Acts 21:33-40 meaning

In Acts 21:33-40, Paul is arrested by the Romans. Thus the prophecy of his being bound was fulfilled shortly after his arrival in Jerusalem.

After returning to Jerusalem from his third missionary journey, Paul was taken captive by a mob of Jews hostile to him and the gospel. Paul knew something like this was going to happen to him, having been told by the Holy Spirit during his travels that “bonds and afflictions” awaited him Jerusalem (Acts 20:23).

The mob of hostile Jews accused Paul of preaching against the Jewish people, against the Law, and the Temple. They also (falsely) accused him of bringing a Gentile into the inner court of the Temple, which was forbidden. They grabbed him and began beating him, intending to kill him, when the Roman commander (“chiliarch”) of the local cohort arrived. In Acts 23:26, we will learn that this commander’s name is Claudius Lysias. When the commander arrived, the mob stopped beating Paul.

The Romans take him into custody: Then the commander came up and took hold of him, and ordered him to be bound with two chains; and he began asking who he was and what he had done (v. 33).

The commander’s presence disperses the mob of would-be murderers to some degree. They do not entirely scatter, but make way for the Roman commander. The commander then ordered his soldiers to see that Paul was bound with two chains. Again, the Spirit’s forewarning had happened. Paul was bound. For now, the commander is simply trying to figure out what Paul did to deserve the fury of the mob. He began asking who Paul was and what he had done to elicit the assault.

The commander must have asked these questions broadly to the crowd there, because he does not receive a clarifying answer: But among the crowd some were shouting one thing and some another, and when he could not find out the facts because of the uproar, he ordered him to be brought into the barracks (v. 34).

As is typical of mob justice, many in the crowd didn’t know what had started the violence. Some among the crowd were shouting one thing to explain why they had attacked Paul. But some in the crowd gave another answer, conflicting with the first explanation. It seems that there was a lot of shouting, because the commander realizes he will not find out the facts because of the uproar from the crowd. The scene is too noisy and chaotic.

Although the crowd has stepped aside for the commander to arrest Paul, he and his soldiers are in a dangerous situation. The crowd is still in an uproar and wants to kill Paul. So the commander ordered him (Paul) to be brought into the barracks where he could be safely interviewed.

The barracks was where the soldiers were housed. It was their headquarters while in Jerusalem. This barracks was probably the Antonia Fortress, which was built by Herod the Great at the northwest corner of the temple complex to house soldiers to watch over the temple, connecting the fortress to the temple by walkways. The fortress was named for Mark Antony, the famous Roman general, who was a political ally of Herod’s and supplied him with soldiers to take Jerusalem (37 BC).

The crowd is thick and threatening, so much so that the soldiers lift Paul off the ground to take him away from the danger: When he got to the stairs, he was carried by the soldiers because of the violence of the mob; (v. 35).

At the stairs which went up into the barracks, the soldiers decided it was better that they carried Paul up the stairs, because of the violence of the mob at hand. The people had not gone home or withdrawn. They were actively following the soldiers and hemming them in, shouting all the while:

for the multitude of the people kept following them, shouting, “Away with him!” (v. 36).

The word multitude indicates a large amount of people. There are many people in the crowd who kept following the soldiers. This is why the soldiers chose to carry Paul up the stairs, in case someone tried to pull him back into the crowd where they could finish him off. While the crowd followed the escort, they kept shouting, “Away with him!” They were celebrating the fact that Paul was chained, and were harassing him as he was taken away.

But Paul wants an opportunity to respond to his accusers and abusers. His hope is not to rebuke them, but to preach the gospel. First, he asks permission to speak:

As Paul was about to be brought into the barracks, he said to the commander, “May I say something to you?” (v. 37).

They were nearly all the way up the stairs which led into the barracks, and Paul would have been taken inside and missed a chance to share his testimony and explain the gospel. He asks the commander if he may speak to him, and based on the commander’s response, Paul posed the question in Greek, rather than Aramaic (the common language in Israel in the first century).

The commander is surprised this Jewish man can speak Greek: And he said, “Do you know Greek? (v. 37).

The commander had developed his own suspicion of who Paul was, and based on Paul’s knowledge of Greek, he began to doubt what he had formerly thought. The commander asks Paul about his identity:

Then you are not the Egyptian who some time ago stirred up a revolt and led the four thousand men of the Assassins out into the wilderness?” (v. 38).

For some reason, the commander thought he had possibly arrested the ringleader of a resistance group. Apparently, there was an Egyptian insurgent who some time ago stirred up a revolt. This revolutionary led some four thousand men of the Assassins out into the wilderness.

The Assassins is a translation of the Greek word, “sikarios” and in Latin, “sicarii.” The word more literally means “dagger—men.” These men would carry a weapon known as a “sica,” a small dagger, secretly under their cloaks, and would swiftly and covertly kill their targets, typically in cities among crowds, into which they would disappear before it could be determined who had done the killing. (This term has endured to modern times; the Spanish word for hitman is “sicario.”)

The Jewish historian Josephus wrote of the Assassins, the Sicarii, as well as the Egyptian for whom the Roman commander confused Paul:

“When the country was purged of these, there sprang up another sort of robbers in Jerusalem, which were called Sicarii...they mingled themselves among the multitude, and concealed daggers under their garments...There was also another body of wicked men gotten together...These were such men...who prevailed with the multitude to act like madmen, and went before them into the wilderness, as pretending that God would there show them the signals of liberty...But there was an Egyptian false prophet that did the Jews more mischief than the former; for he was a cheat, and pretended to be a prophet also...”
(Josephus, The Wars of the Jews, 2.254-2.263)

Josephus reports that this Egyptian rallied a group of men to the Mount of Olives, with the goal of the storming the city and killing the Roman guard there. The attack failed and the Egyptian fled with some of his men. This may be what the commander was referring to, that the Egyptian fled into the wilderness, and that some of the men who helped him were Sicarii. Josephus does not record what happened to the Egyptian, so it seems he was still at large. The commander may also mistakenly be mixing up several of these rebellious figures together.

In any case, he was probably filled with anxiety when he first heard report of the riot, thinking perhaps another rebellion had been provoked, and when he arrested Paul, he suspected he was the Egyptian come back to Jerusalem. Perhaps this accusation had been one of the things which the crowd shouted about Paul (But among the crowd some were shouting one thing and some another...v. 34).

There were many tensions in Jerusalem in those days, political, revolutionary, and religious. But Paul was not a Sicarii nor an Egyptian, nor did he have any earthly ambition to unseat Rome. He was a believer in the Messiah who wanted to tell the world about Him. He identifies himself to the commander:

But Paul said, “I am a Jew of Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no insignificant city; and I beg you, allow me to speak to the people” (v. 39).

Paul corrects the commander’s assumption that he was an Egyptian. Paul is a Jew of Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no insignificant city. Paul is ethnically and culturally Jewish, as are the Jews who were assaulting him moments ago. He is not from Egypt. He is a diaspora Jew, having been born and raised in Tarsus, the capital city in Cilicia, which was a Roman province in southern-central Asia Minor/Anatolia (modern-day Turkey).

When Paul first became a believer in Jesus and returned to Jerusalem, there was such hostility toward him that he had to go home to Tarsus for a number of years before Barnabas invited him to minister with a mixed group of Gentile and Jewish believers in  Antioch, Syria (Acts 9:30, 11:25-26). In addition to being the Cilician capital, Tarsus was 12 miles upriver from the Mediterranean Sea, making it a frequented port for trade. Tarsus was indeed no insignificant city in the first century, with impressive infrastructure and culture, such as its own stadium and academy of Greek philosophy.

Paul asks the commander for permission to reply to the Jews who had beaten him: I beg you, allow me to speak to the people. Paul was always looking for chances to preach the gospel (Acts 17:16-17). In a circumstance where most people would have gladly gone into the safety of the barracks, Paul instead wants to face his abusers and speak to them. Perhaps he wants to try to dispel their hatred toward him. But for certain he desires to guide them to faith in Jesus.

In his testimony, Paul had undergone one of the most significant reversals of character. He had once hated Jesus and His followers, but now he was himself a follower willing to die for Jesus. His story was worth telling, especially to a crowd of Jews who were hostile to the gospel, as he once was.

The commander, perhaps against his better judgment, allowed Paul to address the people of Jerusalem:

When he had given him permission, Paul, standing on the stairs, motioned to the people with his hand; and when there was a great hush, he spoke to them in the Hebrew dialect, saying, (v. 40).

It may have been that the commander thought he would discover why exactly he had found this man being severely beaten by a mob, if given a chance to speak to his attackers. Thus, he had given him permission to talk to crowds. Paul, still standing on the stairs which led into the safety of the barracks, motioned to the people with his hand to be quiet. They had watched the Romans carry Paul up the stairs while shouting, “Away with him!” (v. 36). But then Paul had paused and exchanged words with the commander, out of their hearing.

Now that they saw Paul waving his hand for them to listen, they understood that Paul was going to address them. So they began to quiet down, curious what their enemy would say to them: and when at last there was a great hush from the enormous crowd in the streets, Paul spoke to them in the Hebrew dialect. Rather than speaking in Greek, which Paul had just spoken to the Roman commander, Paul switches to the common language of first-century Judea—the Hebrew dialect, meaning Jewish Aramaic.

Acts 21 ends on a comma: he spoke to them…saying, (v. 40). The chapter divisions in the Bible are not found in the original copies of scripture, but were added a millennium after the New Testament was written. Someone deemed it appropriate to end Acts 21 right as Paul begins his address to the Jews of Jerusalem. He hopes to make peace with them and sway them to faith in the Messiah. Their response will be unfortunate.

Paul is now in the thick of the bonds and afflictions of which the Spirit forewarned him (Acts 20:23). Despite his bruised and bleeding body, he is faithful to preach the gospel, even to those who wish him dead. He is living up to the commitment he expressed in Acts 21:13, “For I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.”

Paul understood what Jesus taught in His Sermon on the Mount. He understood that to be Jesus’s disciple meant to deny himself and pick up his cross daily (Matthew 16:24). This meant commitment to being a faithful witness for Jesus that did not fear rejection, loss, or death. Paul has faced all three in this passage. He has been rejected, lost his freedom, and faced down death.

Paul additionally is practicing an understanding of Jesus’s teaching that it is a narrow and difficult way that leads to “life” (Matthew 7:13-14). Paul expressed with great conviction that the difficulties he endured were “momentary” and “light” compared with the “eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison” which such difficulties produced for those who endured them patiently (2 Corinthians 4:17).

Jesus gives eternal life to all who ask (Revelation 22:17). He gives the free gift of eternal life to all who have the same faith the Israelites had in the wilderness—enough to look at Jesus “lifted up” on a cross, hoping to be healed from the poisonous venom of sin (John 3:14-15). With that gift of eternal life comes the grant of an inheritance (Ephesians 1:11, 14, 18). The inheritance includes being fully restored to our original design, which is to reign as servant leaders, in harmony with God, nature, and one another (Hebrews 2:5-8).

Jesus paved the way for humanity’s restoration to our design through the “suffering of death” (Hebrews 2:9). Hebrews 2:9 speaks of Jesus being “crowned with glory and honor”—referring to the “glory and honor” of reigning over the earth that humans were appointed to by God (Hebrews 2:5-8, quoting Psalm 8:4-6).

Paul is practicing what he preached. He is suffering the sufferings of Jesus that he might gain the greatest possible experience of life by setting aside himself and embracing suffering and death. Paul told the believers in Rome that all believers are God’s children, because they are given an unconditional gift of being born again into His forever family. This is the past-tense aspect of salvation, to be delivered from the penalty of sin. It is a once-for-all-time gift.

But not only are believers God’s children, they are also heirs of Christ—if they share in the “suffering of death” with Him:

“…heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.”
(Romans 8:17)

To reign with Christ is a great reward of life for those who are faithful witnesses who do not fear rejection, loss, or death from the world. We see in Romans 8 that being an heir of God is unconditional, because all believers are a child of God. But to possess our full inheritance of reigning with Christ (being “fellow heirs”) requires we overcome as Jesus overcame (Revelation 3:21). To be “glorified with Him” is to share His reign, to “enter into the joy” of our Master and be put “in charge of many things” (Matthew 25:21).

This is the greatest reward we can gain at the judgement seat of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:10). It is an “eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17). When we understand Paul’s perspective through his writings, we see that from his point of view, this narrow and difficult path that leads to life is the only way to live that makes sense, because it is “far beyond all comparison.”

This is why Paul courageously risks his life for the gospel. We can note that at other times in his ministry he escaped persecution, so that his ministry might continue. In 2 Corinthians 5:9-10, Paul asserts that his aim is to be pleasing to God. He has subjected himself to mortal danger in this case because he is following the leading of the Spirit (Acts 20:22-23).

Paul is following the Spirit, taking the narrow gate that leads to a difficult path that leads to life. He is picking up his cross daily and setting aside self. And in doing so, he is walking in faith that this is producing in him an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. He preaches. He writes. But most importantly, he lives out what he preaches and writes.