Biblion Bible Commentary
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Festus explains the case to Agrippa
Acts 25:13-22
13 Now when some days had passed, King Agrippa and Bernice arrived at Caesarea and greeted Festus. · WEB
A Roman governor describes the whole dispute to a king in one sentence, and his summary is the most accurate description of Christianity's offense in the book.
King Agrippa arrives at Caesarea with Bernice to greet the new governor. He is the last of the Herods to hold a throne, with authority over the temple and the appointment of high priests, and he is exactly the man to consult about a Jewish case.
Festus lays it out, and the account is fascinating because he is speaking privately, with no need to persuade anybody, and therefore says what he actually thinks.
He begins with the request from the chief priests, asking for a sentence against him — a condemnation without a trial. And he reports his refusal in words that are the finest statement of Roman legal principle in Scripture: it is not the custom of the Romans to give up any man to destruction before the accused has met the accusers face to face and has had opportunity to make his defense. Confrontation and the right of reply, stated by a pagan official as ordinary practice.
Then his surprise. When the accusers stood up, they brought no charges against him of such things as I supposed. He had expected a criminal case — violence, fraud, sedition — because that is what men ask for a death sentence over.
And here is the sentence the chapter exists for. But had certain questions against him about their own religion and about one Jesus, who was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive.
A Roman governor, summarizing for a king, reduces the entire dispute to that. Everything else has fallen away — the temple charge, the sedition charge, the twenty years of travel. What is left is a dead man whom the prisoner says is alive. That is what the church was prosecuted for, on the testimony of the magistrate prosecuting it, and no believer could improve the summary.
The phrase one Jesus is the measure of Festus. To him the name is a detail in a file, attached to a person of no consequence, in a dispute he finds unintelligible. He is not being contemptuous; he simply has no category for it.
His own state is stated honestly: Being perplexed how to inquire concerning these things. The Jerusalem proposal was not, on his account, a favor to the prosecution but a genuine attempt to get the case heard by people who understood it — which may be true, and does not change what it would have cost the prisoner.
Agrippa's response is one line and it carries the tone of a man being offered an entertainment: I also would like to hear the man myself. Festus, who needs a report to send with the prisoner, is glad to oblige. Tomorrow, you shall hear him.
So the last and most public of Paul's defenses is arranged as a courtesy between officials with time on their hands, and it becomes the fullest account he ever gives of his own commission.
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