relative in translation see above on Acts 23:33. If the relative rendering ‘who’ were kept, it might be supposed to refer only to Tertullus.

ἐμφανίζω St Luke uses in other places (Acts 25:2; Acts 25:15) of the laying a formal information before a judge. It is also used in LXX. (Esther 2:22) of Esther laying the information of the plot of the two chamberlains before king Ahasuerus.