An Iron Gate Opens; a House Door Stays Shut

This is Herod Agrippa I, grandson of Herod the Great, whom the emperor Claudius made king over all Judaea in AD 41; he reigned only three years. “Stretched forth his hands” means laid violent hands on. “Vex” is kakoo, to do harm, a stronger word in Greek than the mild English of today suggests.

James the son of Zebedee is the first of the Twelve to die, and the only one whose martyrdom the New Testament records. Jesus had told him and John, “Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of” (Mark 10:39). Death by the sword meant beheading. A later tradition in Clement of Alexandria says his accuser was converted and died beside him.

Josephus portrays Agrippa as careful to please the Jewish population, living in Jerusalem and keeping the customs publicly. The parenthesis sets the date: the days of unleavened bread, the same feast at which Jesus was arrested. Peter is seized in the season of his Lord’s own arrest.

A quaternion is a squad of four soldiers, and four squads meant one for each watch of the night: two chained to the prisoner and two at the door (verse 6). Tyndale used “Easter” for pascha throughout his New Testament; the King James changed it to “passover” everywhere but here. The plan was a public trial, as Jesus had faced before the crowd.

The verse turns on its “but”: Peter was kept in prison, but prayer was made. “Without ceasing” is ektenos, literally stretched out, earnest; Luke uses the related word of Jesus praying “more earnestly” in Gethsemane (Luke 22:44). The church is at prayer while the state keeps watch.

In Gethsemane Peter slept while Jesus asked him to watch and pray (Luke 22:45); now the church prays and Peter sleeps, on the night before his trial. Roman military custody chained a prisoner by the wrist to a soldier. Here there are two chains and two soldiers, so he cannot move without waking one of them.

“Came upon him” is ephistemi, to stand by suddenly, the verb for the angel who appeared to the shepherds when “the glory of the Lord shone round about them” (Luke 2:9). “Arise up quickly” is urgent, and the chains simply drop from his wrists without a word said to them.

“Gird thyself” means to tuck up the long tunic into a belt so a man can move quickly. At the first Passover Israel ate “with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet” (Exodus 12:11), ready to leave in haste, and here, in Passover week, Peter is told to belt up, put on his sandals and go.

“Wist not” is the past of the old verb “wit”, to know. “Vision” is horama, the word used of Peter’s rooftop experience in Joppa (10:17), so he has recent reason to think he is dreaming again. He follows without believing, and his feet are ahead of his understanding.

A “ward” is a guard post, and they pass two. “Of his own accord” is automate, the root of automatic; its only other use in the New Testament is the earth bearing fruit “of herself” in Mark 4:28. Codex Bezae adds that they “went down the seven steps”, a detail that sounds like local memory.

“Come to himself” is the phrase used of the prodigal son in the far country, “when he came to himself” (Luke 15:17). “Expectation” is prosdokia, what the crowd was looking forward to: the spectacle Herod had promised them after the feast. Peter names both hands he has been delivered from, the king’s and the people’s.

“Considered” is sunorao, to take in the whole situation at a glance. Mary’s son Mark was a cousin of Barnabas (Colossians 4:10). A house with a gateway, a servant girl and room for “many” gathered at night belonged to a person of some means, which explains why the church met there.

The “door of the gate” is the small wicket set into a larger gateway on the street. The girl is a paidiske, a servant girl, the same word used of the maid in the high priest’s courtyard who first said Peter had been with Jesus (Luke 22:56). A girl at a gate once exposed him; this one rejoices at him.

In the high priest’s courtyard it was also his voice that gave him away: “thy speech bewrayeth thee” (Matthew 26:73). “For gladness” is literally “from joy”, the same odd grammar of joy blocking action as the disciples who “believed not for joy” when the risen Jesus stood among them (Luke 24:41).

“Thou art mad” is the verdict Festus will pass on Paul (26:24). “Constantly affirmed” is diischurizomai, to insist strongly, the verb for the man who insisted Peter was a Galilean on the night of the denial (Luke 22:59). The idea of a personal angel reflects a Jewish belief that Jesus also mentions (Matthew 18:10).

The imperfect tense pictures repeated knocking. A wanted man standing in the street at night, with every knock risking the neighbours’ attention, gives the delay its edge. “Astonished” is existemi, the same verb as the Samaritans’ bewitchment in 8:9, here the amazement of people who had been praying for exactly this.

“Beckoning with the hand” is kataseio, a gesture Acts gives to Paul before speeches (13:16, 21:40). This James is the Lord’s brother (Galatians 1:19), who will speak for the Jerusalem church at the council (15:13). “Another place” has invited guesses, Antioch, where Paul finds him in Galatians 2:11, or Rome; the text gives no hint.

“No small stir” is a litotes, a way of saying much by denying little, and it is a habit of Acts: “no small dissension” (15:2), “no small stir” again at Ephesus (19:23). A guard who lost a prisoner could suffer the prisoner’s penalty, which is why the Philippian jailer draws his sword in 16:27.

“Examined” is anakrino, a formal judicial interrogation. “Put to death” is literally “led away”, apago, the regular term for taking a condemned man to execution. Josephus says Agrippa went to Caesarea to preside over games held in honour of the emperor, which is the setting for what follows.

“Highly displeased” is thumomacheo, to be furiously at odds, found only here. Tyre and Sidon had little farmland and had eaten from Israel’s fields since Solomon paid Hiram in wheat and oil (1 Kings 5:11). Blastus was the chamberlain, the officer over the royal bedchamber; how they won him over is not said.

Josephus tells the same event (Antiquities 19.343–350): on the second day of the festival Agrippa entered the theatre at daybreak in a robe woven wholly of silver, which flashed in the rising sun. “Set day” fits a fixed festival occasion. “Oration” is demegoreo, to address a public assembly, used only here.

The imperfect “gave a shout” suggests a rhythmic chant repeated by the crowd. Josephus reports the flatterers crying that they had revered him as a man but now owned him more than mortal. Hellenistic kings styled themselves “god manifest”, and in a theatre full of dependants, such praise cost the crowd nothing.

“Eaten of worms” is one Greek word, skolekobrotos, found only here. Josephus says Agrippa was seized by pains in the belly and died after five days, aged fifty-four. 2 Maccabees 9:9 gives the same kind of death to Antiochus Epiphanes, the king who made himself a god. “Gave up the ghost” is the verb used of Ananias and Sapphira (5:5, 10).

“Grew and multiplied” is the language of Exodus 1:7, where Israel “increased abundantly, and multiplied” under a Pharaoh determined to crush them, and behind that of Genesis 1:28. The same summary sentence marks earlier and later turns in Acts (6:7, 19:20). The king is dead in one verse, and the word is growing in the next.

Many of the best manuscripts read that they returned “to Jerusalem”, not “from”, a well-known puzzle since they are leaving it; scribes and translators have argued over the sense for centuries. “Ministry” is diakonia, the relief of 11:29. John Mark joins them now, and will leave them at Perga (13:13), a departure that later splits Paul and Barnabas (15:39).