Acts 28:3 - Exposition

But for and, A.V.; a viper came for there came a viper, A.V.; by reason of for out of, A.V. Had gathered ; συστρέψαντος , only here and in the LXX . of 11:3 and 12:4 , for "to collect," "gather together." But συστροφή ( Acts 19:40 ; Acts 23:12 ) means "a concourse," "a conspiracy." In classical Greek συστρέφειν is "to twist up together," to "form into a compact body," and the like. A bundle of sticks ; φρυγάνων πλῆθος . The word only occurs in the New Testament here; it means "dry sticks," "kindlers," any combustible material. In the LXX . it is used as the equi- valent of שׁקַ , straw or stubble ( Isaiah 40:24 ; Isaiah 41:2 , etc.), and for "nettles" ( Job 30:7 ). Theophrastus seems to use it for plants smaller than a shrub ('Hist.,' Plant., 1.3, 1, quoted by Hobart). Lewin writes as follows:—"When in Malta in 1853, I went to St. Paul's Bay at the same season of the year as when the wreck occurred …. We noticed eight or nine stacks of small faggots, they consisted of a kind of thorny heather, and had evidently been cut for firewood." This is a conclusive answer, if any were needed, to the objection to Melita being Malta, drawn from the absence of wood in the island. But besides this, it is not a fact that even now there is no wood at all (see Lewin). A viper came out . It is objected that there are no vipers in Malta. But it is obvious that the condition of Malta now, a very thickly inhabited island, is very different from what it was with a sparse population in the days of St. Paul. Vipers may well have been destroyed during one thousand eight hundred and sixty years. Lewin mentions that his traveling companions in 1853 started what they thought was a viper, which escaped into one of the bundles of heather. Came out. διεξελθοῦσα is the reading of Tischendorf, Alford, Meyer, eta., "came out through the sticks." It is a frequent medical term. The heat ; τῆς θέρμης . This form of the word is only used here in the New Testament, instead of the more common θερμότης . It occurs, however, repeatedly in the LXX . ( Job 6:17 ; Psalms 19:7 ; Ecclesiasticus 38:34, etc.), and was the usual medical word for feverish heat. Fastened ; κάθηψε , here only in the Bible; but not uncommon in classical Greek, and of general use among medical writers.