Historical

Paul before Agrippa

26 Agrippa addressed Paul.

“You are permitted,” he said, “to speak for yourself.”

Paul stretched out his hand and began his defense.

² “I consider myself blessed, King Agrippa,” he said, “to have the chance to speak before you today in my defense concerning all the things of which the Jews have charged me, ³ in particular because I know you are an expert on all matters of Jewish customs and disputes. I beg you, therefore, to give me a generous hearing.

⁴ “All the Jews know my manner of life. I lived from my earliest days among my own people and in Jerusalem. ⁵ They have known already for a long time (if they are willing to testify!) that I lived as a Pharisee, according to the strictest sect of our religion. ⁶ And now I stand accused because of the hope of the promise made by God to our ancestors, ⁷ the hope for which our twelve tribes wait with earnest longing in their worship night and day. And it is this hope, O king, for which I am now accused by the Jews! ⁸ Why should any of you judge it unbelievable that God would raise the dead?

⁹ “I thought I was under obligation to do many things against the name of Jesus of Nazareth, ¹⁰ and that is what I did in Jerusalem. I received authority from the chief priests to shut up many of God’s people in prison, and when they were condemned to death I cast my vote against them. ¹¹ I punished them many times in all the synagogues, and forced many of them to blaspheme. I became more and more furious against them, and even pursued them to cities in other lands.”

Paul’s conversion (one more time)

¹² “While I was busy on this work,” Paul continued, “I was traveling to Damascus with authority and commission from the chief priests. ¹³ Around midday, while I was on the road, O king, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the light of the sun, and shining all around me and my companions on the road. ¹⁴ We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice speaking to me in Aramaic.

“ ‘Saul, Saul,’ he said, ‘why are you persecuting me? It’s hard for you, this kicking against the goads.’

¹⁵ “ ‘Who are you, Lord?’ I said.

“ ‘I am Jesus,’ said the Lord, ‘and you are persecuting me. ¹⁶ But get up and stand on your feet. I’m going to tell you why I have appeared to you. I am going to establish you as a servant, as a witness both of the things you have already seen and of the occasions I will appear to you in the future. ¹⁷ I will rescue you from the people, and from the nations to whom I am going to send you ¹⁸ so that you can open their eyes to enable them to turn from darkness to light, and from the power of the satan to God—so that they can have forgiveness of sins, and an inheritance among those who are made holy, by their faith in me.’

¹⁹ “So then, King Agrippa, I didn’t disobey this vision from heaven. ²⁰ I preached that people should repent, and turn to God, and do the works that demonstrate repentance. I preached it first to those in Damascus, then also in Jerusalem, in the whole countryside of Judaea, and among the nations. ²¹ That is the reason the Jews seized me in the Temple and tried to slaughter me. ²² But I have had help from God, right up to this very day. And so I stand here to bear witness, to small and great alike, of nothing except what the prophets, and Moses too, said would happen: ²³ namely, that the Messiah would suffer, that he would be the first to rise from the dead, and that he would proclaim light to the people and to the nations.”

“Paul, you’re mad!”

²⁴ As Paul was making his defense in this way, Festus roared out at the top of his voice, “Paul, you’re mad! All this learning of yours has driven you crazy!”

²⁵ “I’m not mad, most excellent Festus,” responded Paul. “On the contrary, what I say is full of truth and good sense. ²⁶ The king knows about these things, and it is to him that I am speaking so boldly. I cannot believe that any of this has escaped his notice. After all, these things didn’t happen in a corner. ²⁷ Do you believe the prophets, King Agrippa? I know you believe them.”

²⁸ “You reckon you’re going to make me a Christian, then,” said Agrippa to Paul, “and pretty quick, too, by the sound of it!”

²⁹ “Whether quick or slow,” replied Paul, “I pray to God that not only you but also all who hear me today will become just as I am—apart, of course, from these chains.”

³⁰ The king, the governor and Bernice, and those sitting with them, got up. ³¹ As they were going away, they talked to one another about it.

“This man,” they were saying, “has done nothing to deserve death or chains.”

³² And Agrippa commented to Festus, “This man could have been set free, if only he hadn’t gone and appealed to Caesar.”

All at sea

27 When it was decided that we should sail to Italy, they handed Paul over, along with some other prisoners, to a centurion named Julius, who belonged to the Imperial Cohort. ² They got into a ship from Adramyttium, which was intending to sail to various places along the coast of Asia. So off we set. Aristarchus, a Macedonian from Thessalonica, came too.

³ Next day we put in at Sidon. Julius was kind to Paul, and allowed him to go to his friends to be cared for. ⁴ When we left Sidon, we sailed under the lee of Cyprus, because the winds were against us, ⁵ and then crossed the sea off the coast of Cilicia and Pamphylia, arriving at Myra in Lycia. ⁶ There the centurion found a ship going from Alexandria to Italy, and we got on board.

⁷ After a few days we were making very heavy weather of it, and only got to the shore at Cnidus. Since the wind was not helping us, we sailed under the lee of Crete, off the coast from Salmone. ⁸ Getting past that point with some difficulty, we came to a place called “Fair Havens,” not far from the town of Lasea.

⁹ Quite a bit of time had now elapsed, and sailing was becoming dangerous. The Fast had already come and gone. Paul gave his advice.

¹⁰ “Men,” he said, “I can see we’re going to have trouble on this voyage. It’s going to be dangerous. We may well sustain heavy losses both to the cargo and to the ship, not to mention to human life.”

¹¹ But the centurion put his faith in the helmsman and the ship-owner rather than in what Paul had said. ¹² Unfortunately, the harbor was not suitable for wintering, so most people were in favor of going on from there to see if they could get to Phoenix, a Cretan harbor which faces both south-west and north-west. They would then be able to spend the winter there.

The storm and the angel

¹³ Well, a moderate southerly breeze sprang up, and they thought they had the result they wanted. So they lifted the anchor and sailed along, hugging the shore of Crete. ¹⁴ But before long a great typhoon—they call it “Eurakylon,” the Northeaster—swept down from Crete, ¹⁵ and the ship was caught up by it. Since the ship couldn’t turn and face into the wind, it had to give way and we were carried along.

¹⁶ When we came in behind an island called Cauda, we were just able to get the ship’s boat under control. ¹⁷ They pulled it up, and did what was necessary to undergird the ship. Then, because they were afraid that we would crash into the Syrtis sandbanks, they lowered the sea-anchor and allowed the ship to be driven along. ¹⁸ The storm was so severe that on the next day they began to throw cargo overboard, ¹⁹ and on the third day they threw the ship’s tackle overboard as well, with their own hands. ²⁰ We then went for a good many days without seeing either the sun or the stars, with a major storm raging. All hope of safety was finally abandoned.

²¹ We had gone without food a long time. Then Paul stood up in the middle of them all.

“It does seem to me, my good people,” he said, “that you should have taken my advice not to leave Crete. We could have managed without this damage and loss. ²² But now I want to tell you: take heart! No lives will be lost—only the ship. ²³ This last night, you see, an angel of the God to whom I belong, and whom I worship, stood beside me. ²⁴ ‘Don’t be afraid, Paul,’ he said. ‘You must appear before Caesar, and let me tell you this: God has granted you all your traveling companions.’ ²⁵ So take heart, my friends. I believe God, that it will be as he said to me. ²⁶ We must, however, be cast up on some island or other.”

²⁷ On the fourteenth night we were being carried across the sea of Adria when, around the middle of the night, the sailors reckoned that we were getting near some land. ²⁸ They took soundings and found twenty fathoms; then, a little bit further, they took soundings again and found fifteen fathoms. ²⁹ They were afraid that we might crash into a rocky place, so they let down four anchors from the stern and prayed for day to come. ³⁰ The sailors wanted to escape from the ship, and let down the boat into the sea under the pretense of going to put out anchors from the bow. ³¹ But Paul spoke to the centurion and the soldiers.

“If these men don’t stay in the ship,” he said, “there is no chance of safety.”

³² Then the soldiers cut the ropes of the boat, and let it fall away.

Shipwreck

³³ When it was nearly daytime, Paul urged all of them to eat something.

“It’s now all of fourteen days,” he said, “that you’ve been hanging on without food, not eating a thing. ³⁴ So let me encourage you to have something to eat. This will help you get rescued. No hair of any of your heads will be lost.”

³⁵ So saying, he took some bread, gave thanks to God in front of them all, broke the bread and ate it. ³⁶ Then all of them cheered up and took some food. ³⁷ The whole company on board was two hundred and seventy-six. ³⁸ When we had eaten enough food, they threw the grain overboard to lighten the ship.

³⁹ When day came, they didn’t recognize the land. It appeared to have a bay with a sandy shore, and that was where they hoped, if possible, to beach the ship. ⁴⁰ They let the anchors drop away into the sea, and at the same time slackened the ropes on the rudders, hoisted the foresail, and headed for the beach. ⁴¹ But they crashed into a reef and ran the ship aground. The prow stuck fast and wouldn’t budge, while the strong waves were smashing the stern to bits. ⁴² The soldiers planned to kill the prisoners so that none of them would swim away and escape. ⁴³ But the centurion wanted to rescue Paul, and refused permission for them to carry out their intention. Instead, he ordered all who were able to swim to leap overboard first and head for land, ⁴⁴ while the rest were to come after, some on boards and some on bits and pieces of the ship. And so everyone ended up safely on land.

The snake on Malta

28 When we reached safety, we discovered that the island was called Malta. ² The local inhabitants treated us with unusual kindness: they set to and built a fire for us all, since it was cold and had started to rain. ³ Paul had collected quite a bundle of brushwood, and was putting it on the fire, when a viper, escaping the heat, fastened onto his hand. ⁴ The natives saw the animal clinging to his hand.

“Aha!” they said to one another. “This man must be a murderer! He’s been rescued from the sea, but Justice hasn’t allowed him to live.”

⁵ Paul, however, shook off the snake into the fire and suffered no harm. ⁶ They kept watching him to see if he would swell up or suddenly fall down dead. But when they had waited and watched for quite some time, and nothing untoward had happened to him, they changed their minds.

“He must be a god,” they said.

⁷ Publius, the leading man of the island, owned lands in the region where we were. He welcomed us, and entertained us in a most friendly fashion for three days. ⁸ Publius’ father was lying sick in bed with a fever and with dysentery. Paul went in to see him and prayed; then he laid his hands on him and cured him. ⁹ At this, everyone else on the island who was sick came and was cured. ¹⁰ They gave us many honors, and when we were getting ready to sail away they gave us everything we needed.

To Rome at last

¹¹ After three months we set sail on a ship that had been spending the winter on the island. It was from Alexandria, and had the insignia of the Heavenly Twins. ¹² We arrived at Syracuse, and stayed three days. ¹³ From there we raised anchor and sailed across to Rhegium. After one day there, a south wind arose, and on the second day we arrived at Puteoli, ¹⁴ where we found Christians, who encouraged us to stay with them for seven days.

And so we came to Rome. ¹⁵ Christians from there, hearing about us, came to meet us as far as Appian Forum and Three Taverns. When Paul saw them, he thanked God and took heart.

¹⁶ When we arrived in Rome, Paul was allowed to lodge privately. He had a soldier to guard him.

¹⁷ After three days, Paul called together the leading men of the Jews. When they arrived, he began to speak.

“My brothers,” he said, “I have done nothing against our people or our ancestral customs. Yet I was made a prisoner in Jerusalem and handed over to the Romans. ¹⁸ The Romans put me on trial and wanted to let me go, because they couldn’t find me guilty of any capital crime. ¹⁹ But the Judaeans opposed this, and forced me to appeal to Caesar. This had nothing to do with my bringing any charges against my nation! ²⁰ So that’s why I have asked to see you and talk with you. It is because of the hope of Israel, you see, that I am wearing this chain.”

²¹ “For our part,” they responded, “we haven’t received any letters about you from Judaea. Nor has anyone of our nation come here to tell us anything, or to say anything bad about you. ²² We want to hear from your own lips what you have in mind. However, as for this new sect, the one thing we know is that people everywhere are speaking out against it.”

The end is where we start from

²³ So they fixed a day and came in large numbers to Paul’s lodgings. He spoke to them and gave his testimony about the kingdom of God. From morning to night, he explained to them the things about Jesus, from the law of Moses and the prophets.

²⁴ Some were persuaded by what he said, and others did not believe. ²⁵ They disagreed among themselves. So, as they were getting ready to leave, Paul said one last thing.

“The holy spirit,” he said, “spoke truly through the prophet Isaiah to your ancestors, ²⁶ when he said,

²⁸ “Let it then be known to you that this salvation from God has been sent to the Gentiles. They will listen.”

³⁰ Paul lived there for two whole years at his own expense, and welcomed everyone who came to see him. ³¹ He announced the kingdom of God, and taught the things about the Lord Jesus the Messiah, with all boldness, and with no one stopping him.