9. Expansion and opposition
Luke ended his previous section with the words ‘even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life’ (18). It was an epic declaration by the conservative Jewish leaders of the Jerusalem church. As Peter had become convinced by circumstantial evidence that God intended Gentiles to be welcomed into the redeemed community, so Peter’s critics had been convinced by his setting out of the evidence. God himself had put the matter beyond dispute by pouring out his Spirit on a Gentile household.
The inclusion of the Gentiles is to be Luke’s main theme in the rest of Acts, and with chapter 13 he begins to chronicle Paul’s missionary exploits. Before this, however, he gives his readers two sketches, which form a transition between the conversion of the first Gentile (through Peter) and the systematic evangelization of Gentiles (by Paul). The first (11:19–30) depicts the expansion of the church northwards, as a result of evangelistic activity by anonymous missionaries. The scene is Antioch, and Paul figures in the story, although Barnabas is more prominent. The second (12:1–24) depicts opposition to the church by King Herod Agrippa I, who concentrates his attack on members of the apostolic circle. The scene is Jerusalem, and Peter occupies the centre of the stage. In fact, this is Luke’s final Peter story before his leadership role is taken over by Paul, and Jerusalem is eclipsed by the goal of Rome.
1. Expansion: the church in Antioch (11:19–30)
The key expression at the end of the last paragraph was ‘even to Gentiles’ (18); the key expression of this paragraph is to Greeks also (20). The addition of ‘also’ (kai) is important. It is not that the evangelization of the Jews must stop, but that the evangelization of the Gentiles must begin. As Paul was later to write (it was almost a refrain in the early chapters of Romans), the gospel was intended ‘first’ for ‘the Jew’, ‘then’ for ‘the Gentile’.
a. The Greek mission is initiated by unnamed evangelists (11:19–21)
Luke has written in 8:1 that, as a result of the persecution which broke out after Stephen’s martyrdom, ‘all except the apostles were scattered [diesparēsan] throughout Judea and Samaria’. He now resumes his account: Now those who had been scattered [diasparentes] by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed travelled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch (19a). In both cases he presents this fanning out of believers as a Christian ‘diaspora’ or dispersion. In both cases the result was the same, namely that ‘those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went’ (8:4), spreading the word (19b). And in both cases he leaves the evangelists unnamed, except for stating that they were not apostles (8:1) and mentioning Philip (8:5ff.).
Luke now shows how the outward movement of the gospel expanded in two ways, geographical and cultural. Geographically, the mission spread north beyond ‘Judea and Samaria’ (8:1b) as far as Phoenicia, corresponding to Lebanon today, the island of Cyprus and the city of Syrian Antioch (19). Culturally, the mission spread beyond Jews to Gentiles. Most of the missionaries were spreading the word only among Jews. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus [which incidentally was Barnabas’s home, 4:36] and Cyrene on the North African coast (did they perhaps include ‘Lucius of Cyrene’ mentioned in 13:1?) went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus (20), proclaiming Jesus, that is, not now as ‘the Christ’, but as ‘the Lord’. Moreover, their bold innovation was richly blessed by God, for the Lord’s hand was with them (his power confirming his word), so that a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord (21) in that combination of repentance and faith which is generally called ‘conversion’. Some speculate that Luke himself was one of these converts, because the Western text introduces verse 28 with the words ‘when we were gathered together’, indicating that Luke was present, and because a tradition can be traced back to the end of the second century that Luke was a native of Antioch.
Is it certain, however, that these ‘daring spirits’ did evangelize Greeks in Antioch, and not just Hellenists, that is, Greek-speaking Jews? This question has long occupied scholars. The slightly better-attested reading in verse 20 is not Hellēnas, ‘Greeks’, but Hellēnistas, ‘Hellenists’.
So who were they? The word itself (Hellēnistēs) does not tell us, for it ‘is found nowhere in previous Greek literature or in Hellenistic-Jewish literature’, writes Dr Bruce Metzger, and ‘in the New Testament it occurs only here and in 6:1 and 9:29’. All that can be said with confidence is that it ‘appears to be a new formation from hellēnizein, “to speak Greek” or “to practise Greek ways”’; it thus indicates the culture of the people in question, but not their nationality.
If, then, the meaning of the word is in itself uncertain, we must decide from the context. Yet even this is somewhat uncertain. Some argue that the contrast between ‘only among Jews’ (19) and ‘to Greeks also’ (20) settles the matter. There would have been nothing remarkable about preaching to Greek-speaking Jews, for it had been going on from the beginning. It would not have called for a special investigation from Jerusalem. So, they conclude, the context requires us (like most of the Church Fathers) to take Hellēnistas as a synonym for Hellēnas and to translate it ‘Greeks’, ‘Gentiles’ or (neb, 1961 edition) ‘pagans’.
Others point out, however, that, even if the narrower context is clear (the contrast in verses 19–20 between ‘only Jews’ and ‘also Greeks’), the wider context is not. There would, in fact, be an anachronism in presenting the full-scale Gentile mission as having been pioneered by anonymous evangelists in Antioch, since Luke reserves this innovation for Paul on his first missionary journey (Acts 13). He could hardly have intended to anticipate it here (Acts 11).
Since there is ambiguity in both word and context, it seems wise to look for a compromise solution between Greek-speaking Jews on the one hand and complete pagans on the other. Linguistically, we can be sure only that Hellēnistas denotes people whose language and culture are Greek; the word does not indicate their ethnic origin, whether ‘the person be a Jew or a Roman or any other non-Greek’. It certainly does not require that the person is a Jew. Contextually, Richard Longenecker suggests that the Hellēnistas were indeed Gentiles, but Gentiles ‘who had some kind of relationship with Judaism’, perhaps ‘God-fearers’. His conclusion is
that Luke did not look on the Greeks in verse 20 as simply Gentiles unaffected by the influence of Judaism and that he did not view the Hellenistic Christians’ approach to them as pre-empting the uniqueness of Paul’s later Gentile policy.
Instead, Hellēnistas ‘is to be understood in the broad sense of “Greek-speaking persons”, meaning thereby the mixed population of Antioch in contrast to the Joudaioi of verse 19’. It is clear from both Acts 15:1 and Galatians 2:11ff. that in the church of Antioch Jews and Gentiles, the circumcised and the uncircumcised, were at that time enjoying table fellowship with one another.
This new outreach took place in Antioch, Luke tells us (20), and no more appropriate place could be imagined, either as the venue for the first international church or as the springboard for the worldwide Christian mission. The city was founded in 300 bc by Seleucus Nicator, one of Alexander the Great’s generals. He named it ‘Antioch’ after his father Antiochus, and its port, 15 miles west along the navigable River Orontes, ‘Seleucia’ after himself. Over the years it became known as ‘Antioch the Beautiful’ because of its fine buildings, and by Luke’s day was famous for its long, paved boulevard, which ran from north to south and was flanked by a double colonnade with trees and fountains. Although it was a Greek city by foundation, its population, estimated as at least 500,000, was extremely cosmopolitan. It had a large colony of Jews, attracted by Seleucus’s offer of equal citizenship, and of those from the East too, from Persia, India and even China, earning it another of its names, ‘the Queen of the East’. Since it was absorbed into the Roman Empire by Pompey in 64 bc, and became the capital of the imperial province of Syria (to which Cilicia was later added), its inhabitants included Latins as well. Thus Greeks, Jews, those from the East and Romans formed the mixed multitude of what Josephus called ‘the third city of the empire’, after Rome and Alexandria.
b. The Greek mission is endorsed by Barnabas (11:22–24)
News of this fresh development reached the church in Jerusalem, much as they had previously heard ‘that Samaria had accepted the word of God’ (8:14) and ‘that the Gentiles [Cornelius and his household] also had received the word of God’ (11:1). Luke seems to be hinting that they felt the need to assure themselves that all was well, in addition to helping nurture this young, multicultural church. This time they did not send an apostle, however. Instead, they sent Barnabas to Antioch (22), whom Barclay called ‘the man with the biggest heart in the church’, and who was known to be true to his name ‘son of encouragement’ (4:36). When he arrived in Antioch, he immediately saw for himself the grace of God in the converts’ changed lives and new international community, and as a result he both was glad, presumably expressing his joy in praise, and encouraged them all [‘encouraged’ being perhaps a deliberate play on his name] to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts (23). It was a call both to perseverance and to wholeheartedness. Luke was obviously impressed with Barnabas’s Christian character, and attributed his ministry to it: for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith. It is no wonder that a great number of people were brought [literally ‘added’, as rsv] to the Lord (24).
The verb for ‘added’ in verse 24 (prostithēmi) has become for Luke an almost technical word for church growth. He used it twice in relation to the Day of Pentecost, first of the three thousand who were added that day (2:41) and then of the daily additions which followed (2:47). Later he wrote of ‘more and more men and women’ believing in the Lord and being added to the church (5:14), while in Syrian Antioch ‘a great number of people’ were added (11:24). This use of the verb prostithēmi led the famous Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper to propose the word ‘prosthetics’ to define missiology (although today it applies to the surgical replacement of limbs and organs), since it should be concerned with the expansion of the church by additions to its membership. Hermann Bavinck responded that it would not be an appropriate term, however, because in the New Testament it is the Lord who does the adding (2:47), not human missionaries. We might also comment that the additions are not just to the church but to the Lord (11:24). When we see ‘the Lord adding to the Lord’, so that he is both subject and object, source and goal, of evangelism, we have to repent of all self-centred, self-confident concepts of the Christian mission.
c. The Greek mission is consolidated by Saul (11:25–26)
Barnabas’s next action was to go to Tarsus to look for Saul (25), for Tarsus was Saul’s home town, to which the Jerusalem believers had sent him when his life was threatened (9:28–30). That was seven or eight years previously. We do not know what he had been doing meanwhile, although he seems to indicate in his letter to the Galatians that he was preaching in Syria and Cilicia. Some commentators have suggested that it was during this period that he suffered some of the physical persecutions to which he later referred, and was disinherited by his family.
We cannot help admiring Barnabas’s humility in wanting to share the ministry with Saul, and also his sense of strategy. He must have known of Saul’s calling to be the apostle to the Gentiles (9:15, 27), and it may well have been the Gentile conversions in Antioch which made him think of Saul. At all events, when Barnabas found him, he brought him to Antioch, and then for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church, most of whose members were young and uninstructed believers, and taught great numbers of people (26a).
They must have taught about Christ, making sure that the converts knew both the facts and the significance of his life, death, resurrection, exaltation, Spirit-gift, present reign and future coming. Was it because the word ‘Christ’ was constantly on their lips that the disciples were called Christians first at Antioch (26b)? Luke has so far referred to them as ‘disciples’ (6:1), ‘holy people’ (9:13), ‘brothers and sisters’ (1:16), ‘believers’ (9:30; 10:45), those ‘being saved’ (2:47) and the people of ‘the Way’ (9:2). Now it seems to have been the unbelieving public of Antioch, famed for their wit and nicknaming skill, who, supposing that ‘Christ’ was a proper name rather than a title (the Christ or Messiah), coined the label Christianoi. It was probably more familiar and humorous than derisory. Although it does not seem to have caught on initially, since elsewhere it appears only twice in the New Testament (Acts 26:28 and 1 Pet. 4:16), it at least emphasized the Christ-centred nature of discipleship. For the word’s formation was parallel to Hērōdianoi (Herodians) and Kaisarianoi (Caesar’s people); it marked out the disciples as being above all the people, the followers, the servants of Christ.
d. The Greek mission is authenticated by good works (11:27–30)
It was during this time, Luke continues, that some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch (27). One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world (the oikoumenē or ‘inhabited earth’ being regarded as more or less the same as the empire). Luke adds a comment that this predicted famine happened during the reign of Claudius (28). Claudius ruled from ad 41 to 54, but historians do not record ‘a severe and world-wide famine’ (neb) during this period. F. F. Bruce explains that this period ‘was indeed marked by a succession of bad harvests and serious famines in various parts of the empire’. For example, Josephus wrote of a great famine which during the reign of Claudius oppressed the people of Judea, so that ‘many people died for want of what was necessary to procure food’, although Queen Helena bought and distributed large quantities of corn and figs.
Luke’s concern, however, is not so much with the fulfilment of Agabus’s prophecy as with the generous response of Antioch’s church. For the disciples, as each one was able, decided to provide help for the brothers and sisters living in Judea (29). And their decision led to action. They were soon sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul (30), who, having ministered as evangelists and teachers, were glad now to minister as social workers as well. This second visit of Saul’s to Jerusalem, which Luke records here, seems (although not all scholars agree with this) to be the same as the second visit which Paul himself mentions in Galatians 2:1–10. The parallels are striking. He writes there that he travelled ‘with Barnabas’, that he went ‘in response to a revelation’ (i.e. Agabus’s prophecy), and that the leaders urged him to ‘continue to remember the poor’, which was ‘the very thing’ he was ‘eager to do’, namely in bringing the famine relief.
We naturally wonder why, apart from the famine, the Jerusalem church was now so poor as to need this relief, and whether perhaps their extreme generosity which Luke has described in Acts 2 and 4 was a contributory factor. At all events, it was now the turn of the believers in Antioch to be generous. They gave as each one was able, just as the Jerusalem believers had previously distributed ‘to anyone who had need’ (2:45; 4:35). I have often wondered if Marx knew these two passages and linked them in his mind. For in his famous ‘Critique of the Gotha Programme’ (1875), that is, of the united policy of the two wings of German socialism, he called for something much more radical than they proposed, when society can ‘inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!’
Whatever our political and economic convictions may be, these are clearly biblical principles: that is, ability on the one hand, need on the other, and how to relate them to each other. These principles should characterize the family of God. It is no accident that the Jerusalem recipients of the relief from Antioch are called ‘brothers and sisters’ (29). More important still, this family included both Jewish and Gentile believers, and the fellowship between them was shown by the relations between their two churches. The church of Jerusalem had sent Barnabas to Antioch; now the church of Antioch sent Barnabas, with Saul, back to Jerusalem. This famine relief anticipated the collection which Paul was later to organize, in which the affluent Greek churches of Macedonia and Achaia contributed to the needs of the poor churches of Judea. Its importance to Paul was that it was a symbol of Gentile–Jewish solidarity in Christ, ‘for if the Gentiles have shared in the Jews’ spiritual blessings’, he wrote, ‘they owe it to the Jews to share with them their material blessings’.
2. Opposition: the church in Jerusalem (12:1–24)
Luke has been recording one marvellous conversion after another – the three thousand on the Day of Pentecost, the Samaritans, the Ethiopian official, Saul of Tarsus, the Gentile centurion Cornelius and the mixed crowd in Antioch. The word of God was spreading in concentric circles. Luke is about to describe that great leap forward we call the first missionary journey. But first he has to report a serious setback in the death of James and the imprisonment of Peter, both of whom were apostles and leaders of the Jerusalem church. Herod Agrippa I was the tyrant responsible for this double assault upon the work of God. At the time it must have seemed a grave crisis, although Luke is able to go on to chronicle the rescue of Peter by the intervention of God. Thus the destructive power of Herod and the saving power of God are contrasted. Indeed, throughout church history the pendulum has swung between expansion and opposition, growth and shrinkage, advance and retreat, although with the assurance that even the powers of death and hell will never succeed against Christ’s church, since it is built securely on the rock.
Herod Agrippa I was the grandson of Herod the Great. He shared some of his grandfather’s characteristics, and after the emperors Caligula and Claudius had given him successive areas of Palestinian territory, his kingdom was as extensive as his grandfather’s.
a. Herod’s plot (12:1–4)
It was about this time [Luke is deliberately vague, and scholars dispute the exact order of the events he sets out in Acts 10 to 12] that King Herod [Luke accurately uses the title which the Emperor Caligula had given him] arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them (1). He must have been well informed about Jesus and his followers, for his uncle Antipas had known and tried Jesus. He is also known to have been anxious to preserve the Roman peace in Palestine and therefore to have disliked minorities which threatened to disrupt it. It is fully in keeping with this policy that he sought to ingratiate himself with the Jews (who naturally despised him for his Roman upbringing and Edomite ancestry) by conscientiously observing the law and now by persecuting the church. So he had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword (2) or ‘beheaded’ (neb). Jesus had warned both James and John, who had asked for the best seats in his kingdom, that they would drink his cup and share his baptism, that is, participate in his sufferings. But it belongs to the mystery of God’s providence why this was to mean execution for James and exile for John, whereas for the time being Peter escaped James’s fate which Herod intended for him also. For when he saw that this met with approval among the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also. This happened during the Festival of Unleavened Bread (3), which immediately followed Passover, and during which Jewish law permitted neither trials nor sentencing. After arresting him, therefore, Herod put him in prison, perhaps in the Tower of Antonia at the north-west corner of the temple area, handing him over to be guarded, in a maximum-security arrangement, by four squads of four soldiers each, working by shifts so that each squad would be on duty for six hours at a time, or perhaps for only three hours during the night watches. Herod intended to bring him out for public trial, what today we might call a ‘show trial’, after the Passover, including the days of the feast of Unleavened Bread (4). Peter’s trial would then, of course, be followed by his execution.
The situation looked extremely bleak, even hopeless. There appeared to be no possibility of Peter’s escape. What could the little community of Jesus, in its powerlessness, do against the armed might of Rome?
b. Herod’s defeat (12:5–19a)
The Jerusalem church will not have forgotten Peter’s two previous imprisonments, although they had been at the hand of the Sanhedrin (4:3; 5:18). Nor will they have forgotten how Peter and John, after their first release, had joined the rest of the church in prayer, affirming that God was sovereign and that Herod Antipas and Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles and the Jews, had conspired against Jesus to do only what his ‘power and will had decided beforehand should happen’ (4:23–28). As for the apostles’ second imprisonment, an angel of the Lord had opened the doors of the jail and set them free (5:19); could he not do it again? So, even while Peter was kept in prison, the church was earnestly praying to God for him (5). Luke uses the adverb ektenōs (jb, ‘unremittingly’; neb, ‘fervently’), which he has previously applied to Jesus’ intense agony in Gethsemane. They believed that somehow, whether or not by another miracle, God could grant release to the jailed apostle in answer to their prayers. Here then were two communities, the world and the church, lined up against one another, each wielding an appropriate weapon. On the one side was the authority of Herod, the power of the sword and the security of the prison. On the other side, the church turned to prayer, which is the only power which the powerless possess.
The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries stood guard at the entrance (6). Luke deliberately stresses the thoroughness with which the apostle was being guarded against escape or rescue. Normally it was considered enough for a prisoner to be handcuffed to one soldier, but as a special precaution Peter had a soldier each side of him and both his wrists were manacled, while outside the cell the other two soldiers of the squad were on duty. In spite of the seeming impossibility of liberation, and the extreme likelihood that on the following day he would suffer the same fate as James (in fulfilment of Jesus’ prophecy that he would die as a martyr), Peter showed no sign of anxiety, let alone alarm. On the contrary, he fell fast asleep. Later Paul, in a similar situation in Philippi, was to pray and sing to God (16:25). This leads Chrysostom to comment: ‘It is beautiful that Paul sings hymns, whilst here Peter sleeps.’ Both Luke’s heroes, Peter and Paul, showed themselves to be equally defiant of death.
Then suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared. Our understanding of who this ‘angel’ was will depend largely on our presuppositions, and in particular whether we believe in the existence of angels and the possibility of the miraculous. It is true that the word angelos can be translated simply ‘messenger’ and that Luke used it of human beings several times in his Gospel – for example, of the messengers John the Baptist sent to Jesus (Luke 7:24), of John the Baptist himself (7:27) and of those Jesus sent on ahead to get things ready for him (9:52). Consequently, I suppose one could just argue that a human messenger is meant here. R. P. C. Hanson finds it ‘reasonable’ to understand that Peter ‘managed to escape because of bribery, negligence or simply a change of mind on the part of the authorities’. But the key question is what Luke himself intended us to understand, and of that there is little doubt. He has already referred to supernatural angelic beings on about fifteen occasions in his Gospel and the early chapters of Acts, and his emphasis in this story is on a divine intervention through a heavenly agent. So, as if to make this fact completely clear, a light shone in the cell, and the release was accomplished in a succession of swift actions, while Peter was still half asleep and uncertain if he was dreaming. Luke’s narrative in verses 7 to 11 needs no further comment.
When what had happened had dawned on him, for Peter was fully awake now, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark (12). The fact that it was natural for him to go straight there suggests that it was a well-known (perhaps even the main) meeting place of the Jerusalem believers. The Mary to whom it belonged is known only as the mother of John Mark, a cousin of Barnabas, who is here mentioned by Luke for the first time and who is soon to feature in his story again as the renegade member of the first missionary journey (12:25; 13:5, 13). Some commentators have speculated that this house of Mary contained the ‘large room upstairs, furnished and ready’, which Mark himself mentions as the place where Jesus ate the Passover with the Twelve before his arrest, trial and crucifixion. Perhaps it was also the house where the Twelve lived, and they and others met to pray, during the ten days between the ascension and Pentecost (1:12–14). It was certainly spacious, for it had an outer entrance or vestibule where Peter knocked, and presumably a courtyard between this and the main house. It was here, at all events, although it was in the middle of the night, that many people had gathered and were praying (12).
When Peter knocked at the outer entrance, the praying group must immediately have imagined that they had received a visit from the secret police. As they waited in suspense, a servant named Rhoda [who figured so prominently in this episode that her name was remembered and recorded] came to answer the door (13). When she recognised Peter’s voice, because it was customary in those days for visitors to call out as well as to knock, she was so overjoyed that she ran back, leaving Peter standing outside the door, without opening it and exclaimed, ‘Peter is at the door!’ (14). ‘You’re out of your mind,’ they told her. It is ironic that the group who were praying fervently and persistently for Peter’s deliverance should regard the person who informed them that their prayers had been answered as mad! Rhoda’s simple joy shines brightly against the dark background of the church’s disbelief. When she kept insisting that it was so, because she was sure she had rightly identified Peter’s voice, they changed their tune and said, It must be his angel (15), referring to what are rather loosely called ‘guardian angels’. As F. F. Bruce puts it, ‘The angel is here conceived of as a man’s spiritual counterpart, capable of assuming his appearance and being mistaken for him.’ But Peter kept on knocking, and when, at last, they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished (16). They must also have broken into a chorus of noisy greetings, for Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet, perhaps fearful of the danger if the clamour woke the neighbours, and described how the Lord had brought him out of prison. He then gave them a single instruction: Tell James [that is, the Lord’s brother, who seems already to be recognized as the leader of the Jerusalem church; see 15:13; 21:18; Gal. 1:19; 2:9, 12] and the other brothers and sisters [the rest of the Christian assembly in Jerusalem] about this. Then he left for another place (17). This was definitely not Rome, as the apocryphal Acts of Peter suggested, and as some Roman Catholic commentators used to argue, adding that he stayed there for twenty-five years as the first pope. Luke means simply that he went into temporary hiding, whether or not anybody knew where. What we do know is that a year or two later he was in Antioch, and then back in Jerusalem for the meeting of the Council (15:7ff.).
Perhaps the most important statement of the whole narrative of Peter’s deliverance is in verse 17: the Lord had brought him out of prison. The dramatic details included by Luke all seem to emphasize the intervention of God and the passivity of Peter. Peter was asleep, and the angel had to nudge him awake. His chains fell off. The order to dress was given as though by numbers: Get up . . . Put on your clothes and sandals . . . Wrap your cloak round you and follow me (7–8). They passed the guards on duty in the corridor, who were presumably in a deep sleep, and the external prison gate opened automatically. Peter himself did not know if it was all fact or fantasy, reality or dream.
In the morning, on the very day on which Peter was to be tried and executed, there was no small commotion among the soldiers as to what had become of Peter, for their prisoner was nowhere to be found (18). When the news reached Herod, he first had a thorough search made for him, and then, when he did not find him, he cross-examined the guards and, because in Roman law a prison officer who allowed his charge to escape was liable to the penalty to which the prisoner had been condemned (cf. 16:27; 27:42), ordered that they be executed (19a).
c. Herod’s death (12:19b–24)
Although Herod’s victim had escaped his clutches, Herod himself was still at large. So Luke ends this part of his chronicle by describing the tyrant’s death. He went from Judea to Caesarea, the provincial capital, and stayed there a while (19b). Luke then sketches the history behind the incident he is about to relate. Herod had been quarrelling with the people of Tyre and Sidon on the Phoenician coast, or was ‘furiously angry’ (neb) with them. So they now joined together and sought an audience with him. For this they needed an intermediary. So after securing the support [perhaps by a bribe] of Blastus, who is identified as a trusted personal servant of the king, they asked for peace. It was urgent for them to be restored to Herod’s favour, because they depended on the king’s country for their food supply, especially Galilean corn (20).
That was the background. Now on the appointed day on which Blastus was to present their case to him, Herod, wearing his royal robes, sat on his throne and delivered a public address to the people (21). The crowd shouted, This is the voice of a god, not of a man (22). And immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, and had in fact ‘usurped the honour due to God’ (neb), an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died (23).
Josephus also described in graphic detail the circumstances surrounding Herod’s death. His account and Luke’s differ from one another in a few details, which shows that they are independent. But their general outline is the same. Both agree that Herod was in Caesarea at the time, although Josephus said he had gone there to participate in a festival in honour of Caesar, which was attended by a large crowd of leading citizens. Both mention the royal robes he was wearing, while Josephus adds the detail that his garment was ‘made wholly of silver and of a contexture truly wonderful’, which shone so brightly in the morning sun that the people hailed him as a god. ‘Upon this,’ Josephus continued, ‘the king did neither rebuke them, nor reject their impious flattery.’ Luke and Josephus agree, therefore, that God’s judgment fell upon him because he glorified himself instead of God. Although Luke says ‘he was eaten by worms’, Josephus is content with the more general statement that ‘a severe pain . . . arose in his belly’, which became so violent that he was carried into his palace, where five days later he died. Their description is a reminder of the last days of that arch-persecutor Antiochus Epiphanes, who in his arrogance ‘had thought that he could touch the stars of heaven’, but ‘was seized with a pain in his bowels, for which there was no relief, and with sharp internal tortures’, until he died.
Dr A. Rendle Short, who was professor of surgery at Bristol University and wrote a book entitled The Bible and Modern Medicine, stated that a great many people in Asia ‘harbour intestinal worms’, which can form a tight ball and cause ‘acute intestinal obstruction’. This may have been the cause of Herod’s death.
It is in striking contrast to the death of the tyrant that Luke adds one of his summary verses: But the word of God continued to spread and flourish (24; cf. 6:7; 9:31). Indeed, we cannot fail to admire the skill with which Luke sets out the complete reversal of the church’s situation. At the beginning of the chapter Herod is on the rampage – arresting and persecuting church leaders; at the end he is himself struck down and dies. The chapter opens with James dead, Peter in prison and Herod triumphing; it closes with Herod dead, Peter free and the word of God triumphing. Such is the power of God to overthrow hostile human plans and to establish his own in their place. Tyrants may be permitted for a time to boast and bluster, oppressing the church and hindering the spread of the gospel, but they will not last. In the end, their empire will be broken and their pride cast down.