For Teaching

Acts 13: What the Passage Says

180 claims across 52 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Acts 13 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

In Antioch the Holy Spirit sets apart Barnabas and Saul, and the church sends them off to Cyprus, where Saul, also called Paul, confronts the magician Elymas and the Roman governor comes to believe. At Antioch in Pisidia, Paul speaks in the synagogue, tracing Israel's history from Egypt to David and then to Jesus, whom God raised from the dead, and announcing forgiveness of sins through him. Almost the whole city gathers the next Sabbath; when the Jews contradict him, Paul and Barnabas say they are now turning to the Gentiles. They are driven out of the district and travel on to Iconium.

Claim by Claim

13:1
- There were prophets and teachers in the church at Antioch.
- Barnabas was among them.
- Simeon, who was called Niger, was among them.
- Lucius of Cyrene was among them.
- Manaen was among them.
- Manaen had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch.
- Saul was among them.
13:2
- They were ministering to the Lord.
- They were fasting.
- The Holy Spirit spoke.
- The Holy Spirit said to set apart Barnabas and Saul for him.
- The Holy Spirit said the setting apart was for the work to which he had called them.
13:3
- They fasted.
- They prayed.
- They laid their hands on Barnabas and Saul.
- They sent them away.
13:4
- Barnabas and Saul were sent forth by the Holy Spirit.
- They went down to Seleucia.
- From Seleucia they sailed to Cyprus.
13:5
- They arrived at Salamis.
- They proclaimed the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews.
- They had John with them as their assistant.
13:6
- They went through the whole island as far as Paphos.
- They found a certain man there.
- The man was a magician.
- The man was a false prophet.
- The man was a Jew.
- The man's name was Barjesus.
13:7
- Barjesus was with the proconsul Sergius Paulus.
- Sergius Paulus was an intelligent man.
- Sergius Paulus summoned Barnabas and Saul.
- Sergius Paulus sought to hear the word of God.
13:8
- Elymas the magician opposed Barnabas and Saul.
- Elymas is what the magician's name means when translated.
- Elymas was seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith.
13:9
- Saul is also called Paul.
- Saul was filled with the Holy Spirit.
- Saul looked intently at Elymas.
13:10
- Saul spoke.
- Saul called him full of all deceit.
- Saul called him full of all fraud.
- Saul called him a son of the devil.
- Saul called him an enemy of all righteousness.
- Saul asked whether he would not stop perverting the straight ways of the Lord.
13:11
- Saul said the hand of the Lord was upon him.
- Saul said he would be blind.
- Saul said he would not see the sun.
- Saul said the blindness would last for a time.
- Immediately a mist and darkness fell upon him.
- He went about seeking people to lead him by the hand.
13:12
- The proconsul saw what had happened.
- The proconsul believed.
- The proconsul was astonished at the teaching of the Lord.
13:13
- Paul and those with him set sail from Paphos.
- They came to Perga in Pamphylia.
- John departed from them.
- John returned to Jerusalem.
13:14
- They went on from Perga.
- They arrived at Antioch in Pisidia.
- They entered the synagogue on the sabbath day.
- They sat down.
13:15
- The law was read.
- The prophets were read.
- After the reading, the rulers of the synagogue sent word to them.
- They addressed them as men and brothers.
- They said that if they had any word of exhortation for the people, they should speak.
13:16
- Paul stood up.
- Paul motioned with his hand.
- Paul spoke.
- Paul addressed the men of Israel.
- Paul addressed those who fear God.
- Paul told them to listen.
13:17
- The God of this people Israel chose our fathers.
- God exalted the people during their sojourn in the land of Egypt.
- God brought them out of Egypt with an uplifted arm.
13:18
- For about forty years God bore with their conduct in the wilderness.
13:19
- God destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan.
- God gave their land to the people as an inheritance.
13:20
- God gave them judges for about four hundred and fifty years.
- The judges continued until Samuel the prophet.
13:21
- Afterward they asked for a king.
- God gave them Saul the son of Kish.
- Saul was a man of the tribe of Benjamin.
- Saul was given for forty years.
13:22
- God removed Saul.
- God raised up David to be their king.
- God bore testimony about David.
- God said he had found David the son of Jesse.
- God said David was a man after his own heart.
- God said David would do all his will.
13:23
- From the seed of David God brought to Israel a Savior.
- The Savior is Jesus.
- God did this according to his promise.
13:24
- John preached before Jesus' coming.
- John preached a baptism of repentance.
- John preached it to all the people of Israel.
13:25
- John was completing his course.
- John asked them who they supposed him to be.
- John said he was not that one.
- John said one was coming after him.
- John said he was not worthy to untie the sandal of that one's feet.
13:26
- Paul addressed them as men and brothers.
- Paul called them children of the stock of Abraham.
- Paul addressed those among them who fear God.
- Paul said the word of this salvation was sent to them.
13:27
- Those who dwell in Jerusalem and their rulers did not know Jesus.
- They did not know the voices of the prophets.
- The prophets are read every sabbath day.
- They fulfilled those words by condemning Jesus.
13:28
- They found no cause of death in Jesus.
- They asked Pilate that Jesus be put to death.
13:29
- They fulfilled all that was written about Jesus.
- They took him down from the tree.
- They laid him in a tomb.
13:30
- God raised Jesus from the dead.
13:31
- Jesus was seen for many days.
- He was seen by those who had come up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem.
- Those people are now his witnesses to the people.
13:32
- We proclaim good news to you.
- The good news concerns the promise made to the fathers.
13:33
- God has fulfilled that promise to us, their children.
- God fulfilled it by raising up Jesus.
- It is written in the second psalm.
- The psalm says, You are my Son.
- The psalm says, today I have begotten you.
13:34
- God raised Jesus from the dead.
- Jesus is no more to return to corruption.
- God said, I will give you the holy and sure things promised to David.
13:35
- He also says in another place, You will not let your Holy One see corruption.
13:36
- David served in his own generation by the will of God (the wording leaves open whether he served his generation by God's will or served God's purpose in his generation).
- David fell asleep.
- David was laid with his fathers.
- David saw corruption.
13:37
- The one whom God raised up saw no corruption.
13:38
- Paul told them to know this.
- Paul addressed them as men and brothers.
- Through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you.
13:39
- By him everyone who believes is justified from all things.
- You could not be justified from those things by the law of Moses.
13:40
- Beware lest what is spoken in the prophets come upon you.
13:41
- The prophets say, Look, you despisers.
- They say, wonder.
- They say, perish.
- God says he is working a work in your days.
- God says it is a work you will not believe.
- God says you will not believe it even if someone declares it to you.
13:42
- The Jews went out of the synagogue.
- The Gentiles begged that these words be spoken to them the next sabbath.
13:43
- The synagogue assembly was dismissed.
- Many of the Jews followed Paul and Barnabas.
- Many devout proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas.
- Paul and Barnabas spoke to them.
- Paul and Barnabas urged them to continue in the grace of God.
13:44
- On the next sabbath almost the whole city gathered together.
- They gathered to hear the word of God.
13:45
- The Jews saw the multitudes.
- The Jews were filled with jealousy.
- The Jews spoke against the things spoken by Paul.
- The Jews contradicted and blasphemed.
13:46
- Paul and Barnabas spoke boldly.
- They said it was necessary that the word of God be spoken to them first.
- They said the Jews were thrusting the word from them.
- They said the Jews judged themselves unworthy of everlasting life.
- They said they were turning to the Gentiles.
13:47
- The Lord has commanded them this way.
- The Lord said, I have set you to be a light of the Gentiles.
- The Lord said this was so that you should be for salvation to the end of the earth.
13:48
- The Gentiles heard this.
- The Gentiles were glad.
- The Gentiles glorified the word of the Lord.
- As many as were appointed to eternal life believed.
13:49
- The word of the Lord was spread throughout the whole region.
13:50
- The Jews stirred up the devout and honorable women.
- The Jews stirred up the chief men of the city.
- They raised a persecution against Paul and Barnabas.
- They expelled them from their district.
13:51
- Paul and Barnabas shook the dust of their feet off against them.
- They came to Iconium.
13:52
- The disciples were filled with joy.
- The disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit.

Words Worth Explaining

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

13:1: Antioch in Syria was one of the largest cities of the Roman empire, with a big Jewish population and, by this point, a mixed Jewish and Gentile church. A tetrarch was a minor ruler holding a fraction of a kingdom under Roman oversight; this is Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee. Saying Manaen was "brought up with" him means he was raised alongside Antipas at court, roughly a foster brother, so the list runs from a Cypriot Levite to a man from the royal household. "Niger" is Latin for black, used as a nickname, and Cyrene was a city on the North African coast in what is now Libya.
13:2: "Holy Ghost" is just older English for "Holy Spirit": in 1611 "ghost" meant spirit or breath and carried none of the modern sense of a haunting. Fasting, going without food for a set time, was a normal part of Jewish worship and of seeking a decision from God.
13:3: Placing hands on someone was a formal, public gesture of handing over a task or a blessing, used in the Hebrew Bible for commissioning a successor or setting apart someone for a job. It marks these two as sent by the group rather than going on their own initiative.
13:4: Seleucia was the seaport of Antioch, about sixteen miles downriver at the mouth of the Orontes. Cyprus is a large island off the Syrian coast and was Barnabas's home region.
13:5: Salamis was the main port on the eastern side of Cyprus. KJV "minister" here does not mean a clergyman; the Greek word means assistant or attendant, someone who handled the practical work of a journey. This John is John Mark, mentioned earlier in Acts 12.
13:6: KJV "sorcerer" translates the Greek magos, the word behind "magi": a practitioner of astrology, spells and divination. Such men often attached themselves to Roman officials as private advisers. "Barjesus" is Aramaic for "son of Jesus", Jesus being the ordinary name Joshua, which sets up Paul's retort in verse 10.
13:7: KJV "deputy" is the proconsul, the governor the Roman senate appointed over the province of Cyprus. KJV "prudent" here means intelligent or shrewd, not cautious.
13:8: How the two names relate is not obvious and has been argued over since antiquity. "Elymas" is usually traced to a Semitic word for a wise man or magician, so Luke seems to be glossing the man's professional title or second name rather than translating "Barjesus".
13:9: Many Jews in the Roman world carried both a Hebrew name and a similar sounding Greek or Roman one. Saul was his Hebrew name and Paulus his Roman one; he is not being renamed here. From this point Luke simply uses the Roman name, as the story moves into Roman provincial territory.
13:10: KJV "subtilty" means craftiness and "mischief" means fraud or villainy, far heavier words in 1611 than now. "Thou child of the devil" answers the man's name Barjesus, son of Jesus: Paul is saying whose son he actually is.
13:11: "The hand of the Lord is upon thee" is a Hebrew idiom for God's power at work, here in a hostile sense. "For a season" means for a limited time, not permanently.
13:12: KJV "doctrine" simply means teaching.
13:13: KJV "loosed" is a sailing term meaning to cast off. Perga lay in Pamphylia, on the southern coast of what is now Turkey. Luke gives no reason for John Mark's departure; it later becomes the quarrel that splits Paul and Barnabas in Acts 15.
13:14: A different Antioch from the one in verse 1. This was a Roman colony inland on the high plateau of Asia Minor, near the region of Pisidia; reaching it from the coast meant a climb of several thousand feet through dangerous country.
13:15: A synagogue service included set readings from the Law, the five books of Moses, and from the Prophets. A visiting teacher could then be invited to give the "word of exhortation", a short address applying what had been read. That invitation is the only reason Paul gets to speak.
13:16: "Ye that fear God" is close to a technical term. God-fearers were non-Jews who attended the synagogue, accepted the God of Israel and kept much of the moral law, but had not become full converts. They are the group Paul keeps addressing in verses 26, 43 and 48. "Give audience" means listen.
13:17: "With an high arm" is a Hebrew idiom, common in the exodus story, for an arm raised to strike: overwhelming, undisguised power.
13:18: KJV "suffered he their manners" means he put up with their conduct; "suffer" in 1611 often means allow or endure. In Greek the word here differs by a single letter from a word meaning "he carried them as a nurse carries a child", and the manuscripts divide between the two, so the line may mean either that God endured them or that God nursed them through the wilderness.
13:19: "Chanaan" is the KJV's Greek-based spelling of Canaan. Dividing land "by lot" means assigning it by drawing marked stones or sticks, a method that kept the outcome out of human hands.
13:20: The Greek leaves it open what the 450 years measure. It can be read as the whole stretch summarized in verses 17 to 19, from the choosing of the ancestors to the conquest, or as the length of the period of the judges that follows; the rendering takes the second. Judges were military and legal leaders who rose up in emergencies, in the stretch before Israel had kings.
13:21: "Cis" is the KJV's Greek spelling of Kish. Paul, a Benjamite himself, is naming the one king his own tribe produced, and the man who shared his own Hebrew name.
13:22: The quotation stitches together more than one passage: Psalm 89:20 and 1 Samuel 13:14, with a phrase resembling Isaiah 44:28. "A man after mine own heart" does not mean a man God was fond of; it means a man chosen to God's own liking, for God's own purposes.
13:23: KJV "seed" means offspring or descendants. The word is collective, like "stock" or "line", not a single child.
13:24: Baptism was a ritual washing marking a change of standing. What made John's version startling was that he called Jews themselves to undergo it, since such washings were normally for converts coming in from outside or for removing ritual uncleanness.
13:25: "As John fulfilled his course" pictures running out a set race or finishing an assigned term of duty. Untying and carrying a person's sandals was work for the lowest slave in a household, so John is putting himself below even that.
13:26: "Children of the stock of Abraham" means those physically descended from Abraham, addressed here alongside the God-fearing non-Jews of verse 16.
13:27: KJV "voices of the prophets" means their spoken words, read aloud in the synagogue every Sabbath as in verse 15. The sentence turns on a grim double sense: in failing to recognize what the prophets said, the rulers were the ones who brought it about.
13:28: Pontius Pilate was the Roman prefect governing Judea, the only authority able to order an execution.
13:29: "The tree" renders a Greek word for wood or a wooden stake. Early Christian speech used it for the cross because of Deuteronomy 21:23, which speaks of a body hung on a tree. A "sepulchre" was a tomb cut into rock and closed with a stone, not a dug grave.
13:31: "Witnesses" is a legal word here: people who can testify to what they saw at first hand, not people who merely believe something.
13:32: KJV "glad tidings" translates the Greek word usually rendered "gospel", which in ordinary use meant the public announcement of a victory or of a new ruler's accession.
13:33: The quotation is Psalm 2:7. "This day have I begotten thee" was language spoken over a king of Israel at his enthronement, declaring him God's son in the sense of the installed royal heir; "begotten" here is about appointment, not birth. Some early manuscripts read "first psalm" rather than "second", because Psalms 1 and 2 were sometimes counted as a single psalm.
13:34: "On this wise" means in this way. KJV "corruption" in verses 34 to 37 means the physical decay of a dead body, not moral corruption. "The sure mercies of David" quotes Isaiah 55:3 and means the reliable, binding promises God swore to David.
13:35: The quotation is Psalm 16:10. "Suffer" here means allow or permit.
13:36: "Fell on sleep" is an ordinary ancient way of saying he died. "Was laid unto his fathers" means he was buried in the family tomb alongside earlier generations.
13:38: Forgiveness of sins means God wipes away the wrong things a person has done.
13:39: KJV "justified" is a courtroom word: to be declared in the right, acquitted of a charge. The Greek sentence is genuinely open: it can mean the law of Moses could clear people of some things but not all, or that it could clear them of nothing.
13:41: The quotation is Habakkuk 1:5, in its Greek form. "Despisers" means scoffers, and "in no wise" means in no way at all. In Habakkuk the unbelievable work God announced was the coming of an invading army.
13:42: KJV's wording, with the Jews leaving and the Gentiles making the request, follows later manuscripts. The earliest read simply "as they were going out, they kept begging", without naming who asked. Either way the request is that the same address be repeated the next week.
13:43: A "proselyte" was a non-Jew who had formally converted to Judaism, a fuller step than the God-fearers of verse 16. "When the congregation was broken up" means when the synagogue meeting was dismissed.
13:45: KJV "envy" here means jealousy at the sight of their own hearers going elsewhere. "Blaspheming" translates a Greek word covering abusive, slanderous speech against a person as well as against God, so it need not mean cursing God.
13:46: "Waxed bold" means grew bold, spoke out freely. "Wax" in 1611 English simply means to become or grow.
13:47: The quotation is Isaiah 49:6, words addressed there to God's servant. Paul takes them as the job description handed to him and Barnabas.
13:48: KJV "ordained" translates a word used for being appointed, assigned or enrolled, as a soldier is posted to a unit or a name entered on a list. It has nothing to do with ordination to church office in the modern sense.
13:49: KJV "published" means spread abroad by word of mouth. Printing did not exist in either the first century or, in this sense, the 1611 vocabulary.
13:50: "Devout and honourable women" means women of high social rank who were attached to the synagogue as worshipers. In the cities of Asia Minor such women often held real influence with their husbands and with the town authorities. KJV "coasts" means borders or territory and has nothing to do with the sea.
13:51: Shaking the dust off the feet was a recognized gesture of breaking off relations: treating a place as foreign ground whose very dust one refuses to carry away, and leaving its people to answer for themselves.
13:52: A disciple is a follower who learns from a teacher.

Read Acts 13