Acts 27: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul, still a prisoner, is put on a ship bound for Italy under the guard of a Roman officer named Julius. Against Paul's warning, the ship sails on from Crete and is caught by a violent wind that drives it for two weeks across open sea. Paul tells the crew an angel has promised that all of them will live, though the ship will be lost, and urges them to eat. The ship runs aground and breaks apart, and everyone on board reaches land alive.

Claim by Claim

1. 27:1
   • It was decided that Paul and his companions should sail to Italy.
   • Paul and certain other prisoners were handed over to a centurion named Julius.
   • Julius belonged to the Augustan cohort.
2. 27:2
   • They boarded a ship of Adramyttium.
   • The ship was about to sail to ports along the coast of Asia.
   • They put out to sea.
   • Aristarchus, a Macedonian from Thessalonica, was with them.
3. 27:3
   • The next day they landed at Sidon.
   • Julius treated Paul kindly.
   • Julius permitted Paul to go to his friends and be cared for.
4. 27:4
   • They put out to sea from Sidon.
   • They sailed under the lee of Cyprus.
   • They sailed under the lee of Cyprus because the winds were against them.
5. 27:5
   • They sailed across the open sea off Cilicia and Pamphylia.
   • They came to Myra, a city of Lycia.
6. 27:6
   • There the centurion found a ship of Alexandria sailing to Italy.
   • The centurion put them aboard that ship.
7. 27:7
   • They sailed slowly for many days.
   • They came off Cnidus with difficulty.
   • The wind did not permit them to go on.
   • They sailed under the lee of Crete, off Salmone.
8. 27:8
   • They coasted along Crete with difficulty.
   • They came to a place called Fair Havens.
   • The city of Lasea was near Fair Havens.
9. 27:9
   • Much time had passed.
   • Sailing had now become dangerous.
   • Sailing was dangerous because the Fast was already past.
   • Paul warned them.
10. 27:10
    • Paul addressed them as men.
    • Paul said he perceived the voyage would be with injury and much loss.
    • Paul said the loss would be not only of the cargo and the ship.
    • Paul said the loss would also be of their lives.
11. 27:11
    • The centurion was persuaded by the helmsman and the ship's owner more than by what Paul said.
12. 27:12
    • The harbor was unsuitable for wintering in.
    • The majority advised putting out to sea from there.
    • Their aim was to reach Phoenix if they possibly could and winter there.
    • Phoenix is a harbor of Crete.
    • Phoenix faces southwest and northwest.
13. 27:13
    • A south wind blew gently.
    • They supposed they had obtained their purpose.
    • They weighed anchor.
    • They sailed close along the coast of Crete.
14. 27:14
    • Not long afterward a tempestuous wind rushed down from the island.
    • The wind was called Euroclydon.
15. 27:15
    • The ship was caught by the wind.
    • The ship could not face into the wind.
    • They gave way and were driven along.
16. 27:16
    • They ran under the lee of a small island called Clauda.
    • They were barely able to secure the ship's boat.
17. 27:17
    • They hoisted the boat up.
    • They used supports to undergird the ship.
    • They feared they would run aground on the Syrtis sandbanks.
    • They lowered the gear.
    • They were driven along.
18. 27:18
    • They were violently storm-tossed.
    • The next day the crew began throwing cargo overboard.
19. 27:19
    • On the third day they threw out the ship's tackle with their own hands.
20. 27:20
    • Neither sun nor stars appeared for many days.
    • No small storm lay upon them.
    • All hope of their being saved was taken away.
21. 27:21
    • The men had gone a long time without food.
    • Paul stood up in the midst of them.
    • Paul addressed them as men.
    • Paul said they should have listened to him and not put to sea from Crete.
    • Paul said that by listening they would have spared themselves this injury and loss.
22. 27:22
    • Paul urged them to be of good cheer.
    • Paul said there would be no loss of life among them.
    • Paul said the ship would be lost.
23. 27:23
    • Paul said an angel of God stood by him that night.
    • Paul said he belongs to that God.
    • Paul said he serves that God.
24. 27:24
    • The angel told Paul not to be afraid.
    • The angel said Paul must stand before Caesar.
    • The angel said God had granted Paul all those sailing with him.
25. 27:25
    • Paul told the men to be of good cheer.
    • Paul said he believed God.
    • Paul said it would happen just as it had been told to him.
26. 27:26
    • Paul said they must be cast upon a certain island.
27. 27:27
    • The fourteenth night came.
    • They were being driven about in the Adriatic Sea.
    • About midnight the sailors suspected that land was nearing.
28. 27:28
    • They took a sounding and found twenty fathoms.
    • They went a little farther and sounded again.
    • The second sounding found fifteen fathoms.
29. 27:29
    • They feared they would run aground on rocky places.
    • They cast four anchors out of the stern.
    • They prayed for daybreak.
30. 27:30
    • The sailors were seeking to escape from the ship.
    • They lowered the ship's boat into the sea.
    • They pretended they were going to lay out anchors from the bow.
31. 27:31
    • Paul spoke to the centurion and the soldiers.
    • Paul said that unless these men stayed in the ship, they could not be saved.
32. 27:32
    • The soldiers cut the ropes of the ship's boat.
    • The soldiers let the boat fall away.
33. 27:33
    • Day was about to come.
    • Paul urged them all to take food.
    • Paul said this was the fourteenth day they had continued in suspense and without food.
    • Paul said they had taken nothing.
34. 27:34
    • Paul urged them to take food.
    • Paul said taking food was for their preservation.
    • Paul said not a hair would perish from the head of any of them.
35. 27:35
    • Paul said these things.
    • Paul took bread.
    • Paul gave thanks to God in front of them all.
    • Paul broke the bread.
    • Paul began to eat.
36. 27:36
    • They all became of good cheer.
    • They also took food.
37. 27:37
    • There were two hundred seventy-six souls in all on the ship.
38. 27:38
    • They ate their fill.
    • They lightened the ship.
    • They threw the wheat into the sea.
39. 27:39
    • Day came.
    • They did not recognize the land.
    • They observed a bay with a beach.
    • They planned to drive the ship into that bay if they could.
40. 27:40
    • They cast off the anchors and left them in the sea.
    • They loosed the ropes that held the rudders.
    • They hoisted the foresail to the wind.
    • They made for the beach.
41. 27:41
    • They fell into a place where two seas met.
    • They ran the ship aground.
    • The bow stuck fast and remained immovable.
    • The stern was being broken up by the violence of the waves.
42. 27:42
    • The soldiers' plan was to kill the prisoners.
    • Their plan was to prevent any prisoner from swimming away and escaping.
43. 27:43
    • The centurion wanted to save Paul.
    • The centurion kept the soldiers from their plan.
    • The centurion commanded those who could swim to throw themselves overboard first and get to land.
44. 27:44
    • The rest were to follow, some on boards.
    • Some of the rest were to follow on pieces of the ship.
    • In this way all reached land safely.

Words Worth Explaining

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

27:1

From this point the account is written as "we," the voice of a companion traveling with Paul rather than a report gathered later. "Augustus' band" translates a word for a cohort, a Roman army unit of several hundred men; this one carried the emperor's name as an honorary title. A centurion commanded a century, in practice about eighty men, and was the officer to whom a batch of prisoners would be handed for transport.

27:2

Adramyttium was a port on the northwest coast of Asia Minor, near Troy. "Asia" in the King James is not the continent but the Roman province of Asia, the western end of what is now Turkey. This was a coasting vessel working its way home from port to port, so it could only carry them part of the way; they would have to change ships.

27:3

Sidon was a Phoenician port about seventy miles up the coast from Caesarea. "Entreated" in 1611 meant treated, not begged. A Roman prisoner was not fed or clothed by the state as a matter of course, so "to refresh himself" means to be supplied by friends with food, money and whatever he needed for a long voyage.

27:4

"Sailed under Cyprus" is sailors' language for passing along the lee, the sheltered side, so the island's bulk blocked the wind. In late summer the prevailing winds in that part of the Mediterranean blow from the west and northwest, which is why a ship headed west had to work around them rather than straight into them.

27:5

Cilicia, Pamphylia and Lycia were Roman districts along the southern coast of Asia Minor. Myra was a major harbor where the big grain ships from Egypt put in, which is why the officer could expect to find westbound shipping there.

27:6

A ship of Alexandria on this route almost certainly means a grain freighter carrying Egyptian wheat to Rome. These were among the largest vessels afloat, state chartered and able to take hundreds of passengers, which explains the head count later in the chapter and the cargo thrown overboard in verse 38.

27:7

Cnidus was a port at the tip of a long peninsula in southwest Asia Minor. Salmone is the eastern cape of Crete. Having failed to round Cnidus and run on westward, they were forced to duck south and use Crete itself as a windbreak.

27:8

Fair Havens is a small bay on the south coast of Crete, still known by the same name. Lasea was a nearby town. The harbor was open to part of the weather, which is the problem raised in verse 12.

27:9

"The fast" is the Day of Atonement, the one fast day commanded in the Jewish calendar, which falls in late September or early October. Ancient sailors reckoned the Mediterranean dangerous from roughly mid September and closed to shipping altogether from about early November until spring. Naming the fast is a way of giving the date, and the date is the warning.

27:10

The King James "lading" means the cargo the ship is loaded with.

27:11

The "master" is the sailing master or helmsman, the professional who navigated; the owner had the money at stake. The decision fell to the centurion because on a ship carrying state cargo and state prisoners the senior Roman official aboard outranked the crew, whatever his ignorance of the sea.

27:12

"Commodious" meant suitable or convenient. Phenice, usually spelled Phoenix, lay about forty miles further west along the Cretan coast. The phrase describing which way it faces is genuinely unclear in the Greek: it may mean the harbor looks toward the southwest and northwest, or it may mean it looks in the directions those two winds blow toward, which would be northeast and southeast. Ancient harbors were commonly described by the winds rather than by the compass.

27:13

"Loosing thence" means weighing anchor and getting under way. A soft breeze from the south was exactly the wind they needed for a short westward run, and taking it looked like ordinary seamanship rather than a gamble.

27:14

The name in the Greek manuscripts appears as both Euroclydon and Eurakylon. The second form is a sailors' hybrid of the Greek Euros, the east wind, and the Latin Aquilo, the north wind, so it means something like the northeaster. "Arose against it" means the wind came tearing down off the island of Crete itself.

27:15

"Bear up into the wind" means turn the bow to face the wind, the only way to keep control. "Let her drive" means they gave up steering and ran wherever the storm pushed them. Ships are traditionally called "her" in English.

27:16

Clauda, also spelled Cauda, is a small island about twenty three miles south of Crete, today called Gavdos. The "boat" is the ship's dinghy, normally towed astern on a rope. In a gale it filled with water and dragged dangerously, so hauling it aboard was urgent and, as the verse says, extremely hard work.

27:17

"Undergirding" means passing heavy cables around the hull and hauling them tight, a recognized emergency measure to keep a wooden ship from working itself apart in heavy seas. The "quicksands" are the Syrtis, two vast shoals off the coast of what is now Libya, feared by every Mediterranean sailor as a place where ships stuck fast and broke up. "Strake sail" is uncertain: it may mean they lowered the mainsail and its gear, or that they put out a drag astern to slow the ship, but either way the aim was to keep from being blown south into those shoals.

27:19

"Tackling" covers the spare spars, rigging and heavy gear that was not keeping the ship afloat at that moment. That the passengers and crew did this "with our own hands" rather than using the ship's lifting tackle suggests the gear for hoisting was itself already gone or unusable.

27:20

Ancient ships had no compass. Position and heading were judged from the sun by day and the stars by night, along with the run of the coast. Days of unbroken cloud meant the crew literally did not know where they were or which way they were going, which is why the lost sun and stars is reported as the reason hope ran out.

27:21

"Long abstinence" is not religious fasting but going without food. In a storm of this kind the cooking fire could not be lit, stores were spoiled by seawater, and seasickness and fear did the rest.

27:23

An angel is a messenger sent from God.

27:24

"Thou must be brought before Caesar" points back to Paul's use of his right as a Roman citizen to have his case removed from the provincial court and heard by the emperor. That appeal is the only reason he is on this ship at all. The angel's words about the others are phrased as a gift or grant: the lives of the crew and passengers are handed to Paul.

27:27

In the first century "Adria" did not mean only the narrow sea between Italy and the Balkans. It covered the open central Mediterranean between Sicily, Italy, Malta, Crete and Greece, which is the water they were actually drifting across. "Deemed that they drew near to some country" means the sailors suspected land, probably from the sound of surf in the dark.

27:28

Sounding meant dropping a lead weight on a marked line to measure the depth. A fathom is six feet, originally the span of a man's outstretched arms, so twenty fathoms is about a hundred and twenty feet and fifteen fathoms about ninety. The point is not the depths themselves but that they were shoaling fast: the bottom was rising under them.

27:29

Ships normally anchored by the bow. Anchoring by the stern was a deliberate choice that held the vessel with her bow pointed at the unseen shore, so that at first light they could cut loose and run her straight up onto the beach without having to turn in the surf.

27:30

Lowering anchors from the bow was a real maneuver a crew might attempt in these conditions, which is what made the excuse plausible. Getting the dinghy into the water was the only way off the ship, and the sailors were the only men aboard with the skill to work it through surf.

27:33

"Meat" in 1611 means food of any kind, not flesh specifically. "Continued fasting" here again describes going without food under strain rather than a religious fast; the underlying word for how they spent the fourteen days carries the sense of keeping watch in suspense, without relief.

27:34

"For your health" translates a word closer to preservation or survival: eating is what will get them through the swim and the landing. "There shall not an hair fall from the head of any of you" was a common expression for coming through an ordeal completely unharmed.

27:35

Taking bread, giving thanks and breaking it was the ordinary way any Jewish meal began, the host speaking a blessing over the loaf before dividing it. On a ship of mostly non Jewish sailors and soldiers the gesture would read simply as a man sitting down to eat and meaning it.

27:37

"Threescore" is sixty, so two hundred threescore and sixteen is 276. Some ancient manuscripts read seventy six instead. Either figure is possible for a grain freighter, which carried crew, passengers and soldiers together.

27:38

The wheat is the ship's cargo, Egyptian grain bound for Rome, where imported grain fed the city. Throwing it overboard was the last and most expensive lightening available, done only once they had fixed on beaching the ship and had no further use for her as a carrier.

27:39

"Creek" in 1611 means an inlet or bay, not a small stream. "They knew not the land" means the coast was unfamiliar to them, so they could not tell what lay behind the beach or whether the approach was safe.

27:40

Ancient ships were steered by two large oars, one on each quarter, which were hauled up and lashed while at anchor; the "rudder bands" are those lashings, released to give steering again. "Hoised" is simply an older form of hoisted. The sail raised was most likely the small foresail set forward, enough to drive the ship onto the beach under control rather than the full mainsail.

27:41

"A place where two seas met" describes a spit, bar or shoal with water running on both sides, where opposing currents meet and the bottom rises without warning. The Greek is not precise about the formation, and the rendering leaves it as open as the original does.

27:42

Under Roman practice a guard who let a prisoner escape faced the penalty the prisoner would have suffered. Killing the prisoners in the confusion was therefore not cruelty for its own sake but the soldiers protecting their own necks.