Acts 12: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

King Herod attacks members of the church in Jerusalem: he has James, John's brother, killed, and arrests Peter during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, planning to bring him out before the people after the festival. While the church prays, an angel wakes Peter in the night, his chains fall off, and he walks out past the guards to the house of Mary, where the praying group can hardly believe he is at the gate. Herod executes the guards and goes to Caesarea, where he accepts the crowd's praise as a god's voice and is struck down and dies. The chapter closes with the message spreading and with Barnabas and Saul returning from Jerusalem with John Mark.

Claim by Claim

1. 12:1
   • At about that time King Herod laid hands on some who belonged to the church.
   • Herod laid hands on them in order to mistreat them.
2. 12:2
   • Herod put James, the brother of John, to death.
   • James was killed with a sword.
3. 12:3
   • Herod saw that killing James was pleasing to the Jews.
   • Because of this, Herod went on to arrest Peter as well.
   • These were the days of unleavened bread.
4. 12:4
   • Herod seized Peter.
   • Herod put Peter in prison.
   • Herod handed Peter over to four squads of four soldiers to guard him.
   • Herod intended to bring Peter out before the people after the Passover.
5. 12:5
   • Peter was being kept in the prison.
   • The church was praying earnestly to God for Peter.
6. 12:6
   • Herod was about to bring Peter out.
   • On that night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers.
   • Peter was bound with two chains.
   • Guards in front of the door were guarding the prison.
7. 12:7
   • An angel of the Lord stood over Peter.
   • A light shone in the cell.
   • The angel struck Peter on the side.
   • The angel roused Peter.
   • The angel told Peter to get up quickly.
   • Peter's chains fell off from his hands.
8. 12:8
   • The angel told Peter to gird himself and put on his sandals.
   • Peter did so.
   • The angel told Peter to wrap his cloak around himself and follow him.
9. 12:9
   • Peter went out and followed the angel.
   • Peter did not know that what was being done by the angel was real.
   • Peter thought he was seeing a vision.
10. 12:10
    • They passed through the first guard post and the second.
    • They came to the iron gate that leads into the city.
    • The gate opened for them by itself.
    • They went out and went forward along one street.
    • The angel immediately left Peter.
11. 12:11
    • Peter came to himself.
    • Peter said that now he knew truly that the Lord had sent his angel.
    • Peter said the Lord had rescued him from Herod's hand.
    • Peter said the Lord had rescued him from all that the Jewish people were expecting.
12. 12:12
    • Peter realized what had happened.
    • Peter went to the house of Mary, the mother of John.
    • John was also called Mark.
    • Many people were gathered together at that house.
    • Those gathered there were praying.
13. 12:13
    • Peter knocked at the door of the gateway.
    • A servant girl came to answer.
    • The servant girl was named Rhoda.
14. 12:14
    • Rhoda recognized Peter's voice.
    • Out of joy Rhoda did not open the gate.
    • Rhoda ran inside.
    • Rhoda reported that Peter was standing before the gate.
15. 12:15
    • They told Rhoda she was out of her mind.
    • Rhoda insisted firmly that it was so.
    • They said that it was Peter's angel.
16. 12:16
    • Peter kept on knocking.
    • They opened the door and saw Peter.
    • They were astonished.
17. 12:17
    • Peter motioned to them with his hand to be silent.
    • Peter described to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison.
    • Peter told them to report these things to James and to the brothers.
    • Peter left and went to another place.
18. 12:18
    • When day came there was no small disturbance among the soldiers.
    • The disturbance was over what had become of Peter.
19. 12:19
    • Herod searched for Peter.
    • Herod did not find Peter.
    • Herod interrogated the guards.
    • Herod ordered that the guards be led away to be put to death.
    • Herod went down from Judaea to Caesarea.
    • Herod stayed in Caesarea.
20. 12:20
    • Herod was in a bitter quarrel with the people of Tyre and Sidon.
    • They came to him with one accord.
    • They won over Blastus, who was in charge of the king's bedchamber.
    • They asked for peace.
    • They did so because their country was fed from the king's country.
21. 12:21
    • On an appointed day Herod put on royal clothing.
    • Herod sat on the judgment seat.
    • Herod made a public address to them.
22. 12:22
    • The people shouted out.
    • The people said it was the voice of a god and not of a man.
23. 12:23
    • Immediately an angel of the Lord struck Herod.
    • The angel struck him because Herod did not give the glory to God.
    • Herod became eaten by worms.
    • Herod died.
24. 12:24
    • The word of God grew and multiplied.
25. 12:25
    • Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem.
    • They had completed their ministry.
    • They took with them John, who was also called Mark.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

12:1

The Herod here is Agrippa I, grandson of Herod the Great and nephew of the Herod who executed John the Baptist. Rome gave him the title of king over Judea and Galilee about AD 41, and he died in AD 44, so the events of this chapter fall within about three years. The King James "vex" was much stronger in 1611 than now: it meant to injure or ill treat, not merely to annoy. "Church" at this date means the body of believers themselves; there were no church buildings.

12:2

This James is the son of Zebedee, brother of John, one of the twelve closest followers of Jesus and the first of them known to have been killed. Death "with the sword" means beheading, a swift form of execution rather than a lingering one like crucifixion.

12:3

The Feast of Unleavened Bread was a seven day festival running on from Passover, during which no yeast was used in bread, recalling the night Israel left Egypt in too much haste to let dough rise. Jerusalem would have been packed with pilgrims, which is why a public arrest made a political impression. Note also that "the Jews" in the King James here means the Jerusalem public and its leadership, not Jewish people in general: Peter, James and nearly everyone in the church at this point were themselves Jews.

12:4

A "quaternion" is a squad of four soldiers. Four squads were assigned because the Romans divided the night into four watches, so one squad of four was on duty at a time. The King James "Easter" is famous oddity: the Greek word is pascha, Passover, and every modern version translates it that way. "Easter" was simply the English name the 1611 translators used for the season. Herod waits until the festival is over because executions during a holy week would inflame the crowds.

12:5

Praying means talking to God. The church did it over and over, day after day, without stopping.

12:6

Roman guards commonly chained a prisoner by the wrist to a soldier on either side, which is why two chains hold one man. Two more soldiers watched the door, accounting for the squad of four.

12:7

"Smote" in the King James simply means struck, with no fixed level of force; here it is a nudge to wake a sleeping man, while in verse 23 the same word describes a fatal blow.

12:8

"Gird thyself" means fasten your belt around your tunic; loose clothing was hitched up and belted before walking or working. The "garment" of the next sentence is the outer cloak, a heavy wrap that also served as a blanket at night.

12:9

"Wist not" is the old past tense of "wit," to know: he did not know. A "vision" here means something seen in a trance or a dream state rather than with the eyes, which is what Peter assumes is happening to him.

12:10

A "ward" is a guard post or checkpoint. The iron gate opening onto the street suggests the prison was inside a fortress or palace complex rather than a free standing building. The Greek behind "of his own accord" is the word from which English gets "automatic."

12:11

"Of a surety" means "for certain." What the crowd was expecting to see was Peter's public trial and execution once the festival ended.

12:12

"Surname" in the King James does not mean a family name; it means an additional name a person went by. This man was John among Jews and Mark, the Roman name Marcus, among Greeks and Romans. He travels with Barnabas and Paul later in the book. That his mother's house has an outer gate, a courtyard and a servant suggests a household of some means.

12:13

Houses of this kind opened onto the street through a gated entry passage leading into an inner courtyard. Rhoda was answering the street gate, far enough from the room where people were praying that they could not hear Peter for themselves. Her name means "rose" and was a common one for a servant.

12:15

"Thou art mad" means you are out of your mind. "Constantly affirmed" uses "constantly" in its 1611 sense of steadfastly: she kept firmly insisting. "It is his angel" reflects a belief current among Jews of the period that a person had an accompanying angel who could be taken for that person; the group finds this easier to credit than Peter being out of prison.

12:17

This is a different James from the one killed in verse 2. By this time the leading figure in the Jerusalem community was James the brother of Jesus, and he is the one meant here. "Brethren" means fellow believers, men and women alike, not male relatives.

12:19

"Examined" means formally interrogated, a process that under Roman practice could include torture. Executing the guards follows the Roman rule that a soldier who let a prisoner escape suffered the penalty the prisoner faced. Caesarea was the coastal city Herod the Great had built as a harbor and Rome used as its administrative center for Judea, about sixty five miles northwest of Jerusalem. "Went down" describes the drop from the Judean hills to sea level, not a compass direction.

12:20

Tyre and Sidon were ancient Phoenician port cities on the coast north of Herod's territory, in what is now Lebanon. They were merchant towns with little farmland and bought their grain from the Galilean and Judean interior, so a king who controlled that supply could starve them into negotiating. A "chamberlain" was the official in charge of the king's private quarters, a position of trusted access and therefore real influence.

12:21

The Jewish historian Josephus, writing about fifty years later, describes the same occasion: a festival at Caesarea held in honor of the emperor, with Herod appearing in a robe woven through with silver that caught the morning sun.

12:22

Hailing a ruler's voice or person as divine was a recognized form of public flattery in the Greek speaking cities of the eastern empire, where rulers were routinely given divine honors.

12:23

"Gave up the ghost" is 1611 English for died; "ghost" then meant breath or spirit. Josephus likewise reports that Herod was seized with violent internal pain at this festival and died five days later.

12:24

"The word of God" here means the spoken message being preached about Jesus, not a book. "Grew and multiplied" is language normally used of a family or a crop, describing how far the message spread and how many received it.

12:25

"Ministry" in the King James means a service or errand carried out, here the relief money the believers at Antioch had sent to Judea during the famine described at the end of chapter 11. The manuscripts genuinely disagree at this verse: some read that they returned from Jerusalem, others that they returned to Jerusalem, and the direction of the journey is uncertain.