Acts 25:23

23. Morrow Paul is here not now on trial. He is beyond this jurisdiction, amenable only to the emperor’s own court at Rome. But he is to be heard, first, to gratify the interest of Agrippa and Bernice; and, second, for reasons assigned in Acts 25:26-27.

Bernice This fascinating but dissolute daughter of the Herodian line was now near thirty. She had been so envious of the superior beauty of her younger sister Drusilla that the latter took hasty refuge in marriage to escape her annoyances. Though inferior in beauty, Bernice was superior in success. (Hist. Revelation , 21:17, § 3.)

Great pomp It is clearly an occasion! Never had advocate for Christianity appeared before so august an assembly. Philip the evangelist, (who had indeed preached to and converted a chamberlain of the Ethiopian court,) with his little band of Cesarean Christians, had no reason that day to be ashamed of their champion. As not only Luke, but the magnates, military and civil, of Cesarea present marked the showy style of Bernice, some recollections may have occurred of the gorgeous array worn by her father on the day of his fatal oratory in this same Cesarea. (Acts 12:21.) Agrippa and Bernice were the last of the Herods! With them terminated that meteoric family, which shone with a dark brilliancy, as a strange background, through just the period of Christ and the apostolic age. The race seemed to inherit the beauty of the unfortunate Mariamne with the unscrupulousness of the first Herod; and they stand as striking representatives of the kingdom of this world in contrast with the kingdom of Christ.

Place of hearing Evidently not the court room in which Paul had been arraigned and tried before Felix and Festus. This is a more suitable assembly room, where ladies of highest quality may be agreeably present.

Paul was brought forth The object of all this high interest now appears, and the eyes of the silent assembly are fixed upon him. A slight mercurial figure, in whom the traces of high vitality are apparent, yet worn doubtless by a two years’ confinement, is led in by a soldier with a chain fastened to his wrist.