Acts 21 Study Notes

21:1 The shipboard journey continued from Ephesus by way of Cos to Rhodes and Patara. This is the third “we” section in Acts (see note at 16:10). It extends through 21:18.

21:2 They left the smaller ship at Patara and took a larger one able to travel the four hundred miles to Phoenicia.

21:3 The most common vessels sailing the Mediterranean were grain ships from Egypt, heading to the rest of the Roman Empire (but especially Rome).

21:4 Some Christians in Tyre had received from the Holy Spirit the same message that Paul disclosed in Ephesus: trouble awaited Paul in Jerusalem (20:22-23).

21:5-6 The departure from the Christians at Tyre resembled the departure from Miletus and the Ephesian elders (20:37-38). They knew Paul was heading for his deepest trouble yet.

21:7 Ptolemais is also known as Acco (Jdg 1:31).

21:8 Philip the evangelist was probably so called to distinguish him from other Philips. He was one of those selected to serve in the church in Jerusalem (see note at 6:5-6). Philip eventually settled with his daughters in Caesarea. Some believe he may have been one of the original Twelve (Mt 10:3; Mk 3:18; Lk 6:14). But he is distinctly identified as one of the Seven (6:3).

21:9 The word virgin means Philip’s daughters were young and unmarried.

21:10-11 Agabus (see note at 11:27-28) explicitly stated that Paul would fall into hostile hands in Jerusalem. As it turned out (21:30-36), Paul was delivered by Gentiles out of Jewish hands, but then remained in Gentile hands throughout the rest of the book of Acts.

21:12 With such an explicit prophecy, it is not surprising that Paul’s traveling companions and the locals pleaded with him not to go on to Jerusalem.

21:13 Paul had already thought about the cost of obedience and decided it was worthwhile.

21:14 Ultimately, the only appropriate response for a believer is the one that Paul’s companions stated: The Lord’s will be done. One of the major themes of the book of Acts is the simultaneous reality of human choice and the sovereign divine will (4:24-28; see note at 2:23).

21:15-16 Mnason of Cyprus was a believer who had probably been saved during the first missionary journey. “Mnason” may be a Hellenized form of a Jewish name, or he may have been a Gentile.

21:18 James, Jesus’s half-brother, is singled out as the leader of the church in Jerusalem, along with a group of elders. It is not clear how many of the original apostles would have still been in Jerusalem, but they do not appear in the following events. This verse marks the end of this “we” section.

21:19 As Paul did in his previous major meeting in Jerusalem (15:4), he told James and the church elders what God had been doing among the Gentiles through his ministry. This was an appropriate follow-up to the original Jerusalem Council (see note at 15:2).

21:20 Having listened to Paul’s report about what God had done “among the Gentiles” (v. 19), the Jerusalem leadership rejoiced but also answered back with something like one-upmanship. Mention of many thousands of Jews converting in Jerusalem was perhaps exaggeration, for the city had a population between twenty-five thousand and fifty thousand. At issue in the back-and-forth between Jerusalem leaders and Paul (minister to the Gentiles) is the role of the law in Christian faith; thus the emphasis on Jewish believers being zealous for the law. Perhaps this response also represented an attempt by believers in Jerusalem to strengthen their position as they saw the center of the church shift to Gentile Christians.

21:21 Rumor said Paul was teaching Jews who were dispersed among Gentiles to disregard Mosaic law and traditional Jewish rituals such as circumcision. To dismiss these fears, the brothers proposed a solution that would absolve Paul of the charges (vv. 23-24).

21:22-24 The elders worked out a solution through which Paul could demonstrate his respect for the law and his Jewish identity and put to rest rumors that he was against the law. Paul was not opposed to circumcising Timothy (16:3) or to taking Jewish vows (18:18). What he opposed was any claim that such observances of Jewish law merit salvation (Gl 2:15-16).

21:25 On the Jerusalem Council, see notes at 15:21,22-23a. The issue of the letter had been solved much earlier, and what Paul had or had not encouraged Jews living among Gentiles to do would not be clarified by the proposal of vv. 23-24. James was apparently succumbing to pressures from the Jewish believers in Jerusalem. Ultimately his proposal backfired (v. 27).

21:26 It is somewhat surprising that Paul agreed to perform the ritual of purification. Perhaps he sensed this was part of God’s overall plan, to which he was partially privy (vv. 10-11; 20:22-23).

21:27 There is no indication that the Jews from Asia were Christians.

21:28-29 Trophimus, an Ephesian, accompanied Paul to Jerusalem (20:4). It is unlikely that Paul ever brought Trophimus into the temple. After all, Paul was in the process of fulfilling the Jewish law, not ignoring or flaunting it. Even if the accusation was true, it would be Trophimus, not Paul, who would have been guilty according to the law as stated in temple inscriptions.

21:30 Paul was seized and dragged out of the temple complex, the gates were closed behind him, and he was left in the outermost area of the temple.

21:31-32 Once the crowd had isolated Paul, they tried to kill him. Roman soldiers were stationed in the Antonia Fortress on the northwest side of the temple mount. One of their chief jobs was to put down disturbances such as this.

21:33 The two chains were perhaps attached to soldiers on either side.

21:34-36 Even with the soldiers protecting him, Paul had to be carried as the mob pressed in for the kill. Fortunately the barracks were nearby.

21:37-38 Paul asked permission to speak. His use of Greek surprised the Roman commander (“Claudius Lysias,” 23:26). Lysias mistook Paul for an Egyptian rebel. The Jewish historian Josephus said this rebel, a messianic pretender, had gathered a number of people at the Mount of Olives to attack Jerusalem in AD 54. The group was routed by the Romans, but the leader escaped. Lysias initially suspected that Paul was this man.

21:39 That Paul was a citizen of Tarsus, a city of importance in the Greco-Roman world, accounted for his knowledge of Greek.

21:40 Paul spoke Aramaic to the crowd in order to communicate clearly with them. Aramaic became the new Hebrew, so to speak, among the Jewish people after the exile. In Paul’s day Hebrew was used only by the religious elite.