Acts 28:3

And when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks, and laid them on the fire, there came a viper out of the heat, and fastened on his hand. And when the barbarians saw the venomous creature hanging from his hand, they said one to another, No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped from the sea, yet Justice hath not suffered to live.

Venomous creature ... Although the adjective is not in the Greek text, the meaning surely is. The statement of the islanders that "Justice hath not suffered to live" regarded Paul's death so certain that they already referred to it in the past tense! It is hard not to lose patience with scholars like Ramsay who called this snake "harmless," saying "it was not, as Luke calls it, a viper, which does not occur on Malta."[4] As if this were not enough, he even took a couple of passes at guessing what kind it really was! As Bruce said:

The objections that have been advanced, that there are now no vipers in the island, and only one place where any wood grows, are too trivial to notice.[5]

As Hervey pointed out, the population density of Malta is now over 1,200 people to the square mile,[6] and this alone accounts for the disappearance of vipers from Malta.

Justice ... The capitalization of this word in the English Revised Version (1885) indicates that the islanders referred to the goddess Justice. "Justilia was the daughter and assessor of Zeus, and the avenger of crime."[7]

[4] Sir William M. Ramsay, Pictures of the Apostolic Church (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1959), p. 310.

[5] F. F. Bruce, The Book of Acts (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, Publisher, 1954), p. 522.

[6] A. C. Hervey, The Pulpit Commentary, Acts (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, Publisher, 1950), 2p. 319.

[7] Ibid.