Acts 24:26

Acts 24:26. He hoped also that money should have been given him of Paul, that he might loose him: wherefore he sent for him the oftener, and communed with him. The greed and rapacity of so many of these great lieutenants of the Cæsar in distant provinces of the Empire, is well exemplified in this episode in the government of the Procurator Felix. These men looked upon the great trusts committed to their charge as simply mines of wealth for them to work as best they could for their own advantage. Anything could be purchased at their hands, even immunity from the penalties of crime. What a picture of provincial government in the days of the early Cæsars! The sacred historian by no means painted for us here the darkest picture we possess of these venal governors; for instance, Josephus tells us of one Albinus, a successor of Felix in Judæa, who, on his departure from the province, freed all those prisoners who gave him money; by which means, as the historian quaintly remarks, the prisons were certainly emptied, but the country was filled with robbers (see also Tacitus and Suetonius, who give us similar accounts of these corrupt and selfish rulers). So common an offence did this receiving bribes from a prisoner or his friends appear to be among the higher officials of the Empire, that a special law was framed, expressly forbidding a judge to receive pay in any form for the arrest, acquittal, or condemnation of any individual (‘Lex Julia de repetundis'). There is no doubt that, in the case of the apostle, the Roman governor had heard with interest that the special object of Paul's journey to Jerusalem on this occasion was the distribution among the Jewish poor of sums of money collected in Macedonia and Achaia. This led the rapacious procurator to suspect that the prisoner, if not a wealthy man himself had the command over considerable amounts. He was also well aware of the devoted love which existed between the members of this strange new sect, and had heard that Paul was one of their most distinguished leaders; these circumstances gave him good ground for hoping a substantial bribe would in the end be offered for the life and liberty of the accused.

In after times this offering money by way of a bribe to the Roman officials, to procure liberty to live as a Christian, or in the event of arrest and imprisonment to secure an acquittal, was no uncommon occurrence. Some century and a half later, Tertullian in North Africa, when deploring this custom, reminds his readers how Paul behaved when in danger and in prison, when a gift of money to his unrighteous judge would have saved him (De Fuga in Persecutione; see also Cyprian of Carthage's remarks in his Epistle (third century) denouncing the ‘Libellatici,' those who purchased permission to be Christians).