Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Acts · About this commentary
The gate that opened, and the prayer meeting that did not believe it
Acts 12:6-19
6 The same night when Herod was about to bring him out, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains. Guards in front of the door kept the prison. · WEB
Peter is walked out of a maximum-security prison while asleep, and the church praying for his release refuses to believe he is at the door.
The scene opens on the last night, and on a detail that says everything about the man. Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains. He is to be executed in the morning and he is asleep, so soundly that the angel has to strike him on the side to wake him.
The rescue is conducted at a domestic pace, and the contrast with the urgency of the situation is the source of its charm. The chains fall off, and then: get dressed. Put on your sandals. Put on your cloak. Follow me. An angel of the Lord is standing in a cell in the middle of a jailbreak telling a man to finish dressing.
Peter's state of mind is recorded with unusual candor. He didn't know that what was being done by the angel was real, but thought he saw a vision. The most dramatic deliverance in the book is experienced by its beneficiary as a dream he is going along with. He had had a genuine vision on a roof and had been perplexed by it; now a real event feels like the other thing.
They pass the first guard and the second, and reach the iron gate that leads into the city, which opened to them by itself. Then one street, and the angel is gone — no farewell, no instructions. The help extends exactly as far as the point where Peter can manage.
And there, in the street, Peter had come to himself. His first coherent sentence is a piece of careful theology composed at speed: Now I truly know that the Lord has sent out his angel and delivered me out of the hand of Herod, and from everything the Jewish people were expecting. He identifies the agent, the sender and the danger, and gives the credit past the angel to the Lord who sent him.
What follows is the funniest passage in the New Testament, and the humor is at the church's expense. He goes to a house where many are gathered praying — praying, the text has told us, for exactly this. A servant girl named Rhoda answers the knock, recognizes his voice, and is so delighted that she runs back inside without opening the gate, leaving the escaped prisoner standing in the street.
The assembly's response to her report is You are crazy! She insists. They revise their position to It is his angel — a remark that tells us what these people happened to think and nothing about what is true; the same sentence records them being wrong about the man at the door. Meanwhile Peter continued knocking, which is one of the great understatements in Scripture. When they finally open, they are amazed.
The scene is left without a rebuke, and it should be. These are not people of small faith; they are people who have gathered at night, at some risk, to pray for a man on the eve of his execution. They simply did not expect to be answered, and the text loves them anyway.
Peter silences them, tells the story, sends word to James, and departs to another place. The reader is told no more than that, and Herod's soldiers are told less. The chapter closes their part of it grimly: the guards are examined and executed, which was the Roman penalty for losing a prisoner, and sixteen men die for something none of them could have prevented.
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