Acts 24:24 - Exposition

But for and, A.V.; Felix came for when Felix came, A.V. ; Drusilla, his wife for his wife Drusilla, A.V.; and sent for he sent, A.V.; Christ Jesus for Christ, A.V. and T.R. Came ; παραγενόμενος , a very favorite word with St. Luke, occurring twenty-nine times in his Gospel and the Acts. It implies that Felix had been absent from Caesarea for some days after the trial. Drusilla . She was, according to Josephus ('Ant. Jud.,' 20. 7.1, 2) the daughter of Herod Agrippa I., who "killed James with the sword" ( Acts 12:1 , Acts 12:2 ), and died shortly afterwards. She was first the wife of Azizus, King of Emesa; but Felix, becoming enamored of her on account of her singular beauty, employed a certain magician, a Jew named Simon, to entice her away from her husband, and persuade her to marry him, contrary, as Josephus says, to the institutions of her country. She perished, with Agrippa, her only son by Felix, in the eruption of Vesuvius, in the reign of Titus (Josephus, as above). Tacitus says that Drusilla, the wife of Felix, was granddaughter of Antony and Cleopatra. But he seems to have confounded her with another of the three royal wives of Felix, mentioned by Suetonius in 'Claudius;' unless, perchance, as has been conjectured, be had two wives of the name of Drusilla, of whom one was, as Tacitus says, granddaughter of Antony, by being the daughter of King Juba and Cleopatra Selene, Antony's daughter (see note in Whiston's 'Josephus,' and in Kuinoel, on Acts 23:24 ). But there is no certainty on the subject. Only Josephus's detailed account of Drusilla, the wife of Felix, agrees with St. Luke's statement that she "was a Jewess," and is beyond doubt true.