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Paul, Silas, and the Jailer: Acts 16:23-35

verse 23: Some jailers were public slaves. Prison directors (whether slave or free, as may be likelier here; cf. 16:33-34) could receive good pay.

24: Guards were often harsh with prisoners. Stocks were used for low-status prisoners not only to secure them but also for punishment and torture; legs could be locked into various painful positions. Apparently all the prisoners were confined to the “inner cell” overnight, which would suffer from overcrowding and poor ventilation.

25: The psalmist mentions being put in bonds (Ps 119:61), but then speaks of singing at midnight (Ps 119:62).

26: Earthquakes were common in this region, though they normally would not selectively target doors and chains while sparing people.

27: If faced with a dishonorable execution, Romans typically considered suicide the nobler way to die. The chief jailer may not have been held accountable for escapes in view of the earthquake, but in principle a guard who let prisoners escape through negligence could face severe consequences (cf. 12:19). Many Jews, however, considered it normally shameful (as people generally considered it under normal circumstances).

28: Prisoners may have remained because of the guards (implied in 16:29) or because Paul urged them to do so. Roman law treated escape from custody as a criminal act, but often treated with favor those who refused to escape.

29: Inner cells (16:24) were very dark; the jail official requests torches or perhaps lamps from his subordinates.

30: The jailer probably knows the charge (involving their Jewishness) and something of their message (about salvation, 16:17).

31: In Roman custom, the whole household would follow the religion of the head of the household, normally the worship of the respected Roman deities.

33: Prisoners normally were unable to wash or trim hair in jails. The jailer undoubtedly takes them out of the jail, which could have gotten him in severe trouble, especially if they tried to escape (16:23). Some suggest a fountain in the jail’s courtyard; since jails were usually in center cities, various public fountains are possible, although these increased the risk of being seen by Philippi’s night watchmen.

34: Jails and prisons typically provided only the barest sustenance, so that prisoners had to depend on outside help. The jailer takes a major risk: he could be severely punished for feeding and eating with a prisoner (in some cases death; in this case, certainly at least losing his job).

35: Sometimes public beatings, humiliation and a night in jail were considered sufficient punishment (though the earthquake may also play a factor here).

(Adapted from Dr. Keener’s personal research. Used with permission from InterVarsity Press, which published similar research by Dr. Keener in The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. Buy the book here.)

 

 

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The ministry at Antioch: Acts 11:19-30

Verse 19: There were large Jewish communities in Phoenicia, Cyprus (cf. Acts 4:36), and Antioch. Antioch on the Orontes was called Syria’s “mother-city,” was its most influential city, and was probably the third or fourth largest city in the Roman Empire (though its precise population is debated). Rome granted it the privilege of being a “free city,” mostly governing itself.

20: Perhaps 10% of Antioch was Jewish (though, like some other ancient population figures, this is merely an educated guess). Antioch, in contrast to most predominantly Gentile cities in the region, spared its Jewish inhabitants in the war of 66-70, though they did not fully trust them. Various cults flourished there; the most famous religious connection was the nearby cult center of Apollo at Daphne. Some Diaspora Jews were more concerned with making monotheism reasonable to outsiders than circumcising converts. Antioch’s cosmopolitan nature allowed for more interchange of different cultural ideas than possible, say, in Jerusalem. Many proselytes and God-fearers attended Antioch’s synagogues, helping facilitate the Jewish-Christian outreach to Gentiles (here, perhaps “Hellenizing” Syrians) there.

24: Similarly, later rabbis extolled the earlier sage Hillel for his gentleness, including his mercy toward potential Gentile converts.

25: Tarsus was about 100 miles from Antioch; by contrast, Jerusalem was over 300. This is no short journey, but Barnabas knows of Paul’s calling.

26: In the NT, “Christians” appears only as a nickname from outsiders (here; 26:28) and perhaps as echoing a legal charge (1 Pet 4:16). The nickname emulates the forms of names used for adherents of political parties, such as “Caesarians,” “Flavians,” “Herodians,” etc. Had it been interpreted politically (“partisans of the executed Jewish king”) it could have stirred persecution, but here it apparently functions merely as derision.

27: Although Greeks and Syrians had local oracles, the idea of a movement with numerous prophets is unparalleled and points to the early Christian belief that God had poured out the Holy Spirit. Josephus reports that many Essenes could prophesy, but he avoids calling them “prophets” in the present.

28: A person would rise to speak in an assembly. A number of famines afflicted the Empire during Claudius’ reign (Claudius himself barely escaped being mobbed in Rome due to the effects there, A.D. 51). Papyri reveal high grain prices in about A.D. 46; Queen Helena of Adiabene, a proselyte to Judaism, bought Egyptian grain at highly inflated prices to provide for Judeans (around A.D. 45-46).

29: Due to the nature of the Empire (and Roman suspicion of translocal activity), most Jewish ministry to the poor was local. Exceptions existed for severe cases, however, like Queen Helena’s aid to Judea (see comment on 11:28). Wealthy patrons often alleviated food crises in cities, but here all the believers participate. They act in advance based on a prophecy (cf. Gen 41:33-36), even though the hardship is likely to strike Antioch as well.

30: “Elders” reflects the traditional Israelite leadership structure for towns and villages, continuing in this period. Ancient historians had to compromise between following the action of their story and events occurring elsewhere at the same time; Luke postpones taking up the completion of the project until 12:25.

(Adapted from Dr. Keener’s personal research. Used with permission from InterVarsity Press, which published similar research by Dr. Keener in The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. Buy the book here.)

 

 

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Why it is important to study the Bible in context

Context is the way God gave us the Bible, one book at a time.  The first readers of Mark could not flip over to Revelation to help them understand Mark; Revelation had not been written yet.  The first readers of Galatians did not have a copy of the letter Paul wrote to Rome to help them understand it.  These first readers did share some common information with the author outside the book they received.

We’ll call this shared information “background”: some knowledge of the culture, earlier biblical history, and so on.  But they had, most importantly, the individual book of the Bible that was in front of them.  Therefore we can be confident that the writers of the Bible included enough within each book of the Bible to help the readers understand that book of the Bible without referring to information they lacked.  For that reason, context is the most important academic key to Bible interpretation.

Often popular ministers today quote various isolated verses they have memorized, even though this means that they will usually leave 99% of the Bible’s verses unpreached.  One seemingly well-educated person told a Bible teacher that she thought the purpose of having a Bible was to look up the verses the minister quoted in church!  But the Bible is not a collection of people’s favorite verses with a lot of blank space in between.  Using verses out of context one could “prove” almost anything about God or justify almost any kind of behavior–as history testifies.  But in the Bible God revealed Himself in His acts in history, through the inspired records of those acts and the inspired wisdom of His servants addressing specific situations.

People in my culture value everything “instant”: “instant” mashed potatoes; fast food; and so forth.  Similarly, we too often take short-cuts to understanding the Bible by quoting random verses or assuming that others who taught us have understood them correctly.  When we do so, we fail to be diligent in seeking God’s Word (Proverbs 2:2-5; 4:7; 8:17; 2 Timothy 2:15).

One prominent minister in the U.S., Jim Bakker, was so busy with his ministry to millions of people that he did not have time to study Scripture carefully in context.  He trusted that his friends whose teachings he helped promote surely had done so.  Later, when his ministry collapsed, he spent many hours honestly searching the Scriptures and realized to his horror that on some points Jesus’ teachings, understood in context, meant the exact opposite of what he and his friends had been teaching!  It is never safe to simply depend on what someone else claims that God says (1 Kings 13:15-26).

I discovered this for myself when, as a young Christian, I began reading 40 chapters of the Bible a day (enough to finish the New Testament every week or the Bible every month).  I was shocked to discover how much Scripture I had essentially ignored between the verses I had memorized, and how carefully the intervening text connected those verses.  I had been missing so much, simply using the Bible to defend what I already believed!  After one begins reading the Bible a book at a time, one quickly recognizes that verses isolated from their context nearly always mean something different when read in context.

We cannot, in fact, even pretend to make sense of most verses without reading their context.  Isolating verses from their context disrespects the authority of Scripture because this method of interpretation cannot be consistently applied to the whole of Scripture.  It picks verses that seem to make sense on their own, but most of the rest of the Bible is left over when it is done, incapable of being used the same way.  Preaching and teaching the Bible the way it invites us to interpret it—in its original context–both explains the Bible accurately and provides our hearers a good example how they can learn the Bible better for themselves.

If we read any other book, we would not simply take an isolated statement in the middle of the book and ignore the surrounding statements that help us understand the reason for that statement.  If we hand a storybook to a child already learning how to read, the child would probably start reading at the beginning.  That people so often read the Bible out of context is not because it comes naturally to us, but because we have been taught the wrong way by frequent example.  Without disrespecting those who have done the best they could without understanding the principle of context, we must now avail ourselves of the chance to begin teaching the next generation the right way to interpret the Bible.

Many contradictions some readers claim to find in the Bible arise simply from ignoring the context of the passages they cite, jumping from one text to another without taking the time to first understand each text on its own terms.  To develop an example offered above, when Paul says that a person is justified by faith without works (Romans 3:28), his context makes it clear that he defines faith as something more than passive assent to a viewpoint; he defines it as a conviction that Christ is our salvation, a conviction on which one actively stakes one’s life (Romans 1:5).  James declares that one cannot be justified by faith without works (James 2:14)—because he uses the word “faith” to mean mere assent that something is true (2:19), he demands that such assent be actively demonstrated by obedience to show that it is genuine (2:18).  In other words, James and Paul use the word “faith” differently, but do not contradict one another on the level of meaning.  If we ignore context and merely connect different verses on the basis of similar wording, we will come up with contradictions in the Bible that the original writers would never have imagined.

 

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God owns the cattle on a thousand hills

Some people insist that God can supply all our needs because, after all, He “owns the cattle on a thousand hills” (Ps. 50:10); some go beyond God supplying all our needs to suggest that He will supply anything we want. It is in fact true that God can supply all our needs, but there are other texts that explicitly make that point. Psalm 50:10, by contrast, does not address the issue of God supplying our needs (and certainly not all our wants); rather, it declares that God does not need our sacrifices.

The figurative setting of Psalm 50 is a courtroom, where God has summoned His people to respond to His charges. He summons heaven and earth as His witnesses (50:1-6)–as witnesses of the covenant (see Deut. 32:1; cf. Ps. 50:5), they would be witnesses concerning Israel’s violation of that covenant. Israel has some reason to be nervous; God is not only the offended party in the case, but the Judge (Ps. 50:4, 6), not to mention the accusing witness! Testifying against them, God declares, “I am your God” (50:7)–reminding them of the covenant He had made with them. They had not broken faith against Him by failing to offer sacrifices (50:8)—in fact, God has little concern about these sacrifices. “I don’t need your animal sacrifices,” he declares, “for all the animals belong to Me, including the cattle on a thousand hills. I don’t eat animal flesh, but if I did, would I tell you if I were hungry? Since I own these creatures, wouldn’t I just take them if I wanted them?” (50:9-13). The sacrifice which He really requires is thanksgiving and obedience (50:14-15; cf. 50:23). But He would prosecute (50:21) the wicked who broke His covenant (50:16-20).

Most ancient near Eastern peoples believed that their gods depended on them for sacrifices, and if their gods were overpowered, their nation would be overpowered as well. The God of Israel reminds them that He is not like the pagan gods around them. Unlike Baal of the Canaanites (whose temples included a bed), Zeus of the Greeks (whom Hera put to sleep so her Greeks could win a battle), and other deities, the God of Israel neither slumbered nor slept (Ps. 121:3-4). God does not mention the cattle on a thousand hills to promise us anything we want (as a song pointed out some years ago, many of us don’t need any cows at the moment anyway); He mentions the cattle to remind us that He is not dependent on us, and we are not doing Him a favor by serving Him.

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Who is the thief who comes to steal and destroy?

Many people assume that the thief in John 10:10 is the devil, but they assume this because they have heard this view many times, not because they examined the text carefully in context. Of course, the devil does come to steal, to kill, and to destroy; but we often quote the verse this way and miss the text’s direct applications because we have not stopped to read the verse in context.

When Jesus speaks of “the thief,” he speaks from a larger context of thieves, robbers, wolves, and strangers who come to harm the sheep (10:1, 5, 8, 10, 12). In this context, those who came before Jesus, claiming his authority, were thieves and robbers (10:8); these tried to approach the sheep without going through the shepherd (10:1). This was because they wanted to exploit the sheep, whereas Jesus was prepared to die defending his sheep from these thieves, robbers, and wolves.

The point becomes even clearer if we start further back in the context. In chapter 9, Jesus heals a blind man and the religious officials kick the blind man out of the religious community for following Jesus. Jesus stands up for the formerly blind man and calls the religious leaders spiritually blind (9:35-41). Because there were no chapter breaks in the original Bible, Jesus’ words that continue into chapter 10 are still addressed to the religious leaders. He declares that He is the true Shepherd and the true sheep follow His voice, not the voice of strangers (10:1-5). Those who came before Him were thieves and robbers, but Jesus was the sheep’s true salvation (10:8-9). The thief comes only to destroy, but Jesus came to give life (10:10).

In other words, the thief represents the false religious leaders, like the Pharisees who kicked the healed man out of their synagogue. The background of the text clarifies this point further. In Jeremiah 23 and Ezekiel 34, God was the shepherd of His scattered people, His sheep; these Old Testament passages also speak of false religious leaders who abused their authority over the sheep like many of the religious leaders of Jesus’ day and not a few religious leaders in our own day.

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Will gifts like prophecy and tongues pass away?

Paul says that spiritual gifts like prophecy, tongues and knowledge will pass away when we no longer need them (1 Cor. 13:8-10). Some Christians read this passage as if it said, “Spiritual gifts like prophecy, tongues, and knowledge passed away when the last book of the New Testament was written.” This interpretation of 1 Corinthians 13 ignores the entire context of 1 Corinthians, however: it is a letter to the Corinthians in the middle of the first century, and they had never yet heard of a New Testament in the middle of the first century. Had Paul meant the completion of the New Testament, he would have had to have made this point much more clearly–starting by explaining what a New Testament addition to their Bible was.

In the context we find instead that Paul means that spiritual gifts will pass away when we know God as He knows us, when we see Him face to face (13:12; when we no longer see as through a mirror as in the present—cf. 2 Cor 3:18, the only other place where Paul uses the term). In other words, spiritual gifts must continue until our Lord Jesus returns at the end of the age. They should remain a normal part of our Christian experience today.

A broader examination of the context reveals even more of Paul’s meaning in this passage. In chapters 12-14, Paul addresses those who are abusing particular spiritual gifts, and argues that God has gifted all members of Christ’s body with gifts for building up God’s people. Those who were using God’s gifts in ways that hurt others were abusing the gifts God had given for helping others. That is why Paul spends three paragraphs in the midst of his discussion of spiritual gifts on the subject of love: gifts without love are useless (13:1-3); love seeks to edify (13:4-7); the gifts are temporary (for this age only), but love is eternal (13:8-13). We should seek the best gifts (1 Cor. 12:31; 14:1), and love gives us the insight to see which gifts are the best in any given situation–those that build others up.

The context of Paul’s entire letter drives this point home further: Paul’s description of what love is in 1 Cor. 13:4-7 contrasts starkly with Paul’s prior descriptions of the Corinthians in his letter: selfish, boastful, and so on (1 Cor 3:3; 4:6-7, 18; 5:2). The Corinthian Christians, like the later church in Laodicea (Rev. 3:14-22), had a lot in their favor, but lacked what mattered most of all: the humility of love.