Acts 28:4

Acts 28:4. When the barbarians saw the venomous beast hang on his hand. Our translators have added the adjective ‘venomous.' The word θήριον is exactly that which would be naturally used for a snake. There is a curious illustration of this in the word ‘treacle,' which is derived from (θκριακόν [or θϰριαϰόν]), a black medicine or antidote made of snakes. For the meaning of the word ‘barbarian,' see note above.

They said among themselves. This suspicions conversation among themselves is an animated element in the description. We can well imagine the scene.

This man is a murderer. They would readily perceive that St. Paul was one of the prisoners under the charge of the military officer, and it was natural to suspect that his crime had been no light one. It is not likely that he had been chained to a soldier, when the people from the ship were struggling through the waves; but the manacle might be on his wrist, and he might be chained again to a soldier on gaining the land.

Yet vengeance suffereth not to live. The ancients personified retributive justice under the name of Nemesis. We need not imagine an absolute personification in this case. The instinctive moral sense of these untutored people would naturally lead them to this conclusion. Mr. Humphrey adduces here an interesting Greek epigram, the substance of which is this, that a man shipwrecked on the coast of Libya, and killed while asleep by a serpent, had struggled in vain against the waves, finding here on land the fate that was his due.