Acts 28: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

After the shipwreck, Paul and the others come ashore on the island of Malta, where a viper bites Paul without harming him and where he prays for and heals the sick, including the father of the island's chief official. Three months later they sail on to Italy and reach Rome, where Paul is allowed to live under guard by himself. He calls together the Jewish leaders in Rome, explains why he is a prisoner, and spends a day arguing from the Law and the Prophets about Jesus; some are convinced and some are not, and he quotes Isaiah about people who hear without understanding. The chapter closes with Paul spending two full years in his own rented house, welcoming everyone who came and preaching without anyone stopping him.

Claim by Claim

1. 28:1
   • The people from the ship escaped safely to land.
   • They then learned that the island was called Malta.
2. 28:2
   • The native people of the island showed the travelers unusual kindness.
   • The natives kindled a fire.
   • The natives welcomed all of the travelers.
   • The fire was kindled because rain had set in.
   • The fire was kindled because of the cold.
3. 28:3
   • Paul gathered a bundle of brushwood.
   • Paul laid the brushwood on the fire.
   • A viper came out because of the heat.
   • The viper fastened on Paul's hand.
4. 28:4
   • The native people saw the creature hanging from Paul's hand.
   • They said to one another that this man was certainly a murderer.
   • They said that although he had escaped from the sea, Justice had not permitted him to live.
5. 28:5
   • Paul shook the creature off into the fire.
   • Paul suffered no harm.
6. 28:6
   • The natives were expecting Paul to swell up or suddenly fall down dead.
   • They watched for a long time.
   • They saw nothing unusual happen to him.
   • They changed their minds.
   • They said that Paul was a god.
7. 28:7
   • In the area around that place were estates belonging to the leading man of the island.
   • The leading man of the island was named Publius.
   • Publius received the travelers.
   • Publius lodged them hospitably for three days.
8. 28:8
   • The father of Publius was lying sick.
   • He was suffering from fever and dysentery.
   • Paul went in to him.
   • Paul prayed.
   • Paul laid his hands on him.
   • Paul healed him.
9. 28:9
   • After this happened, the rest of the people on the island who had diseases came.
   • They were cured.
10. 28:10
    • The islanders honored the travelers with many honors.
    • When the travelers set sail, the islanders supplied them with the things they needed.
11. 28:11
    • After three months the travelers set sail.
    • The ship was from Alexandria.
    • The ship had wintered at the island.
    • The ship's figurehead was the Twin Brothers, Castor and Pollux.
12. 28:12
    • They put in at Syracuse.
    • They stayed there three days.
13. 28:13
    • From Syracuse they went around and came to Rhegium.
    • After one day a south wind came up.
    • On the second day they came to Puteoli.
14. 28:14
    • At Puteoli they found brothers.
    • The brothers invited them to stay seven days.
    • They went on toward Rome.
15. 28:15
    • The brothers at Rome heard news about them.
    • The brothers came to meet them as far as the Forum of Appius and Three Taverns.
    • Paul saw the brothers.
    • Paul thanked God.
    • Paul took courage.
16. 28:16
    • They came to Rome.
    • The centurion handed the prisoners over to the captain of the guard.
    • Paul was permitted to stay by himself.
    • A soldier guarded Paul.
17. 28:17
    • After three days Paul called together the leading men of the Jews.
    • They came together.
    • Paul addressed them as men and brothers.
    • Paul said he had done nothing against the people.
    • Paul said he had done nothing against the customs of the fathers.
    • Paul said he had been handed over as a prisoner from Jerusalem into the hands of the Romans.
18. 28:18
    • Paul said the Romans examined him.
    • Paul said they wanted to release him.
    • Paul said there was no ground for a death sentence in him.
19. 28:19
    • Paul said the Jews spoke against his release.
    • Paul said he was compelled to appeal to Caesar.
    • Paul said he had nothing of which to accuse his own nation.
20. 28:20
    • Paul said that for this reason he had asked to see them and speak with them.
    • Paul said he was bound with this chain because of the hope of Israel.
21. 28:21
    • They said they had received no letters about Paul from Judea.
    • They said none of the brothers who had come had reported or spoken anything bad about him.
22. 28:22
    • They said they wanted to hear from Paul what he thought.
    • They said they knew that this sect was spoken against everywhere.
23. 28:23
    • They set a day for Paul.
    • Many came to him at his lodging.
    • Paul explained and testified to the kingdom of God.
    • Paul tried to persuade them about Jesus.
    • Paul argued from the law of Moses and from the prophets.
    • Paul spoke from morning until evening.
24. 28:24
    • Some were persuaded by what was said.
    • Some did not believe.
25. 28:25
    • They disagreed among themselves.
    • They began to leave.
    • Paul spoke one final statement.
    • Paul said the Holy Spirit spoke rightly through Isaiah the prophet to the fathers.
26. 28:26
    • The quoted words say: Go to this people and say.
    • The quoted words say they will hear and hear and not understand.
    • The quoted words say they will see and see and not perceive.
27. 28:27
    • The quoted words say the heart of this people has grown dull.
    • The quoted words say their ears hear with difficulty.
    • The quoted words say they have closed their eyes.
    • The quoted words say this is so that they will not see with their eyes.
    • The quoted words say this is so that they will not hear with their ears.
    • The quoted words say this is so that they will not understand with their heart.
    • The quoted words say this is so that they will not turn back.
    • The quoted words say this is so that God will not heal them.
28. 28:28
    • Paul said they should know that the salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles.
    • Paul said the Gentiles will listen.
29. 28:29
    • When Paul had said these words, the Jews departed.
    • They had a great dispute among themselves.
30. 28:30
    • Paul stayed two full years in his own rented dwelling.
    • Paul welcomed all who came to him.
31. 28:31
    • Paul proclaimed the kingdom of God.
    • Paul taught the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ.
    • Paul did this with all boldness.
    • No one forbade him.

Words Worth Explaining

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

28:1

The King James "Melita" is Malta, a small island about sixty miles south of Sicily. The ship carrying Paul had been driven there by a two week storm, described in the previous chapter.

28:2

"Barbarous" and "barbarians" in verse 4 do not mean savage or uncivilized. The Greek word simply labels people who did not speak Greek; it imitates the bar-bar sound their speech made to Greek ears. The Maltese spoke a Phoenician dialect. The King James uses the word without insult, but a modern reader hears one that is not there.

28:4

"Vengeance" here translates the Greek word Dike, which was also the name of a goddess who personified justice and punished the guilty. The islanders are not making a general remark about fate; they are naming a power they believed hunted down killers who had slipped free of other punishment.

28:6

In the ancient Mediterranean, surviving something that should have killed you was commonly read as evidence that you were more than human, so the swing from "murderer" to "god" was not as strange to them as it sounds now.

28:7

"The chief man of the island" renders a Greek phrase, ho protos, that inscriptions found on Malta show was an actual title for the island's leading Roman official. It is an office, not just a description of a rich neighbor.

28:8

"Bloody flux" is the old English name for dysentery, a severe intestinal infection causing bloody diarrhea. It was often fatal, and combined with fever it marked the man as seriously ill.

28:10

The Greek word behind "honours" can mean marks of respect or payments and fees. Both senses are live here, so the gifts may have been gestures of gratitude, or something closer to a fee for medical help, or both. "Laded" is simply the old past tense of load.

28:11

Alexandria in Egypt was the port from which the great grain ships sailed to feed Rome. Sailing across the open Mediterranean effectively stopped between roughly November and March because of storms, which is why the ship had spent the winter in harbor. A ship's "sign" was the carved figure or painted emblem at its bow. Castor and Pollux were twin sons of Zeus in Greek and Roman belief and were regarded as protectors of sailors, so their image was a common and reassuring choice.

28:12

Syracuse was a major port on the east coast of Sicily.

28:13

"Fetched a compass" is a sailor's phrase of 1611 meaning to go around by an indirect course, tacking rather than running straight. Rhegium sits at the toe of Italy, across the strait from Sicily. Puteoli, on the Bay of Naples, was the main harbor where Rome's grain ships unloaded, still about a hundred and forty miles south of the city.

28:14

"Brethren" here means fellow believers rather than blood relatives. "Were desired to tarry" means were asked to stay; in the King James "desire" often means to request, not to want.

28:15

Both places were stops on the Appian Way, the main road south from Rome. The Forum of Appius was a market town about forty three miles out, and Three Taverns about thirty three. "Taverns" here means shops or inns of any kind, not only drinking houses. Walking that far to meet a prisoner on the road was a deliberate journey of a day or more.

28:16

A centurion commanded roughly eighty to a hundred men. The arrangement described, a prisoner living in his own quarters with a single soldier attached, was a recognized light form of Roman custody, usually with the prisoner's wrist chained to the guard's. Note that the first sentence of this verse, about handing the prisoners over to the commander of the guard, is missing from the earliest Greek manuscripts and appears only in later ones.

28:17

The Jewish community in Rome was large and organized in several synagogues rather than under one head, so "the chief of the Jews" means its leading men collectively. "Men and brethren" is a standard formal address, roughly "my fellow Jews."

28:19

A Roman citizen facing a criminal charge could demand that his case be removed from a provincial governor's court and heard by the emperor. Once made, the appeal could not be withdrawn, which is why Paul says he had no choice: the appeal itself is what sent him to Rome.

28:20

"The hope of Israel" is Paul's shorthand for what his nation had long expected from God. In his earlier defenses in Acts he ties this hope specifically to the resurrection of the dead. "Bound with this chain" is literal; he is speaking while wearing it.

28:21

Judea was the region around Jerusalem, where Paul had been arrested.

28:22

"Sect" translates the Greek hairesis, meaning a party or school of thought. The same word is used in Acts for the Pharisees and the Sadducees, so it is not automatically an insult; it marks a recognizable group within Judaism rather than a separate religion.

28:23

"The law of Moses" and "the prophets" were the two great divisions of the Jewish scriptures, so the phrase means Paul argued from their shared sacred writings rather than from anything new. "Expounded" means laid out and explained in detail.

28:25

"Holy Ghost" is the King James rendering of Holy Spirit; in 1611 "ghost" simply meant spirit. "Esaias" is the Greek form of the name Isaiah. The quotation that follows is from Isaiah chapter 6, given in the wording of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures that Greek-speaking Jews used.

28:26

These words come from the book of Isaiah. God gave them to Isaiah when he first sent him to speak to the people of Israel.

28:27

"Waxed gross" means grown thick or fat, used of a heart that has become insensitive. "Converted" here carries its plain older sense of turning around or turning back, not the modern sense of changing religion.

28:28

"Gentiles" means all the nations other than the Jews. The word behind "salvation" means rescue or deliverance, and would have been heard as a concrete saving rather than an abstract religious status.

28:29

This verse is absent from the earliest Greek manuscripts of Acts and appears only in later ones, which is why many modern translations omit it or move it to a footnote.

28:30

"His own hired house" means lodging he rented at his own expense, which a prisoner in this light form of custody was expected to pay for himself. The account gives no verdict on his case; it simply stops at the end of these two years.

28:31

"No man forbidding him" translates a single Greek adverb meaning unhindered, and it is the final word of the book of Acts. "With all confidence" means openly and without fear rather than with certainty.

Where the Manuscripts Differ

Worth knowing before you stand up: a listener following a modern translation may not have this verse in front of them.

28:29

Most modern translations leave this verse out. It is in the Greek text the King James translators worked from, but not in the older manuscripts found since, so scholars generally take it as a copyist’s addition rather than part of the original.