The Farewell Entrusts a Living Flock to God

“Uproar” is thorubos, clamour or tumult. “Embraced” is aspazomai, to greet or to take leave. Paul’s letters fill in the route: he went first to Troas, found “a door was opened”, but had no rest because Titus had not arrived, and pressed on into Macedonia (2 Corinthians 2:12–13).

Paul wrote of this stretch, “when we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest… without were fightings, within were fears” (2 Corinthians 7:5), and 2 Corinthians was written from here. “Greece” is Hellas, the only time that name appears in the New Testament; it means Achaia, with Corinth at its centre.

The three months were spent chiefly in Corinth, where Paul wrote Romans; Romans 16 sends greetings from his host Gaius and from Erastus. Ships to Syria at this season would carry Jewish pilgrims bound for Passover, where a plot could be carried out at sea; that setting is a suggestion of W. M. Ramsay, not a statement of the text.

These men were almost certainly the delegates carrying the collection for Jerusalem from their churches, as Paul had planned: “whomsoever ye shall approve by your letters, them will I send to bring your liberality” (1 Corinthians 16:3). Tychicus later carries Paul’s letters (Colossians 4:7), and Trophimus becomes the pretext for Paul’s arrest (21:29).

The writer’s “us” returns at Philippi, the city where it stopped in 16:40, some six years later on the usual dating. Whoever the writer is, he seems to have stayed with the Philippian church in the meantime and now rejoins the company for the voyage to Jerusalem.

The days of unleavened bread fix the date at Passover week, probably in the spring of AD 57. From Passover to Pentecost is fifty days (verse 16), so the clock starts here: five days at sea and seven at Troas already use nearly a quarter of the time Paul has.

This is the earliest clear notice of Christians meeting on the first day of the week, alongside 1 Corinthians 16:2. By Jewish reckoning the day began at sunset, which would make this a Saturday evening; by Roman reckoning it would be Sunday evening. “Continued his speech” is dialegomai, discussion, not an uninterrupted monologue.

Oil lamps give light but also heat and smoke, and many of them in a crowded upper room would make the air thick; the detail helps explain the young man’s sleep. Some commentators think the lights are mentioned to answer pagan rumours that Christians met in darkness for shameful purposes, a guess.

Eutychus means “Lucky” or “Fortunate”, a common slave name. The “third loft” is the third storey, typical of the crowded apartment blocks of Roman towns. The Greek uses two participles: sinking into a deep sleep, then overcome by it, so the fall is the end of a long drift. He sat in the open window for the air.

Paul “fell on him”, as Elijah stretched himself on the widow’s son (1 Kings 17:21) and Elisha on the Shunammite’s child (2 Kings 4:34). “Trouble not yourselves” is thorubeisthe, “stop the commotion”, the verb Jesus used at Jairus’s house: “Why make ye this ado?” (Mark 5:39).

“Broken bread, and eaten” uses geuomai, to taste, for the eating. “Talked” is homileo, to converse, the verb behind homily. After midnight the speech becomes conversation, and it lasts until dawn, augē, the first light. Only then does he leave.

The Greek now calls him pais, a boy or a young servant, where verse 9 said neanias, young man; he may have been in his early teens. “Not a little comforted” is litotes again. In Greek the last word about him is “alive”.

Assos lay about twenty miles from Troas by a road across the headland, while the ship had to round Cape Lectum, so a walker could keep pace. Why Paul chose to walk alone is not said. “Minding himself” means intending or planning.

Mitylene was the chief city of Lesbos, some thirty miles south of Assos. In the spring Aegean the wind tends to blow hard by day and drop at night, so coasting vessels made short daylight stages and anchored in a harbour each evening, which is the rhythm of these verses.

Chios and Samos are islands off the coast; Trogyllium is a headland facing Samos, and the clause about tarrying there is missing from the oldest manuscripts. Miletus, at the mouth of the Maeander river, was the old Ionian city of Thales, lying about thirty miles south of Ephesus.

“Sail by” means pass without calling there; the ship may simply not have been stopping at Ephesus. Pentecost was the feast of firstfruits, and Paul describes his work as “the offering up of the Gentiles” to God (Romans 15:16); some see a deliberate fit in bringing the Gentile gift then, an interpretation rather than a stated motive.

A messenger to Ephesus and the elders’ return would take several days on the road. They are called “elders”, presbuteroi, here, and “overseers”, episkopoi, in verse 28: the same men with two titles, as in Titus 1:5–7, where the two words are used of one office.

This is the only speech in Acts addressed to Christians, and its language is the closest in the book to Paul’s letters; compare 1 Thessalonians 2:1–12, “ye know… what manner of entering in we had unto you”. “From the first day” reaches back to his first brief visit in 18:19.

“Serving” is douleuo, to serve as a slave, and Paul opens Romans calling himself a doulos. “Humility of mind” is tapeinophrosune, a word Paul uses in Philippians 2:3 and Colossians 3:12. “Temptations” means trials and testings, peirasmoi, the plots against his life among them.

“Kept back” is hupostello, to draw back or hold something in, used of furling or shortening sail. Paul repeats the verb in verse 27, “I have not shunned”: the claim is made twice. Teaching publicly and house to house covers both the hall of Tyrannus and the homes where the church met.

The same two things were preached to Jews and Greeks alike: repentance toward God and faith toward Jesus. Hebrews 6:1 lists “repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God” among the first principles of Christian teaching, a similar pairing.

“Bound in the spirit” is a perfect participle, dedemenos, already bound. In the next chapter the prophet Agabus will take Paul’s girdle and bind his own hands and feet to show what awaits him (21:11). The inner constraint comes before the outward chains.

“In every city” is borne out in the next chapter, where disciples at Tyre warn him through the Spirit (21:4) and Agabus acts out his binding at Caesarea (21:11). “Abide me” means await me. What the Spirit has told him is the fact of suffering, not its details.

The Greek of the first half is compressed and the manuscripts vary; the sense is “I do not count my life of any value to myself”. “The gospel of the grace of God” is a phrase found only here in the New Testament. Paul measures his life by an errand received, a ministry, diakonia.

“I know” states conviction rather than a prophecy. Whether Paul in fact ever returned to the region is debated: the letters to Timothy mention Timothy left at Ephesus (1 Timothy 1:3) and Trophimus “at Miletum sick” (2 Timothy 4:20), which some take as evidence of later travels.

Farewell speeches were a recognised form in Scripture: Jacob’s last words to his sons (Genesis 49), Moses in Deuteronomy, Joshua at Shechem (Joshua 24), Samuel before Israel (1 Samuel 12). “This day” is the formula of a solemn declaration made before witnesses, and “take you to record” calls them as witnesses.

“Counsel” is boule, God’s plan and purpose, the word Peter used at Pentecost for “the determinate counsel” by which Jesus was delivered (2:23). Luke says the Pharisees “rejected the counsel of God” in refusing John’s baptism (Luke 7:30). Paul has held nothing of that plan back.

“Feed” is poimaino, to shepherd, the verb Jesus used to Peter, “Feed my sheep” (John 21:16), and Peter to the elders, “Feed the flock of God” (1 Peter 5:2). The manuscripts divide between “church of God” and “church of the Lord”, and “his own blood” can also be read as “the blood of his own”, meaning his own Son.

“Grievous” is barus, heavy, fierce. Jesus warned of wolves “in sheep’s clothing” (Matthew 7:15) and sent his disciples “as lambs among wolves” (Luke 10:3). Years later the risen Jesus commends Ephesus for having “tried them which say they are apostles, and are not” (Revelation 2:2).

“Perverse” is diastrepho, twisted, the verb Paul threw at Elymas in 13:10. “Draw away” is apospao, to tear away. The letters to Timothy name men from this very circle, Hymenaeus and Alexander (1 Timothy 1:20), and Paul later writes that “all they which are in Asia be turned away from me” (2 Timothy 1:15).

“Watch” is gregoreo, to stay awake, and in a chapter where a young man fell asleep during Paul’s preaching the word has an edge, a connection readers have noted rather than one the text draws. “Night and day” is Paul’s own order in his letters (1 Thessalonians 2:9). “Warn” is noutheteo, to admonish.

“Build you up” is oikodomeo, the builder’s verb behind edify. “An inheritance among all them which are sanctified” repeats words Paul reports hearing from the risen Jesus at his conversion: “inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me” (26:18).

The line matches Samuel’s farewell to Israel: “Whose ox have I taken? or whose ass have I taken?” (1 Samuel 12:3). Clothing was stored wealth in the ancient world; Achan coveted “a goodly Babylonish garment” (Joshua 7:21), and James warns the rich that “your garments are motheaten” (James 5:2).

Paul lifts his hands, leather-worker’s hands, as evidence. He told the Thessalonians the same: “wrought with labour and travail night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you” (2 Thessalonians 3:8). He supported “them that were with me” too, not only himself.

“Support” is antilambano, to take hold of and help, the verb of Mary’s song, “He hath holpen his servant Israel” (Luke 1:54). The saying of Jesus is an “agraphon”, an unwritten saying preserved outside the Gospels. 1 Clement 2:1 praises the Corinthians for “giving more gladly than receiving”, apparently echoing it.

Standing was the usual posture for prayer (Mark 11:25, “when ye stand praying”), so kneeling marks earnestness. Luke records kneeling in prayer for Jesus in Gethsemane (Luke 22:41), for Stephen (7:60), for Peter at Tabitha’s bed (9:40), and on the beach at Tyre (21:5).

“Fell on Paul’s neck” is the embrace of the father running to the returning son (Luke 15:20) and of Joseph weeping on Benjamin (Genesis 45:14). “Kissed” is kataphileo, to kiss warmly and repeatedly. “Wept sore” is literally “there was much weeping of all”.

“Sorrowing” is odunao, to be in anguish, the word Mary used when she and Joseph searched for the boy Jesus, “thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing” (Luke 2:48). The next chapter opens with the company “gotten from them”, apospao, torn away, the verb used of false teachers in verse 30.