The Promised Son Is Announced Beyond Israel

Niger is Latin for black, a nickname that may point to African origin; linking him with Simon of Cyrene (Mark 15:21) is a guess. Manaen is Menahem, “comforter”. “Brought up with” is suntrophos, a foster brother or companion raised at court, so he grew up beside Herod Antipas, the tetrarch who beheaded John the Baptist.

“Ministered” is leitourgeo, the word for priestly service in the temple, used of Zechariah’s course of duty (Luke 1:23) and the root of the English liturgy. “Separate” is aphorizo, the verb Paul later uses of himself: “separated unto the gospel of God” (Romans 1:1), set apart “from my mother’s womb” (Galatians 1:15).

A second fast, now with prayer, follows the command; the church does not hurry. “Sent them away” is apoluo, to release or let go, a softer word than the Spirit’s “sent forth” in the next verse. When they return in 14:26, Antioch is described as the place “from whence they had been recommended to the grace of God”.

Seleucia Pieria was Antioch’s port, about sixteen miles west near the mouth of the Orontes, where the harbour walls can still be traced. From there Cyprus lies some sixty miles out to sea to the south-west. Barnabas was a Cypriot (4:36), so the first stop is his home ground.

Salamis, on Cyprus’s east coast, was the island’s largest city, with enough Jews to need several synagogues. “Minister” here is huperetes, an assistant, the word for the synagogue attendant who took the scroll back from Jesus at Nazareth (Luke 4:20). What John Mark actually did for them is not specified.

They crossed about ninety miles to Paphos, the Roman capital on the west coast, known for its shrine of Aphrodite. Bar-jesus means son of Jesus, that is, of Joshua, a name built on “the LORD saves”. He is the first figure Acts calls a false prophet, and a Jew at the court of a Roman governor.

“Deputy” is anthupatos, proconsul, and it is exactly the right title: Cyprus became a senatorial province governed by a proconsul in 22 BC. A Lucius Sergius Paullus is named in a Roman inscription as a curator of the Tiber banks under Claudius, possibly the same man. “Prudent” is sunetos, intelligent, discerning.

“By interpretation” is a puzzle, since Elymas is no translation of Bar-jesus; proposals include an Arabic word for a learned man and an Aramaic word for a dream-reader. “Turn away” is diastrepho, to twist, and Paul throws the same verb back at him two verses later: “pervert the right ways of the Lord”.

The Roman name Paulus, meaning small, appears for the first time in front of a Roman official who shares it, and from here on Acts uses nothing else except when Paul retells his conversion. He had likely borne both names from birth, a Hebrew one and a Roman one, as many Jews with citizenship did.

“Subtilty” is dolos, deceit, and “mischief” is rhadiourgia, reckless villainy, found only here. “Child of the devil” turns his name inside out: Bar-jesus, son of salvation, is called son of the accuser. “Pervert” means to make crooked, against the ways the Baptist was sent to make straight (Luke 3:4–5).

Two chapters earlier “the hand of the Lord was with” the preachers at Antioch (11:21); here it is “upon” a man for judgment, as it came “upon thy cattle” in Egypt (Exodus 9:3). “Mist” is achlus, a term Greek medical writers used for clouding of the eyes. First a mist, then full darkness.

“Astonished at the doctrine” uses the same verb as the crowd in Capernaum who “were astonished at his doctrine: for his word was with power” (Luke 4:32). The proconsul is struck by the teaching more than by the blinding; he is the first provincial governor in Acts said to believe.

“Paul and his company” is literally “those around Paul”: from here Barnabas is usually named second, and Paul leads. Perga stood a few miles inland from the south coast of Asia Minor on the river Cestrus. John Mark’s return is told in one clause; its cost comes out in 15:38.

Pisidian Antioch was a Roman colony about 3,600 feet up, reached from Perga by a hard hundred-mile road through the Taurus mountains. Some, following W. M. Ramsay, connect the climb with the “infirmity of the flesh” Paul mentions to the Galatians (4:13), a guess. Sitting down in the synagogue marked them as ready to be called on.

The service followed an order still recognisable: prayers, a reading from the Law, a reading from the Prophets, then an address. The “rulers of the synagogue” arranged it; Jairus held that office (Luke 8:41). “Word of exhortation” is the phrase the Letter to the Hebrews uses to describe itself (Hebrews 13:22): a sermon.

Paul stands to speak, where Jesus at Nazareth sat down after the reading (Luke 4:20); customs of posture varied. His address names two audiences in one breath, Israelites by birth and Gentiles who worship Israel’s God. “Give audience” is simply “listen”.

“With an high arm” is the Septuagint’s phrase for the exodus, the Greek of “stretched out arm” in Exodus 6:6 and Deuteronomy 5:15. “Dwelt as strangers” is paroikia, a sojourn in someone else’s land. Paul begins where Stephen began (7:2–7), with the fathers and Egypt.

“Suffered he their manners” is etropophoresen, “he put up with their ways”. Many manuscripts read etrophophoresen, differing by one letter: “he carried them as a nurse carries a child”. The same pair of readings occurs in the Septuagint of Deuteronomy 1:31, the verse Paul is echoing, where God bore Israel “as a man doth bear his son”.

The seven nations are listed in Deuteronomy 7:1: Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. “Divided their land to them by lot” is one Greek verb meaning to give as an inheritance, recalling Joshua 14:2, where the land was assigned by lot among the tribes.

The King James attaches the 450 years to the judges, which clashes with 1 Kings 6:1, where 480 years run from the exodus to Solomon’s temple. The oldest manuscripts put the figure before “after that”, so it covers the 400 years in Egypt, 40 in the wilderness and the conquest, and the problem mostly disappears.

Paul names the first Saul, “a man of the tribe of Benjamin”, and Paul himself is a Saul of that same tribe (Philippians 3:5). The Old Testament never gives Saul’s reign a clear length; 1 Samuel 13:1 is damaged in the Hebrew. Josephus also gives forty years in one place, so Paul reflects a known reckoning.

“Removed” is methistemi, to depose. The divine testimony is stitched from three texts: “I have found David my servant” (Psalm 89:20), “a man after his own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14), and “shall perform all my pleasure”, said of Cyrus in Isaiah 44:28. Paul quotes the sense of all three as one word of God.

The promise is the one given through Nathan: “I will set up thy seed after thee” (2 Samuel 7:12). “Saviour” and the name Jesus reinforce each other, since Yeshua means “the LORD saves”. In the Greek, Jesus is the last word of the sentence, held back for emphasis.

“Before his coming” is literally “before the face of his entrance”, a Hebrew-flavoured expression. This is Paul’s only mention of John the Baptist in his recorded speeches, and he stresses the reach of John’s preaching: “to all the people of Israel”. In 19:3–4 Paul meets disciples at Ephesus who knew only John’s baptism.

“Fulfilled his course” is dromos, a runner’s race, the word Paul uses of his own life in 20:24 and in 2 Timothy 4:7, “I have finished my course.” Loosing a master’s sandals was a slave’s job, and a later rabbinic saying excused a disciple from it; John claims to be below even that.

Paul turns and addresses the room again with a warmer title, “children of the stock of Abraham”, then again the God-fearers. “Salvation” picks up “Saviour” from verse 23. The word “sent” is exapostello: the message itself is dispatched, as the apostles were.

The hearers in Pisidian Antioch had just heard the Law and the Prophets read aloud that morning (verse 15), so Paul’s phrase “read every sabbath day” points at their own service. “Knew him not” is agnoeo, the ignorance Peter also names in 3:17: “through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers.”

“Cause of death” is the phrase Pilate used when he said the third time, “I have found no cause of death in him” (Luke 23:22). “Desired” is aiteo, to request, the same verb used for the crowd asking Pilate for Barabbas (Luke 23:25). They asked for the one and demanded the death of the other.

Paul compresses: the ones who took Jesus down and buried him were Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus (Luke 23:50–53, John 19:38–39), both council members, so “they” loosely covers Jerusalem’s leaders. “Fulfilled all that was written” recalls Luke 18:31, where Jesus said everything written by the prophets would be accomplished.

In Greek the verse is six words long, the shortest in the speech, and it turns the whole argument. The three verses before it had “they” as their subject, Jerusalem and its rulers doing everything to Jesus; now “God” is the subject and the direction reverses.

The “many days” are the forty of 1:3. Paul here cites the Galilean witnesses and does not add himself, although in 1 Corinthians 15:8 he counts his own encounter, “last of all he was seen of me also”. In a synagogue far from Jerusalem, he rests the case on those who knew Jesus before and after.

“Declare glad tidings” is euangelizomai, announce good news. “The promise which was made unto the fathers” is the phrase Paul returns to before King Agrippa, saying he stands on trial “for the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers” (26:6).

Codex Bezae reads “the first psalm”, which reflects an old custom of counting Psalms 1 and 2 as one; the Talmud records that the two were once joined. “Raised up” here may mean bringing Jesus onto the scene, as God “raised up” David in verse 22, before verse 34 speaks of raising from the dead.

Isaiah 55:3 in the Septuagint promises “the holy things of David, the sure ones”, ta hosia. Verse 35 quotes Psalm 16 on God’s “Holy One”, hosios, the same root. Linking two texts by a shared word was an established Jewish method of interpretation, and Paul uses it here.

Psalm 16:10 is the verse Peter used at Pentecost (2:27). “Corruption” is diaphthora, bodily decay, and in the New Testament the word appears only in these two speeches, six times in all, in Acts 2 and here. Two apostles, years apart, rest on the same line of David.

“Fell on sleep” is koimao, the word for Stephen’s death (7:60), and “laid unto his fathers” echoes 1 Kings 2:10, “David slept with his fathers”. The Greek allows “served his own generation” or “served the will of God in his own generation”; either way his service had a term, and it ended.

The verse is the whole contrast in miniature. Peter made the same point at Pentecost by pointing to David’s tomb, “with us unto this day” (2:29); in Pisidian Antioch, far from Jerusalem, Paul makes it without the landmark. “Raised again” is egeiro, the verb of verse 30.

“Be it known unto you” is the formula Peter used to open at Pentecost (2:14) and before the council (4:10). Paul uses it to bring a historical survey to a personal address: forgiveness is “preached unto you”, in this room, this sabbath.

This is the first time Acts uses “justified”, dikaioo, in the sense Paul’s letters make famous: “a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 2:16). Whether the sentence implies the law justifies from some things but not all is argued; most read it as saying the law could not do what Christ does.

“Beware” is blepete, literally “look”, the same verb Jesus used for “take heed”. “The prophets” may mean the Book of the Twelve, the minor prophets, which circulated as a single scroll; the quotation that follows comes from Habakkuk, one of that collection.

Habakkuk 1:5 is quoted from the Septuagint, which has “ye despisers” where the Hebrew reads “among the heathen”. In Habakkuk the unbelievable work was the Chaldean invasion; Paul applies the warning to God’s present act. The prophet’s audience refused to believe a coming judgment, and Paul warns against the same deafness.

The oldest manuscripts read simply “as they went out, they besought them”, without naming “the Jews” or “the Gentiles”; the King James follows a later text that fills in both. “The next sabbath” may also mean “in the meantime”, since the Greek metaxu can mean between.

“Religious proselytes” combines two words usually kept apart: proselytes were full converts, while “religious” or “devout” normally described uncircumcised worshippers. “Continue in” is prosmeno, the verb Barnabas used in 11:23 when he urged the Antioch believers to cleave unto the Lord.

A week has passed, filled with the conversations of verse 43, and the word has spread. “Almost the whole city” is broad language for a Roman colony of several thousand, but it signals something practical as well: Gentiles filling a synagogue built for a Jewish congregation.

“Filled with envy” is the same phrase as in 5:17, where the high priest’s party “were filled with indignation”; the Greek word zelos means both zeal and jealousy. “Blaspheming” can mean reviling a person as well as God, and the Greek leaves open whether the abuse fell on Jesus, Paul, or both.

“Waxed bold” is parresiazomai, to speak openly, a keyword of Acts (4:29, 31). “First” matches Paul’s own “to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16). The phrase “judge yourselves unworthy” turns their verdict on Paul back on themselves. This and verse 48 are the only mentions of eternal life in Acts.

Isaiah 49:6 is the servant’s commission, and Simeon had already applied it to the infant Jesus: “a light to lighten the Gentiles” (Luke 2:32). Paul and Barnabas take the servant’s “thee” as their own charge. “Unto the ends of the earth” is the phrase of Jesus’ last words in 1:8.

“Glorified the word of the Lord” is an unusual phrase: praise given to the message itself. “Ordained” is tasso, to arrange or appoint, originally a military word for posting soldiers in their ranks; Acts uses it elsewhere for things “appointed” (22:10) and for a day set (28:23).

“Published” is diaphero, carried through or spread abroad. “Region” is chora, the countryside around a city; Pisidian Antioch was the chief administrative centre of its district, and its roads carried the word out to the farms and villages around it.

Women of rank were often drawn to the synagogue; Josephus says most of the wives of Damascus were attached to the Jewish religion. “Chief men” would be the colony’s magistrates. “Coasts” in 1611 meant borders or territory, not seashore; Antioch was far inland.

Jesus had told the Twelve and the Seventy to shake the dust off their feet against a town that refused them (Luke 9:5, 10:11). Jews returning from Gentile lands reportedly did the same, treating foreign soil as unclean. Iconium, modern Konya, lay about ninety miles to the east-south-east along the Via Sebaste.

The disciples here are the new believers left behind in Antioch, not only the two missionaries. “Were filled” is in the imperfect tense, “kept being filled”, a continuing condition rather than a single moment. Paul and Barnabas will come back through the city in 14:21–22 to strengthen them.