Acts 16: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul picks up Timothy at Lystra and circumcises him, then travels on, delivering the decisions made by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem. After the Spirit blocks two directions, a night vision of a man from Macedonia sends the group across to Philippi, where Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth, believes and is baptized with her household. Paul drives a fortune-telling spirit out of a slave girl, and her owners have Paul and Silas beaten and jailed; an earthquake opens the prison, the jailer and his household believe and are baptized, and the next morning the officials, learning the two are Roman citizens, come in person to escort them out.

Claim by Claim

1. 16:1
   • He came to Derbe and to Lystra.
   • A disciple named Timothy was there.
   • Timothy was the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer.
   • Timothy's father was a Greek.
2. 16:2
   • Timothy was well spoken of by the brothers in Lystra and Iconium.
3. 16:3
   • Paul wanted Timothy to go out with him.
   • Paul took Timothy and circumcised him.
   • Paul circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those places.
   • They all knew that Timothy's father was a Greek.
4. 16:4
   • As they traveled through the cities, they delivered to them the decrees to keep.
   • The decrees had been decided by the apostles and elders at Jerusalem.
5. 16:5
   • The churches were strengthened in the faith.
   • The churches increased in number daily.
6. 16:6
   • They went through Phrygia and the region of Galatia.
   • They were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.
7. 16:7
   • They came to Mysia.
   • They attempted to go into Bithynia.
   • The Spirit did not permit them to go into Bithynia.
8. 16:8
   • They passed by Mysia.
   • They went down to Troas.
9. 16:9
   • A vision appeared to Paul in the night.
   • In the vision a man of Macedonia was standing.
   • The man begged Paul.
   • The man said, Come over into Macedonia and help us.
10. 16:10
    • After Paul saw the vision, we immediately sought to go into Macedonia.
    • We concluded that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to the Macedonians.
11. 16:11
    • We set sail from Troas.
    • We ran a straight course to Samothrace.
    • The next day we came to Neapolis.
12. 16:12
    • From Neapolis we came to Philippi.
    • Philippi is the chief city of that part of Macedonia.
    • Philippi is a colony.
    • We stayed in that city some days.
13. 16:13
    • On the sabbath day we went outside the city gate to a riverside.
    • At that riverside prayer was customarily made.
    • We sat down.
    • We spoke to the women who had come together there.
14. 16:14
    • A certain woman named Lydia heard us.
    • Lydia was a seller of purple.
    • Lydia was from the city of Thyatira.
    • Lydia worshipped God.
    • The Lord opened Lydia's heart.
    • Lydia attended to the things spoken by Paul.
15. 16:15
    • Lydia was baptized.
    • Lydia's household was baptized.
    • Lydia urged us.
    • Lydia said, If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and stay there.
    • Lydia constrained us.
16. 16:16
    • As we were going to prayer, a certain slave girl met us.
    • The girl was possessed with a spirit of divination.
    • The girl brought her masters much gain by fortune-telling.
17. 16:17
    • The girl followed Paul and us.
    • The girl cried out.
    • The girl said these men are servants of the Most High God.
    • The girl said these men show to us the way of salvation.
18. 16:18
    • The girl did this for many days.
    • Paul was grieved.
    • Paul turned and spoke to the spirit.
    • Paul said, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.
    • The spirit came out of her that same hour.
19. 16:19
    • Her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone.
    • They seized Paul and Silas.
    • They dragged Paul and Silas into the marketplace to the rulers.
20. 16:20
    • They brought Paul and Silas to the magistrates.
    • They said these men greatly trouble our city.
    • They said these men are Jews.
21. 16:21
    • They said these men teach customs.
    • They said it is not lawful for us to receive or observe those customs.
    • They said this because they are Romans.
22. 16:22
    • The crowd rose up together against Paul and Silas.
    • The magistrates tore the clothes off Paul and Silas.
    • The magistrates commanded that they be beaten with rods.
23. 16:23
    • They laid many stripes on Paul and Silas.
    • They cast Paul and Silas into prison.
    • They charged the jailer to keep them securely.
24. 16:24
    • The jailer received that charge.
    • The jailer thrust them into the inner prison.
    • The jailer fastened their feet in the stocks.
25. 16:25
    • At midnight Paul and Silas were praying.
    • Paul and Silas were singing hymns to God.
    • The prisoners were listening to them.
26. 16:26
    • Suddenly there was a great earthquake.
    • The foundations of the prison were shaken.
    • Immediately all the doors were opened.
    • Everyone's bonds were loosed.
27. 16:27
    • The keeper of the prison awoke out of sleep.
    • He saw the prison doors open.
    • He drew out his sword.
    • He was about to kill himself.
    • He supposed that the prisoners had escaped.
28. 16:28
    • Paul cried out with a loud voice.
    • Paul said, Do yourself no harm.
    • Paul said, We are all here.
29. 16:29
    • The jailer called for a light.
    • The jailer sprang in.
    • The jailer was trembling.
    • The jailer fell down before Paul and Silas.
30. 16:30
    • The jailer brought them outside.
    • The jailer said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?
31. 16:31
    • They said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
    • They said, you shall be saved, and your household.
32. 16:32
    • They spoke the word of the Lord to the jailer.
    • They spoke the word of the Lord to all who were in his house.
33. 16:33
    • The jailer took them that same hour of the night.
    • The jailer washed their stripes.
    • The jailer was baptized immediately.
    • All his household were baptized immediately.
34. 16:34
    • The jailer brought them into his house.
    • The jailer set food before them.
    • The jailer rejoiced with all his house.
    • The jailer had believed in God.
35. 16:35
    • When it was day, the magistrates sent the officers.
    • The magistrates said, Let those men go.
36. 16:36
    • The keeper of the prison told these words to Paul.
    • He said the magistrates have sent orders to release you.
    • He said, now therefore depart and go in peace.
37. 16:37
    • Paul said to them, They beat us publicly.
    • Paul said we were uncondemned.
    • Paul said we are Romans.
    • Paul said they cast us into prison.
    • Paul asked whether they now thrust us out secretly.
    • Paul said no.
    • Paul said, let them come themselves and bring us out.
38. 16:38
    • The officers told these words to the magistrates.
    • The magistrates were afraid when they heard that Paul and Silas were Romans.
39. 16:39
    • The magistrates came and appeased them.
    • The magistrates brought them out.
    • The magistrates asked them to depart out of the city.
40. 16:40
    • They went out of the prison.
    • They entered into Lydia's house.
    • They saw the brothers.
    • They comforted the brothers.
    • They departed.

Words Worth Explaining

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

16:1

"A Greek" here means a gentile, someone outside the Jewish people, not necessarily a native of Greece. In Jewish practice descent was reckoned through the mother, so a Jewish mother and a Greek father left Timothy counted among the Jews while raised in a mixed household.

16:3

Circumcision was the physical mark of belonging to the Jewish people, normally performed on an infant boy. Because Timothy's father was Greek it had not been done, and Jews in the district knew it. "In those quarters" means in those parts of the country; "quarters" in 1611 meant districts, not city blocks.

16:4

The "decrees" are the decisions of the meeting of apostles and elders in Jerusalem described in the previous chapter, which set out what gentile believers were expected to observe. "Ordained" here means formally decided, not ordained in the sense of appointing a minister.

16:5

"Churches" translates a word meaning assemblies or congregations of people. There were no church buildings at this date; believers met in private houses.

16:6

"Holy Ghost" is the King James phrase for the Holy Spirit; "ghost" in 1611 simply meant spirit. "Asia" is the Roman province of that name, occupying the western end of what is now Turkey, with Ephesus as its principal city. It is not the continent.

16:7

"Assayed" means attempted. "The Spirit suffered them not" means the Spirit did not permit them; "suffer" in 1611 meant to allow. Mysia and Bithynia are districts of northwestern Asia Minor, Bithynia reaching to the Black Sea coast.

16:8

Troas was a busy port on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor, near the site of ancient Troy, and the usual place to take ship for Europe.

16:9

Macedonia was a Roman province in the north of what is now Greece, across the Aegean Sea. Crossing to it meant leaving Asia Minor for the European mainland.

16:10

The narrative shifts here without explanation from "they" to "we" and stays there for a stretch, the first of several such passages in Acts. Readers have long understood the shift to mean that the writer joined the traveling party at this point. "Assuredly gathering" means concluding with confidence; "endeavoured" means set about it.

16:11

"Loosing from Troas" means casting off the mooring ropes, that is, setting sail. "A straight course" describes a direct run with a favorable wind. Samothrace is an island in the northern Aegean; Neapolis was the harbor town serving Philippi, some ten miles inland.

16:12

A Roman colony was a city planted with Roman citizens, often discharged soldiers, governed under Roman law and enjoying privileges normally reserved for towns in Italy. This status explains the appeal to being "Romans" in verse 21 and the alarm in verse 38. The Greek behind "the chief city of that part" is difficult and may instead mean a city of the first district of Macedonia, a matter of administrative division rather than rank.

16:13

"Where prayer was wont to be made" means where people were accustomed to pray. A "place of prayer" was a Jewish meeting spot, often outside the walls and beside running water, used where there was no synagogue building. That the gathering was of women may suggest the Jewish community in Philippi was small.

16:14

Purple cloth was a luxury good. The dye was costly, obtained from shellfish or, in the Thyatira region, from a root, and dealing in it marked Lydia as a woman of independent business means. Thyatira, in the province of Asia, was known for its guilds of dyers. "Which worshipped God" is a standing term for a gentile who attended Jewish worship and honored the God of Israel without becoming a full convert.

16:15

A "household" in this world took in the family, its servants and slaves, and any dependents living under the same roof. "Besought" means urged, and "she constrained us" means she pressed until the refusal gave way.

16:16

The Greek behind "a spirit of divination" is literally a python spirit, after the snake associated with the oracle at Delphi; the phrase described someone believed to speak predictions on behalf of a god. "Damsel" here is a girl who is someone's property. "Soothsaying" is fortune telling for a fee, and the profits went to her owners, not to her.

16:17

"The most high God" was a title Jews used for their own God, but it was also current in Greek religion for the supreme god, so bystanders could hear the shout as praise of gods they already worshiped. "Shew" is the older spelling of show.

16:18

"Being grieved" translates a word closer to worn down and exasperated than to sorrowful. "The same hour" is an idiom for that very moment rather than a measured sixty minutes.

16:19

The "marketplace" is the agora or forum, the open civic square that served as the center of business and of public legal proceedings. "Rulers" is a general word for the officials who sat there.

16:20

The "magistrates" of a Roman colony were its two chief annual officials, who in colonies such as Philippi liked to be addressed by the Roman title of praetor. "These men, being Jews" was a pointed charge: about this period the emperor Claudius expelled Jews from the city of Rome, and suspicion of Jewish communities ran high.

16:21

Roman citizens were expected to keep to Roman religion, and the spreading of foreign cults among them was legally suspect. The charge is not that Judaism was banned but that these men were recruiting Romans into practices not open to them.

16:22

"The magistrates rent off their clothes" can be misread as the magistrates tearing their own garments. The Greek means they had the clothes torn off Paul and Silas, stripping them for a public flogging. The beating was administered with the rods carried by the magistrates' attendants.

16:23

"Stripes" are the individual blows of the rods and the marks they leave.

16:24

The stocks were a heavy timber with holes for the ankles. The legs could be forced wide apart and locked there, so the device punished as well as restrained.

16:26

"Bands" means bonds, the chains or fetters holding the prisoners.

16:27

A guard who let prisoners escape was liable to undergo the punishment they would have received. Taking his own life was, in Roman eyes, the honorable way out of that.

16:30

The verb rendered "saved" covers both rescue from immediate danger and religious deliverance, and the same word carries through the jailer's question and the answer given him. The King James wording does not resolve which sense the jailer had in mind.

16:31

"Thy house" means your household, the same wide group of family, servants and dependents as in verse 15.

16:33

"Washed their stripes" means cleaned the open wounds left by the rods. "Straightway" means immediately.

16:34

"He set meat before them" means he served them food. "Meat" in 1611 meant food of any kind, not flesh in particular.

16:35

The "serjeants" are the lictors, the attendants who walked before Roman magistrates carrying the bundled rods and who carried out floggings on their order.

16:37

Roman citizenship was a legal status, inherited or granted, that protected the holder from flogging and from summary punishment without a trial, and gave a right of appeal. To beat an uncondemned citizen in public was a serious offense, and officials who did it could lose their position. "Openly" means publicly, "privily" means in secret, and "nay verily" is an emphatic refusal.

16:38

Their fear is practical: they had flogged citizens without trial, and a complaint carried to the provincial governor or to Rome could cost them their office and the colony its privileges.

16:39

"Besought them" means begged them. Asking Paul and Silas to leave was the magistrates' way of closing the matter without any further public admission of what they had done.

16:40

"The brethren" means the fellow believers, women included; Lydia's house served as their meeting place. "Comforted" in 1611 carries the stronger sense of strengthened and encouraged, not merely consoled.