Acts 9:36

Acts 9:36. Now there was at Joppa. Joppa (Hebrew, Japho). a word signifying ‘beauty,' the port of Jerusalem in the days of Solomon, as it has been ever since. It belonged to the tribe of Dan (Joshua 19:46), and was originally a Philistine city. Josephus tells us it once belonged to the Phoenicians; and a tradition exists that on the rocks of Joppa, Andromeda was bound and exposed to the monster. At Joppa, in the days of Solomon, the cedar wood and materials for the Jerusalem Temple were landed. It was at this seaport that the prophet Jonah ‘took ship to flee from the presence of his Maker.' At the period referred to in this chapter, Joppa was a flourishing city, but was ruined in the Jewish war with Rome. We hear frequently of this seaport in the time of the Crusades. Godfrey de Bouillon, Richard of England, and St. Louis of France, in turn resided there for a considerable period. It is still the principal harbour of Palestine, but it is in a decaying state, containing only about 4000 inhabitants. The house of Simon the tanner, where Peter lodged, purports to be shown still.

A certain disciple named Tabitha, which by interpretation is called Dorcas. The name Tabitha is an Aramaic form of the Hebrew word signifying ‘gazelle,' the gazelle being regarded by Jews and Arabs as the standard of beauty. It was, with its Greek equivalent ‘Dorcas,' a name not uncommon among the Greeks and Hebrews. As at Joppa, a seaport, both the Hebrew and Greek languages were used, it is most likely this woman was known by both names Tabitha and Dorcas. It is impossible to decide her nationality. She must have been a person of considerable means, and not improbably, from the position she evidently occupied among the disciples of Joppa, belonged to a family of some rank.

Was full of good works and alms-deeds which the did. We gather from this brief notice of the life of Dorcas, and from many other incidental allusions in the ‘Acts' and Epistles, that the life recommended by the earliest preachers of Christianity, and certainly led by all the most distinguished members of the society was eminently a practical and active existence. The disciples seem to have lived, as aforetime, in the world and among men and women; they mixed in the business and harmless pleasures, and shared in the social intercourse of the day; but at the same time they coloured the old life with a new strange beauty, they adorned it with acts of generosity, self-denying love, with sweet gentle deeds of kindness done to slaves, to helpless ones, to poor sick beings of whose existence the busy restless world had hitherto taken no thought. The life of contemplation, of prayerful meditation, was evidently unknown and unheard of in the Church of the first days; such a life was a necessary development of a later age.

This is not the place to consider the advantages and disadvantages to mankind of the life of the solitary and the recluse a life which possesses in itself, it cannot be denied, much that is beautiful, and which is by no means without its holy influence on the life and work of the busy world; still the careful and thoughtful student of the words and spirit of Jesus and His disciples, as contained in the writings of the New Testament, is obliged to confess that the monastic type of life was never sketched out or imagined by a Peter, a Paul, a James, or by any of their friends or disciples. The Master's words spoken to His Father on that solemn evening before the day of the Cross, were after all the groundwork of all true Christian theology and life: ‘I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil' (John 17:15).