XVI. (1) A CERTAIN DISCIPLE WAS THERE, NAMED TIMOTHEUS. — We read with a special interest the first mention of the name of one who was afterwards so dear to the Apostle, his “true son in the faith” (1 Timothy 1:2). On his probable conversion on St. Paul’s first mission in Lystra, see Notes on Acts 1... [ Continue Reading ]
AND TOOK AND CIRCUMCISED HIM. — The act seems at first inconsistent with St. Paul’s conduct as to Titus (Galatians 2:3), and with his general teaching as to circumcision (Galatians 5:2). The circumstances of the two cases were, however, different, and there were adequate reasons here for the course... [ Continue Reading ]
THEY DELIVERED THEM THE DECREES. — The number of copies which the process implies is in itself a sufficient guarantee that that which St. Luke gives is a faithful transcript. The decrees were clearly still regarded by the Gentile converts as being the charter on which they might take their stand in... [ Continue Reading ]
WHEN THEY HAD GONE THROUGHOUT PHRYGIA AND THE REGION OF GALATIA. — In the previous journey St. Paul, when he was at Antioch in Pisidia, was just on the border of the two provinces, but had not travelled through them, Phrygia lying to the west, and Galatia to the north-east. The former name was used... [ Continue Reading ]
THEY ASSAYED TO GO INTO BITHYNIA. — The verse describes very vividly the uncertainty produced day by day by this conflict between human plans and divine direction. Bithynia, lying to the north, had, like Pontus, a considerable Jewish population scattered along its shores, and they were inclined to t... [ Continue Reading ]
CAME DOWN TO TROAS. — Their travels had at last led them to the coast, and they looked out upon the waters of the Ægean. The town of Alexandria Troas, at this time reckoned as a Roman colony and a free city, recalls to our memories, without entering into vexed questions as to its identity with the s... [ Continue Reading ]
THERE STOOD A MAN OF MACEDONIA. — The term is probably used in its later sense as applied to the Roman province, which included Macedonia, properly so called, Illyricum, Epirus, and Thessaly, the province of Achaia including, in like manner, the whole of Southern Greece. The vision which St. Paul lo... [ Continue Reading ]
IMMEDIATELY WE ENDEAVOURED... — The natural inference from the sudden appearance of the first person in a narrative previously in the third, is that the author became at this point an actor in the events which he records. (See _Introduction to St. Luke’s Gospel._) The other hypothesis, that he incor... [ Continue Reading ]
WE CAME WITH A STRAIGHT COURSE TO SAMOTHRACIA. — Their course lay to the north-west, and, probably, after the manner of the navigation of the time, they put into harbour each night; and the historian, with his characteristic love of geographical detail (see _Introduction to St. Luke’s Gospel_)_,_ no... [ Continue Reading ]
THE CHIEF CITY OF THAT PART OF MACEDONIA. — More accurately, _a chief_ (or _first_)_ city of the border-country of Macedonia._ The description is not without difficulty, and has been noted by adverse critics as an instance of St. Luke’s inaccuracy. The city of Philippi, rebuilt by the father of Alex... [ Continue Reading ]
BY A RIVER SIDE, WHERE PRAYER WAS WONT TO BE MADE. — Better, _where an oratory_ (_i.e.,_ a place of prayer) _was established._ The word, which was the Greek equivalent for the Hebrew “house of prayer” (Matthew 21:13), is used in this sense by Josephus (_Vit._ p. 54), (see Note on Luke 6:12), and was... [ Continue Reading ]
LYDIA, A SELLER OF PURPLE, OF THE CITY OF THYATIRA. — The city so named, now known as _Ak-hissar,_ was in the Roman province of Asia, but came within the boundaries of the older kingdom of Lydia, and it is probable that, like so many slaves and women of the _libertinæ_ class, she took her name from... [ Continue Reading ]
AND WHEN SHE WAS BAPTIZED, AND HER HOUSEHOLD. — It does not follow from St. Luke’s condensed narrative that all this took place on the same day. The statement that “her household” were baptised has often been urged as evidence that infant baptism was the practice of the apostolic age. It must be adm... [ Continue Reading ]
AS WE WENT TO PRAYER. — Better, perhaps, _to the oratory,_ or _place of prayer._ (See Note on Acts 16:13.) It should be stated, however, that the Greek noun is used without the article, and that this is so far in favour of the Received rendering. On the other hand, we find the noun _ecclesia,_ or _c... [ Continue Reading ]
THE SAME FOLLOWED PAUL AND US, AND CRIED, SAYING. — Better, _kept on crying._ Assuming that the case now before us presented phenomena analogous to those of the cases of demoniac possession, we may refer to what has been said in the _Excursus_ on that subject appended to St. Matthew’s Gospel for gen... [ Continue Reading ]
BUT PAUL, BEING GRIEVED ... — It is obvious that the constant repetition of these clamorous cries must have been a hindrance to the Apostle’s work, disturbing him as he talked to the other women at the _proseucha._ Was it not right for him to do as his Master had done with the demoniacs of Gadara (s... [ Continue Reading ]
THAT THE HOPE OF THEIR GAINS WAS GONE. — Better, _of their occupation._ The word for “gains” is the same as that translated “gain” and “craft” in Acts 19:24. There is something like a prophetic significance in the use, at this stage, of the word which was the key to nearly all the persecutions to wh... [ Continue Reading ]
THE MAGISTRATES. — The Greek word used (_Stratêgi,_ literally, _generals_ — the name survived in 1750 in the Italian _Stradigo,_ used of the prefect of Messina) is used with St. Luke’s usual accuracy, for the prætors, or duumviri, who formed the executive of the Roman _colonia._ THESE MEN, BEING JEW... [ Continue Reading ]
AND TEACH CUSTOMS. — The word is used as including ritual as well as social habits, and seems to have been specially used of the whole system of Jewish life. (See Notes on Acts 6:14; Acts 15:1; Acts 21:21.) BEING ROMANS. — The people of Philippi, as a _colonia,_ had a right to claim the title of Ro... [ Continue Reading ]
COMMANDED TO BEAT THEM. — The Greek verb gives the special Roman form of punishment, that of being beaten with the rods of the lictors. This, therefore, takes its place as one of the three instances to which St. Paul refers in 2 Corinthians 11:25. The question naturally occurs, why he did not, on th... [ Continue Reading ]
AND WHEN THEY HAD LAID MANY STRIPES UPON THEM. — The words imply a punishment of more than usual severity, such as would leave their backs lacerated and bleeding. So in 1 Thessalonians 2:2, St. Paul speaks of having been “shamefully entreated” at Philippi.... [ Continue Reading ]
THRUST THEM INTO THE INNER PRISON. — Those who have seen anything of the prisons of the Roman empire, as, _e.g.,_ the Mamertine dungeon at Rome itself, can picture to themselves the darkness and foulness of the den into which Paul and his friend were now thrust: the dark cavern-like cell, below the... [ Continue Reading ]
AND AT MIDNIGHT PAUL AND SILAS PRAYED, AND SANG PRAISES. — Better, _praying, they Were singing hymns,_ the Greek expressing one act rather than two. The act was, we may believe, habitual, and they would not intermit it even in the dungeon, and fastened as they were, so that they could not kneel. The... [ Continue Reading ]
AND SUDDENLY THERE WAS A GREAT EARTH QUAKE. — Both the region and the time were, it will be remembered, conspicuous for convulsions of this kind. Cities in Asia, such as Sardis, Apamea and Laodicea, and in Campania, suffered severely under Tiberius. (See Note on Matthew 24:7.) St. Luke apparently re... [ Continue Reading ]
HE DREW OUT HIS SWORD, AND WOULD HAVE KILLED HIMSELF. — We have seen in Acts 12:19 what was to be expected by a gaoler who, under any circumstances, allowed a prisoner to escape. (See also Note on Acts 27:42.) Here the man sought to anticipate his fate. Suicide was a natural resource under such cond... [ Continue Reading ]
DO THYSELF NO HARM. — Few and simple as the words are, they are eminently characteristic of the love and sympathy which burnt in St. Paul’s heart. For him the suicide which others would have admired, or, at least, have thought of without horror, would have been the most terrible of all forms of deat... [ Continue Reading ]
THEN HE CALLED FOR A LIGHT. — More accurately, _‘for lights._ As St. Luke does not use, as in Acts 20:8, the word for “lamps,” it is probable that the lights were torches, and that the gaoler, with one in his hand, leapt into the darkness of the subterranean dungeon.... [ Continue Reading ]
SIRS, WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED? — The use of “Sirs” differs from that of Acts 7:26 in having a Greek word, expressive of respect (that used in John 20:15), corresponding to it. We ask what the gaoler meant by the question. Was he thinking of temporal safety from the earthquake, or from punishment;... [ Continue Reading ]
AND THEY SAID, BELIEVE ON THE LORD JESUS Christ. — The plural pronoun is not without significance. St. Paul was not the only teacher. Silvanus also took part in the work of conversion. The words have naturally become, as it were, the crucial instance — standing nearly on the same level as that of th... [ Continue Reading ]
AND THEY SPAKE UNTO HIM THE WORD OF THE LORD. — It is clear that belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, unless it were to be a mere formula, repeated as a charm, required an explanation. The very title of Christ; the acts and words that showed that Jesus was the Christ; His life, and death, and resurrecti... [ Continue Reading ]
HE... WASHED THEIR STRIPES; AND WAS BAPTIZED... — The two-fold washings, that which testified of the repentance of the gaoler and his kindly reverence for his prisoners, and that which they administered to him as the washing of regeneration, are placed in suggestive juxtaposition. He, too, was clean... [ Continue Reading ]
HE SET MEAT BEFORE THEM, AND REJOICED. — Literally, _set a table before them._ The two sufferers may well have needed food. If the tumult had begun, as is probable, as they were going to the _proseuclia_ for morning prayer, at the third hour of the day (9 A.M.), they had probably been fasting for ne... [ Continue Reading ]
THE MAGISTRATES SENT THE SERJEANTS. — Literally, _the rod-bearers,_ or _lictors._ They would probably be the very officers who had inflicted the stripes. We are not told what led to this sudden change of action. Possibly, as has been suggested, the earthquake had alarmed the _strategi;_ more probabl... [ Continue Reading ]
GO IN PEACE. — The few hours which the gaoler had spent with his new teacher had probably taught him to use the phrase in the fulness of its meaning (see Notes on Luke 7:50; Luke 8:48), and not as a mere conventional formula. He naturally looks on the offer — securing, as it did, safety for his new... [ Continue Reading ]
THEY HAVE BEATEN US OPENLY UNCONDEMNED, BEING ROMANS. — By the Lex Porcia (B.C. 247), Roman citizens were exempted from degrading punishment, such as that of scourging. It was the heaviest of all the charges brought by Cicero against Verres, the Governor of Sicily, that he had broken this law: “_Fac... [ Continue Reading ]
THEY FEARED, WHEN THEY HEARD THAT THEY WERE ROMANS. — It is clear that the _strategi_ did not consider their ignorance of St. Paul’s citizenship a sufficient defence. They had acted illegally, and the consequence of that illegality went further than they counted on; but they could not, therefore, sh... [ Continue Reading ]
THEY COMFORTED THEM, AND DEPARTED. — Lydia’s house appears to have been the meeting-place of the brethren, as well as the lodging of the Apostle and his party. As the third person is now resumed, we may infer that St. Luke remained at Philippi, Timothy accompanying the other two. It would seem from... [ Continue Reading ]