Acts 28:20

Acts 28:20. For this cause therefore have I called for you, to see you, and to speak with you. His love to his own people was so great that the ever-recurring suspicions of his work and conduct on the part of the Jews were the occasion of the most bitter grief to him. He longed to set himself right with the representatives of the nation dwelling in Rome, and with this hope he had sent for them to his prison room.

Because that for the hope of Israel I am bound with this chain. The ‘Hope,' the glorious hope, for which he, the old man, was suffering all these indignities, was closely connected with the Messiah, for whom Israel had been so long anxiously waiting. He, Paul, believed that that Messiah had come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. It was his unswerving belief in that Messiah Jesus which was the cause of all his suffering, including the chain then hanging upon his arm and linking him to the silent Roman legionary at his side. The chain is specially mentioned in the singular. This is evidently the remark of an eye-witness, who was referring to the fetter which bound him to a single soldier (see Acts 28:16).