Acts 16:16-24 meaning

In Acts 16:16-24, Paul encounters hostility from enemies of the gospel, both human and inhuman.  

Paul and his team (Silas, Timothy, and Luke) have been preaching the gospel in the city of Philippi, Macedonia. They attended a worship service by the river outside the city, where Paul preached the gospel, and a Greek woman, Lydia, believed and was then baptized. She insisted that Paul and his team stay in her house while in Philippi. 

Some time passes, which Luke (the author of Acts) does not specify. It may have been a week later, on another Sabbath, because Paul was returning to the river, to the place of prayer. Paul often tried to preach the gospel to the Jews first, at synagogues or gathering places (Acts 17:2-3), when the Jews and God-fearing Gentiles who worshipped the One God had set aside work and were in a good place to hear a message from God. At Philippi there was apparently not a synagogue, so the worshippers gathered by the river.

But on their second visit to the river, they are followed and harassed by a peculiar enemy:

It happened that as we were going to the place of prayer, a slave-girl having a spirit of divination met us, who was bringing her masters much profit by fortune-telling (v. 16). 

They are met by a slave-girl in the road. She is possessed by a spirit of divination. The original Greek reads more literally that she had “a spirit of Python.” Python was a Greek mythological figure, a great serpent or dragon-like monster, which guarded Delphi before being slain by Apollo. Delphi was where an Oracle lived, a prophetess who spoke visions of the future. 

Thus a spirit of Python would be a spirit of divination. Luke does not believe in a real Python, but is using a Greek phrase, which meant that anyone with the spirit of Python could see the future. Luke attributes the actual spiritual activity to a spirit, which we can presume is a demon. 

The only supernatural powers we see engaging with humans on earth are God, the Maker and Ruler of all, the angels, and demons. Angels and demons are also creations of God; angels are God’s spirit servants, while demons were formerly spirit servants who rebelled against God and now serve under Satan, who was once the prince of the angels. 

Therefore, this slave-girl was possessed by a demon. She was not in control of her speech, or her body. Her masters did not mind her demon-possession because they were making money from it. The demon was bringing the masters much profit by fortune-telling; the people of Philippi would visit this slave-girl, give money to her masters, and then the demon would speak a fortune for them.

Can demons see the future? There is no evidence for this in the scriptures. God, who is Eternal, exists outside of time. He knows and reigns over the entirety of events that have happened and will happen. But the angels and demons have a beginning point. They are creations of God, faithful or fallen. God places limits on the demons (Luke 8:29-32). However, it appears that demons can perform signs that lead people astray (Revelation 19:20).

While we do not know all the particulars of what angels and demons are capable of, throughout the scripture, demons often preoccupy themselves with opposing and bringing destruction to humans. We do know that demons can be the agent of supernatural activity. An example of this is the unnatural strength displayed by a demon-possessed man in Mark 5:1-4. 

When demons possess people, it appears that they take charge of what the person says and does. They sometimes disable the person’s ability to see or speak (Matthew 12:22). They have mastery over the person. A demon troubled King Saul after God removed His Spirit from him, a Legion of demons tormented a Gerasene man by making him live in caves, scream wildly, and cut himself with stones (1 Samuel 16:14-23, Mark 5:1-9). 

This slave-girl was not only a slave to her human masters, but to an evil spiritual master as well. While the demon probably did not actually tell its Philippian customers what their fortune would be, it may have provided sufficient information to put on a captivating performance and deceive them. The demon was deceiving people through the slave-girl it possessed. Whatever it was doing through the slave-girl, it attracted the attention and money of the citizens of Philippi, who regarded it as a fortune-teller. 

This possessed slave-girl met Paul and his team on their walk to the river. Paul passed by the girl, and so the demon made her follow Paul and the others. While walking after them, she announced who they were and what they were doing:

Following after Paul and us, she kept crying out, saying, “These men are bond-servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation” (v. 17).

Like an unwanted herald following a king, the girl plagued them and kept crying out, repeatedly, to no end. Everything she/the demon spoke was true. Paul, Silas, Timothy, and Luke were bond-servants of the Most High God. They were in Philippi proclaiming to the Philippians the way of salvation. 

This is a curious fact about demons. They know God is the Most High. Their knowledge of Him causes them to shudder in fear (James 2:19). In multiple encounters with Jesus, they knew exactly who He was and what He could do to them. When facing Jesus, they did not have a fighting attitude, they did not believe they could somehow overcome the Son of God. They begged Him not to banish them into eternal nothingness, what they describe as “the abyss” (Luke 8:31). The abyss may be the same prison which the Apostle Peter references when he describes how some demons are in chains until judgement (2 Peter 2:4).

The demons know God and fear His judgement, yet are opposed to Him all the same. They do not seem to be capable of repentance; they made their decision forever when they joined Satan in his rebellion against God. But they know God’s power. They know their fate (Matthew 8:29). 

Demons are capable of seeing those who do not have the Holy Spirit, those who can be mistreated (Matthew 12:43-45, Acts 19:13-16). But this demon in this slave-girl saw God’s power in Paul and his companions, who were indwelled by God the Holy Spirit. 

The demon in the girl prompted her to follow and harass them without pause. Every day she met them in the street when they came out of Lydia’s house to preach the gospel in the city or by the river. 

Luke writes of this ongoing stalking and shouting:

She continued doing this for many days. But Paul was greatly annoyed, and turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!” And it came out at that very moment (v. 18).

The effect the demon has on Paul is to make him greatly annoyed. It was like psychological torture. If someone follows another around, shouting at them all day, it is upsetting and distracting. Perhaps the demon was doing this to try to impede Paul’s ability to talk, to preach. Perhaps it was trying to drown him out. 

Perhaps the demon knew its own popularity in Philippi, and was goading Paul to cast it out, knowing that Paul would then experience intense backlash from the girl’s masters. Or, perhaps it was trying to ingratiate itself to Paul, just as the demons who encountered Jesus tried to acknowledge His supremacy and avoid trouble from Him. The impression we get of demons in the New Testament is that they are unstable, miserable things. They are especially anxious when confronted with God’s power. 

Why Paul tolerated this harassment for many days is unclear. Why he did not call the demon out of the girl sooner, to silence it or as an act of mercy toward the girl, is also not evident. We can only speculate. However, this is the first instance recorded of Paul casting out a demon. The demon may have been somehow winning the battle over Paul for these several days. He may have doubted he could do anything about the demon, having only healed people physically before through God’s power. This is all guesswork. The Bible does not tell us why. 

Eventually, whatever was keeping Paul from acting no longer inhibited him. The demon had disturbed him to the limit, so he dealt with it. Exorcism in the Bible is always a simple matter. It does not require special ceremonies or tools. Christ and the Apostles usually removed demons simply by commanding it of them. Christ, by His own authority, could tell any spirit where to go, whether to the abyss or to a herd of pigs (Mark 5:6-13, Luke 4:33-35). The same was generally true for the Apostles, with the exception of a particular type of demon that required prayer and fasting (Matthew 17:21). 

The Apostles and some of the disciples, always in the authority of Jesus’s name, could tell demons to depart from the humans they troubled (Luke 9:1, Luke 10:17-20, Acts 8:5-7). There are apparently some demons that are stronger than others, but to cast them out only requires appealing to God and His power, through prayer (Mark 9:29). It is always in God’s name that demons are cast out. 

Here, Paul does exactly that. He turned and said to the spirit who possessed the girl, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!” 

It is a command in the most powerful and authoritative name above names, the name of the King of the World and the Savior of humankind from spiritual darkness—the name of Jesus Christ. 

The evil spirit obeyed immediately. There was no struggle, no drama, no counterattack. As soon as Paul gave the demon a command, the demon complied with the command: And it came out at that very moment.

We are not told what happened to the slave-girl. She may have thanked Paul and believed in Jesus. Or she may have run back to her masters’ house in fear. 

Luke does report on the fallout of this exorcism, which is significant to Paul and Silas specifically:

But when her masters saw that their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the market place before the authorities (v. 19).

It seems the slave-girl’s masters may have witnessed the exorcism itself. They may have been with her as she followed Paul that day, shouting after him, and may have thought it was good publicity for their fortune-telling racket. It is also possible that they were not present, but that after she was freed of the demon, and spoke with her masters, they realized she was changed. There was no longer a spirit speaking through her, controlling her body. She was herself again, and her masters would have noticed this. 

They are enraged that the girl has been healed. This speaks to the utter cruelty of these men. They did not value this girl as a fellow human. They did not care for her welfare. They only cared for her as a means to an end. They only saw her as a object to exploit for financial gain. A prop to make money off of. Seeing that their hope of profit from her possession was gone, they seek to avenge themselves upon Paul for ruining their business. 

They physically confront and grab hold of him. For some reason, they seized not only Paul but Silas as well. This may hint that they had not witnessed the exorcism, but were informed by someone who had witnessed it. Someone may have told them who had cast the demon out. For whatever reason, Silas is implicated along with Paul. Both were assaulted by the girl’s masters and taken away by force to be dealt with. Paul and Silas did not go willingly, but were dragged all the way to the market place before the authorities of Philippi.

The authorities to whom they dragged Paul and Silas were legitimate Roman authorities: the chief magistrates. 

These slave masters, naturally, do not explain the actual basis for their dispute with Paul and Silas. Instead of saying, “These men got rid of our slave’s power to tell the future,” they make a more civically-relevant case against Paul and Silas, one which would prompt the chief magistrates into action:

and when they had brought them to the chief magistrates, they said, “These men are throwing our city into confusion, being Jews, and are proclaiming customs which it is not lawful for us to accept or to observe, being Romans” (vs. 20-21).

Interestingly, their complaint is not a total lie. The idea that Paul and Silas are throwing our city into confusion seems hyperbolic and ridiculous; we know these men who had seized them were angry because they had lost their ability to make good money off of fortune telling. And yet, while in Philippi, Paul and Silas are certainly proclaiming customs which are in conflict with Roman customs. The Romans worshipped Caesar as a god. This is what is known as “the Imperial cult.” It is why the Jewish priests’ claim that, “We have no king but Caesar!” was such a strong statement made to pressure Pilate into crucifying Jesus (John 19:15). 

Additionally, the Romans believed in many gods and made regular sacrifices to them. Paul and his team were preaching about one God over all creation, who sent His Son to die for the world, resurrected Him, and made Him king over the world for His obedience (Deuteronomy 4:35, 39, Philippians 2:5-11). 

Paul and company preached that anyone could put their trust in Jesus, and would be filled with God’s Spirit, and would receive eternal life when they died. Any faithful believer would be rewarded for their obedient service to God by sharing in rulership in the Messiah’s kingdom, when He comes back to earth (Revelation 3:21). 

Paul was inviting the Philippians to believe in a Jewish Messiah, and at the same time to disbelieve in all the Roman gods (and Caesar). In a real sense, the gospel is a threat to all worldly customs. The gospel leads men and women to practice God’s customs, following God’s good design for His creation (Psalm 128:1, James 4:4-10). 

Of course, the men who dragged Paul and Silas to the chief magistrates were not concerned with this. They were angry at the loss of their slave’s demonic influence. But to arouse alarm in the chief magistrates, they cast Paul and Silas as disruptors. They also resort to jingoism. It has been pointed out in previous sections of this commentary that Philippi did not seem to have a synagogue, because worshippers of God had to go outside the city to a river to pray to Him and congregate together (Acts 16:13). This indicates that there were not very many Jews in Philippi (ten Jewish men were required at minimum to form a synagogue). 

Paul and Silas’s accusers make the case that it is by nature of the fact that they are Jews that they have thrown the city of Philippi into confusion. The accusers are blaming these mischievous Jews for proclaiming customs which it is not lawful for us to accept or to observe, being Romans. This corrupting outside influence has come in to lead good law-abiding Romans astray. They want us to follow illegal practices. They are stirring up dissent and sedition. 

Luke states that, at this accusation, The crowd rose up together against Paul and Silas. This impromptu mock-trial had taken place in the market place, so there was a crowd watching it. At the word that Jewish men were corrupting the people of Philippi, the crowd cries out against them. They demand these foreigners be put in their place. The chief magistrates are complicit in this reaction; they tore Paul and Silas’s robes off them and proceeded to order them to be beaten with rods (v. 22). Rods are thick, sturdy wooden sticks.

Paul and Silas are beaten severely and then jailed:

When they had struck them with many blows, they threw them into prison, commanding the jailer to guard them securely (v. 23).

Paul and Silas are stripped down to their underclothes; bruised, bleeding, and humiliated. All because of accusations from the slave-girl’s masters. There was no proper hearing, no evidences, no witnesses, no defense. There was only a speedy reaction of mob justice sanctioned by the leading governmental authorities in the city. The order given to the jailer who managed the Philippian prison was that Paul and Silas were to be guarded securely.

The jailer takes the order seriously:

and he, having received such a command, threw them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks (v. 24).

He detains them in the darkest, deepest cell, the inner prison. He adds extra security measures to keep them from free motion; he fastened their feet in the stocks. Stocks are wooden boards that clap over the prisoner’s feet or arms like a vice, locking them into place. It was an unnecessary, painful added measure. We can presume from all this that the slave-girl’s handlers were influential in Philippi. It would seem that they spread around the substantial money they had made. And perhaps the city’s magistrates were well known to them, given that it appears they simply took the men’s word for it.

Paul and Silas have had a miserable experience—having their robes torn off, being beaten with many blows with rods, being thrown into the darkest prison, and having their feet crushed by stocks—and it is ongoing. They do not know what awaits them in the morning. More beatings, execution, or perhaps they will be forgotten about to starve in that dark pit. But they do not react to this mistreatment as normal men would. They have hope and faith in God that whatever happens, all will be worth it to receive God’s reward, to suffer for Jesus Christ (Matthew 5:10-12, Acts 5:41, Romans 8:17).