Acts 25:12

Acts 25:12. Then Festus, when he had conferred with the council. The council here referred to was not the members of the Sanhedrim then present at Cæsarea, but certain officials whom Suetonius calls consiliarii. These advisers or assessors were taken into counsel in questions of difficulty. Gloag refers to a similar case in the administration of Cumanus, when Josephus (Antiquities) tells us that the governor took counsel with his friends before he put to death a Roman soldier who had wantonly destroyed the sacred books of the Jews; and to another like incident in the life of Cestius Gallus, the Proconsul of Syria, who, on receiving contradictory reports from Florus, the Procurator of Judæa, and the rulers of Jerusalem, concerning certain disturbances among the Jews, consulted with his principal men, that is, with his council (Josephus, Wars of the Jews). In the present case the point of discussion was, Should the appeal of Paul to Cæsar be allowed or not? If the accusation against the citizen appealing were perfectly clear, as in the case of a notorious malefactor or rebel, the request to be allowed to appeal might be refused by the Roman official presiding over the court. In the present instance, however, no fair ground of refusal occurred to Festus, who proceeded to signify his consent to Paul's request.

Hast thou appealed unto Cæsar? unto Cæsar shalt thou go. This reply of Festus to Paul, granting him, after consulting with his assessors, his request to be sent to Rome for trial, is not interrogative, as in the English Version. It simply expresses the decision of the court. Bengel sees in the curt phrase evidently in the very words in which Festus addressed the apostle at the close of the hearing an intention on the part of the speaker of alarming the prisoner, who had declined to comply with what was evidently the judge's wish viz., to waive the right of his citizenship, and to consent to be judged by the Sanhedrim at Jerusalem. Without, perhaps, quite conceding this, we cannot help suspecting that over the procurator's face something like a smile of derision passed when he delivered his sentence: ‘Well, you have appealed to Cæsar's court; to Cæsar's court you shall go,' Festus knowing well the reception, the weary delays and harsh treatment, such a prisoner would probably meet with at Rome.