Biblion Bible Commentary
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Berea: examining the Scriptures daily
Acts 17:10-15
10 The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Beroea. When they arrived, they went into the Jewish synagogue. · WEB
A congregation is called noble for checking the apostle's preaching against the Scriptures, which sets the standard by which every claim in this book asks to be judged.
They are sent away by night to Berea , and on arrival they do the same thing again: they went into the Jewish synagogue. The pattern is unvarying, and the previous town's violence changes nothing about it.
The assessment that follows is the most quoted sentence about Bible reading in Scripture, and it repays close reading. Now these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.
The word for noble originally described good birth and came to mean the openness of mind that good breeding was supposed to produce. It is a compliment about character, and the two things it is paid for are held in one sentence.
The first is readiness of mind — eagerness, a willingness to be persuaded. The Thessalonians had included men who reacted to an argument they could not answer by hiring a mob. These men wanted to hear it.
The second is that they checked. Examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so. The verb is a legal one, used of a judicial investigation. They put an apostle's preaching on trial against the written word, every day, and they were commended for it — not tolerated, commended. The man whose sermons were being audited is the one the account praises them for auditing.
The two halves belong together and neither survives alone. Readiness without examination is credulity, and examination without readiness is the posture of men looking for grounds to refuse. What is praised is an open mind that still checks, and a checking that actually wants the thing to be true.
The standard this sets applies to everything in this book. Every sermon in Acts argues from the Scriptures, and every hearer is entitled to do what the Bereans did with them. A claim that cannot survive that examination is not improved by the standing of the man making it.
Many of them therefore believed — the therefore is important, since the belief is the result of the investigation rather than a substitute for it — also of the prominent Greek women, and not a few men.
Then the opposition arrives from sixty miles away. The Thessalonian Jews hear the word is being preached at Berea, come there, and agitate the multitudes, using the same technique a second time. The brothers move Paul to the coast at once and send him to Athens, while Silas and Timothy stay behind — a division that leaves the new church supported and its most exposed member out of reach.
His escort takes him all the way to Athens and carries back an instruction for the other two to come quickly. It is the only glimpse the chapter gives of Paul's own state, and it is a man alone in a strange city asking for his friends.
settled What this mark means