Acts 21:11

He took Paul’s girdle, and bound his own hands and feet. — The MSS. vary between “his hands” (St. Paul’s) and “his own;” but the latter is by far the best-supported reading. It is interesting to note the revival of the old prophetic manner of predicting by symbolic acts. So Isaiah had walked “naked and barefoot” (Isaiah 20:3); and Jeremiah had gone and left his girdle in a cave on the banks of the Euphrates, and had made bonds and yokes, and had put them on his neck (Jeremiah 13:1; Jeremiah 27:2); and Ezekiel had portrayed the siege of Jerusalem on a tile, and had cut the hair from his head and beard (Ezekiel 4:1; Ezekiel 5:1). Looking to the previous relations between St. Paul and Agabus at Antioch (Acts 11:27), we may well believe that the latter, foreseeing the danger to which the Apostle would be exposed, came down to Cæsarea, in a spirit of friendly anxiety, to warn him not to come. The feeling which led to the murderous plot of Acts 23:12 could be no secret to a prophet living at Jerusalem.