The Welcome at Jerusalem Is Followed by Chains

“Gotten from them” is a verb of tearing away, the wrench of leaving the Ephesian elders weeping on the beach at Miletus. Cos, Rhodes and Patara are a day’s sail apart, and the first person plural means the author of the Book of Acts is aboard, counting the ports.

At Patara on the Lycian coast the company changes vessels. A ship bound straight for Phoenicia could cross four hundred miles of open water instead of creeping from harbour to harbour, and Paul is racing to reach Jerusalem by Pentecost (20:16).

In 1611 “discovered” meant brought into view: Cyprus rose over the horizon. Leaving it “on the left hand” means passing south of the island where Paul’s first journey began (13:4). Tyre was a busy merchant port, and cargo decides the schedule.

“Finding” translates a verb of searching out; the travellers had to look for the believers. A church at Tyre fits 11:19, where those scattered after Stephen’s death reached Phenice. The seven days match the week spent at Troas in 20:6.

“Accomplished” is simply completed. The word for shore is aigialos, a smooth beach where boats were drawn up, and the kneeling is notable, since Jews more often stood to pray. The Book of Acts records the same posture at the Miletus parting in 20:36.

“Taken our leave” renders a verb that also means to embrace. The believers go back “home again”, literally to their own things, while the travellers climb aboard. The phrase quietly marks the difference between people with houses and a company with none.

Ptolemais is the Old Testament Accho (Judges 1:31), later Acre, about twenty-five miles south of Tyre. With this stop the sea voyage is over. Even this small harbour town has “brethren” to greet, and one day is all the calendar allows.

Caesarea was Herod the Great’s showpiece harbour and the seat of the Roman governor. Philip was last seen arriving there in 8:40, perhaps twenty years before. He is “one of the seven” of 6:5, whose colleague Stephen died while the young Saul held the coats.

Four unmarried daughters who prophesy fulfil, in one household, Joel’s line that Peter quoted at Pentecost: “your daughters shall prophesy” (2:17). Early church writers preserved by Eusebius remembered Philip’s daughters living later at Hierapolis in Asia and valued as sources for the first generation.

Paul had arrived early enough to spend “many days” at Caesarea. Agabus is introduced as “a certain prophet” as if new, though he predicted the famine in 11:28. “Came down from Judaea” is accurate even though Caesarea lay in Judaea, since Jerusalem sat in the hills above.

The girdle was a long cloth sash wound round the waist, often used as a purse. Agabus acts out his message as Isaiah walked stripped (Isaiah 20) and Jeremiah buried a linen girdle (Jeremiah 13). The old formula “Thus saith the LORD” becomes “Thus saith the Holy Ghost”.

“Both we” includes the writer. The author of the Book of Acts admits that he too begged Paul not to go up, and does not tidy his own objection away in hindsight.

“Break mine heart” translates a verb for pounding something to pieces, the way washing was beaten on a stone. The weeping is hurting him, not changing him. “The name of the Lord Jesus” is the phrase the apostles were beaten for in 5:40–41.

“The will of the Lord be done” echoes Gethsemane as Luke himself recorded it: “not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). Friends who could not win the argument give the matter back to the One they share.

“Carriages” is the King James word for things carried; the Greek may mean they packed or even saddled up. Caesarea to Jerusalem is some sixty-five miles and a climb of about 2,500 feet, which is why the verb is always “went up”.

“An old disciple” means one from the beginning, perhaps since Pentecost. Mnason is a Greek name, a Cypriot Jew able to house a party that included uncircumcised Gentiles like Trophimus. One ancient text places his house in a village on the road, a halfway stop.

This is Paul’s fifth visit to Jerusalem in the Book of Acts since his conversion (9:26; 11:30; 15:4; 18:22). The welcome is recorded first and without qualification: the brethren received them gladly.

James is the Lord’s brother, now plainly the leading figure in Jerusalem, and no apostle is mentioned at all. After this verse the “we” disappears and does not return until the ship sails for Italy in 27:1.

“Particularly” is literally one by one, an itemised report. Paul had come carrying a collection from the Gentile churches for Jerusalem’s poor (Romans 15:25–26; 1 Corinthians 16:1–4), yet the Book of Acts is almost silent about it, mentioning the alms only later in 24:17.

“Thousands” is myriades, literally tens of thousands. “Zealous” is zelotai, the word that also named the militant Zealots; its sense is burning devotion. The elders call Paul “brother” before they raise the problem, and they praise God before they say a word of it.

“Informed” is katechethesan, they have been instructed, the root of “catechism”: the rumour had been taught to them repeatedly. It concerns Jews living among Gentiles, not Gentile converts. Paul had in fact circumcised Timothy, whose mother was Jewish (16:3).

“What is it therefore?” means what, then, is to be done. The elders assume Paul’s arrival cannot stay quiet. Some manuscripts lack the line about the multitude gathering and read only “they will certainly hear that thou art come”.

The four men are most likely completing a Nazirite vow (Numbers 6), which ended with shaving the head and a set of offerings at the temple. The elders already have the men and the plan ready before Paul arrives.

“Be at charges” means pay their costs. Each Nazirite owed a he lamb, a ewe lamb and a ram, with grain and drink offerings (Numbers 6:14–15), so four men meant twelve animals. Josephus says Herod Agrippa I paid for Nazirites’ shaving to win popular goodwill.

The four abstentions are those of the council’s letter, in the order of 15:29. Paul was at that council, so the reminder is chiefly for others hearing it; the elders want it plain that nothing asked of Paul is being asked of Gentile believers.

A Jew returning from Gentile lands was treated as defiled and needed a seven-day cleansing, with sprinkling on the third and seventh days (Numbers 19:12). “Signify” is to give notice: Paul tells the priests when the vows will be complete so the offerings can be booked.

The seven days are the purification period of verse 26. The trouble comes not from Jerusalem’s believers but from Jews of Asia, pilgrims for Pentecost from the province where Paul had spent three years in Ephesus. They knew his face.

“Men of Israel, help” is a cry for aid against a crime in progress. A stone balustrade ringed the inner courts with notices in Greek and Latin forbidding any foreigner entry on pain of death; two of those inscriptions have been recovered, one found in 1871.

The parenthesis is the Book of Acts explaining the crowd’s error in its own voice. Trophimus of Asia (20:4) was known to the Ephesian visitors from home, which is exactly why they recognised him in the street. He appears again, left sick at Miletus, in 2 Timothy 4:20.

The doors shut are the gates between the outer court and the inner sanctuary, closed by the temple guard, possibly to keep a killing from defiling the holy place. This is the last time Paul is inside the temple in the Book of Acts.

The “chief captain” is a chiliarch, commander of a thousand, here of the cohort stationed in the Antonia fortress at the temple’s northwest corner. The report “came up” to him, since the fortress overlooked the courts. His name, Claudius Lysias, waits until 23:26.

Centurions in the plural means at least two centuries, perhaps two hundred men. “Ran down” fits the stairs that led from the Antonia into the temple porticoes. The mere sight of the soldiers stops the beating that the crowd had begun.

Two chains most likely bound Paul to a soldier on either side, as Peter was held in 12:6. Agabus’s acted prophecy is now fulfilled in outline: bound in Jerusalem, and in Gentile hands. The commander chains first and asks questions afterwards.

“The castle” is parembole, the barracks of the Antonia fortress. The commander cannot learn the facts “for the tumult”, thorubos, the word for the Ephesian riot in 20:1 and for the tumult that made Pilate wash his hands in Matthew 27:24.

Josephus describes stairways running down from the Antonia to the roofs of the temple colonnades. The pressure of the mob is such that the soldiers lift Paul off his feet and carry him up.

“Away with him” is the cry the crowd raised against Jesus before Pilate in Luke 23:18. The same shout will return when Paul names the Gentiles in 22:22.

Paul addresses the commander politely and in good Greek, and that alone upsets the officer’s assumptions. The question is literally “Do you know Greek?”, as though an educated tongue did not match the prisoner he thought he had.

Josephus tells of an Egyptian prophet who led a crowd to the Mount of Olives promising Jerusalem’s walls would fall; the governor Felix routed them and the Egyptian vanished. “Murderers” is sikarioi, the dagger-men who stabbed opponents in festival crowds. Josephus says thirty thousand followers; the commander says four thousand.

“No mean city” is understatement meaning a very distinguished one. Tarsus was a university city that the geographer Strabo ranked with Athens and Alexandria for learning. Paul names his civic identity here and holds the Roman citizenship in reserve.

“The Hebrew tongue” most likely means Aramaic, the everyday speech of Judaea. Paul beckons as he did in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch (13:16). The chapter ends on the word “saying”, a comma, the verse division cutting in just as he opens his mouth.