The Defense Becomes an Appeal to Everyone in the Room

Agrippa, not Festus, grants leave to speak, a courtesy the governor extends to his royal guest. The outstretched hand was the orator’s classic opening gesture, and in verse 29 Paul will mention the chain that went with it.

“Happy” is makarios, fortunate, the word of the Beatitudes. A speaker customarily congratulated himself on his judge, but Paul gives a real reason in the next verse rather than flattery.

“Expert” is gnostes, a connoisseur. Agrippa had charge of the high priest’s vestments and the right to appoint high priests, so he knew temple custom from the inside. “Patiently” is makrothymos: Paul is asking for a long hearing, and this is his longest defence.

“Manner of life” is biosis, a rare word for a person’s way of living. “At the first” means from the very beginning. Paul’s youth in Jerusalem is offered as public knowledge, something every Jew there could check.

“Most straitest” is a double superlative, since the Greek is already the superlative of strict. “Religion” is threskeia, religious practice and worship as others see it. “If they would testify” implies they could and will not.

“The promise made of God unto our fathers” is the phrase Paul used in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch (13:32). The charge sheet says sedition and temple profanation; Paul says the real charge is hope.

“Our twelve tribes” is a single Greek word, dodekaphylon. Paul speaks of Israel as twelve tribes still, as James does (James 1:1). “Instantly” means earnestly, “day and night” as the prophetess Anna served in the temple (Luke 2:37). The irony is plain: accused by Jews for Israel’s own hope.

“You” is plural, so the question takes in the whole hall, Gentiles included. To most educated Romans a bodily resurrection was absurd, as the Athenians showed by mocking in 17:32. “Incredible” is apiston, not to be believed.

“I” is emphatic in Greek: I myself once thought so too. “The name of Jesus of Nazareth” was precisely what the council forbade the apostles to speak in (4:17–18), and Saul had set himself against the same name.

“Saints” is hagioi, the word Paul uses in his letters for believers, spoken here before a king. “Gave my voice” is literally “cast my pebble”; votes were cast with stones, and a dark pebble condemned.

The tense of “compelled” suggests effort rather than success: I tried to force them to blaspheme. “Exceedingly mad” is emmainomenos, raging. “Strange cities” means foreign ones, beyond Judaea, and Damascus was the first on the list.

“Commission” is epitrope, a delegated mandate; the man who held one was an epitropos, the Greek title of a Roman procurator. Paul rode out as the chief priests’ agent with full powers.

“O king” breaks in at the decisive moment. “Above the brightness of the sun” appears only in this telling. Paul also makes a point of the light surrounding his companions, so that the event was not a private illness.

Only this account says the voice spoke “in the Hebrew tongue”, and only this one adds the saying about the pricks. A prick was an ox goad, and the proverb is Greek, found in Euripides’ Bacchae and in Aeschylus; Jesus speaks a Greek saying to Saul in his own tongue.

The exchange is the one part of the event that never varies across the three tellings in chapters 9, 22 and 26. Whatever else is shortened or expanded, the question and the name stay the same.

“Rise, and stand upon thy feet” echoes the call of Ezekiel, who fell on his face and heard “stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee” (Ezekiel 2:1). “Minister” is hyperetes, an attendant, the word Luke uses for the “ministers of the word” (Luke 1:2).

“Delivering” can also mean choosing out; both senses fit Paul’s life. “The people” is laos, Israel, set beside the Gentiles, and “I send thee” is apostello, the verb of an apostle.

Opening eyes and bringing out of darkness are the tasks of the Servant in Isaiah 42:7 and 42:16. The man who was blinded is sent to make others see. “Inheritance among them which are sanctified” repeats Paul’s words to the Ephesian elders (20:32).

“Not disobedient” is understatement for complete obedience. “Vision” is optasia, the word Luke uses for what Zechariah saw in the temple (Luke 1:22) and for the angels seen at the tomb (Luke 24:23).

Damascus, Jerusalem, Judaea, then the Gentiles: the order follows the commission of 1:8 outward. “Works meet for repentance” echoes John the Baptist’s “fruits worthy of repentance” (Luke 3:8), so Paul’s preaching carries the same moral demand.

“For these causes” points to the preaching to Gentiles just described. Paul boils the temple riot of chapter 21 down to its root; the Trophimus rumour is not even mentioned.

“Help” is epikouria, a military word for allied reinforcements. Paul was rescued by Roman soldiers more than once, yet he names the ally as God. “Small and great” takes in the slave and the king in the front row.

Each “should” renders a Greek “whether”, as though Paul lists the questions argued in synagogues: whether Messiah must suffer, whether he would be first to rise. “Light unto the people, and to the Gentiles” echoes Isaiah 49:6 and Simeon’s song over the infant Jesus (Luke 2:32).

“Much learning” is literally “many letters”, perhaps Paul’s appeals to written prophets, perhaps his evident education. “Beside thyself” is mainomai, to rave. A Roman official hears resurrection and assumes a scholar has read himself into lunacy.

“Soberness” is sophrosyne, sound-mindedness, one of the cardinal virtues of Greek moral philosophy and the exact opposite of mania. “Speak forth” is apophthengomai, the verb used at Pentecost for the Spirit giving utterance (2:4).

“Not done in a corner” was a stock phrase used against philosophers who hid from public life; Plato has a critic sneer at men who whisper in a corner with three or four boys. The death and resurrection of Jesus happened in public, and Agrippa’s own family was involved.

Paul answers his own question before the king can. The trap is neat: a yes invites the prophets’ testimony about Jesus, and a no would ruin Agrippa’s standing with his Jewish subjects.

The Greek en oligo can mean “in a little time” or “with little effort”: so quickly you think to make me a Christian? “Christian” appears only three times in the New Testament (11:26; 1 Peter 4:16), always as a name outsiders used.

Paul turns the king’s phrase: “both almost, and altogether” is en oligo kai en megalo, in little and in much, whether it takes a short time or a long one. “I would to God” is a verb of prayer. The chain on his raised hand provides the final exception.

Royal protocol ended a hearing when the king stood. The list of those rising runs in rank order: king, governor, Bernice, then the rest.

“Doeth nothing” is in the present tense: the officials judge the man’s ongoing conduct, not only a single past act. The verdict is spoken in private, among themselves, where it costs nothing.

Once an appeal was lodged, the case belonged to the emperor. For a governor to release the prisoner then would have slighted Caesar’s jurisdiction, so Festus is bound by an appeal that his own proposal of a Jerusalem trial had provoked (25:9–11).