Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Acts 26:31

Acts 26:31. And when they were gone aside, they talked between themselves, saying, This man doeth nothing worthy of death or of bonds. The second of these public expressions of opinion on the part of such exalted personages as Agrippa and Festus, respecting Paul's complete innocence of the really grave charge of promoting sedition and of exciting the peoples of the Empire against the ruling powers, was an important memorandum in the history of the great Gentile apostle, who, we know, eventually was condemned and put to death on a similar false charge.

It tells us how groundless were the accusations made against him by those Jews whose dearest interest he, for the sake of his brother men, was compelled to attack tells us how blameless, how perfectly unselfish, was the whole tenor of that generous brave life.

We need not suppose that this defence of Paul, and that unanimous expression of goodwill he obtained from those distinguished persons who listened to him that day in the Cæsarean court, were without effect upon the after history of the apostle. Although, as the appeal to the emperor had been formally lodged, it was no longer in the power of any provincial official, however exalted, to acquit or to free, any more than to condemn and to punish the prisoner who had thus appealed to Rome; still, as Festus had arranged this hearing before Agrippa with a view to procure satisfactory material to enable him to make an exhaustive report to the minister at Rome, he no doubt wrote such a favourable view of the prisoner's case as eventually brought about his acquittal and freedom from his first Roman imprisonment (On the wearisome delays which frequently postponed for a lengthened period the hearing of these provincial appeals, see Excursus C, in the Chapter Comments for Acts 26)

The favourable report of Festus, too, certainly procured him kindly treatment after his arrival in the capital (he was allowed to dwell in his own hired house and even to receive large numbers of friends and pupils there, chap. Acts 28:17-23; Acts 28:30-31).

Another result of Paul's great defence of Christianity before King Agrippa II. and the Procurator Festus, was, that from this time a kindly feeling seems to have sprung up in the king's heart towards that strange Nazarene sect which he tells us himself he once almost was persuaded to join. Stier, in his Words of the Apostles, calls attention to the fact of this Agrippa at the outbreak of the great Jewish war, some eight or nine years after the scene at Cæsarea, protecting the Christians, giving them succour, and receiving them kindly into his territory.

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Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Acts 26:31

Old Testament

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