Biblion Bible Commentary
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Not done in a corner: almost persuaded
Acts 26:24-32
24 As he thus made his defense, Festus said with a loud voice, “Paul, you are crazy! Your great learning is driving you insane!” · WEB
A governor calls him mad, a king deflects the question, and the two agree in private that the prisoner should have been released.
The interruption comes from the governor and it is a shout: Paul, you are crazy! Your great learning is driving you insane! Festus has followed the speech as far as the resurrection and can go no further. It is not contempt for the man — he concedes the learning, and concedes it is great — but the conclusion strikes him as what happens when a clever person studies too long.
The reply is courteous and exact. I am not crazy, most excellent Festus, but boldly declare words of truth and reasonableness. The last word means sober good sense, the opposite of the madness alleged. Paul does not defend an ecstatic experience; he claims his account is sane and can be checked.
And then the checking is offered: the king knows of these things, to whom also I speak freely. For I am persuaded that none of these things is hidden from him, for this has not been done in a corner.
That last phrase is the strongest apologetic sentence in the book. The events being disputed were public. They happened in a known province, under named officials, in the reigns of identifiable rulers, before crowds, and within the memory of the man on the throne. Whatever else may be argued, this is not a private revelation that only its recipient can attest, and the king in the room can confirm the background himself.
Then Paul turns the hearing around with a question put directly to the judge: King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you believe.
It is a masterstroke and it is also a trap of the gentlest kind. Agrippa's position depends on his standing as a Jewish king; he cannot say no. But if he says yes, in that room, having just heard Paul argue that the prophets point to a suffering and risen Christ, he has conceded the premises of the case. Paul does not wait for the answer and supplies it himself.
Agrippa's reply is the most discussed sentence in the chapter, and the English translations divide on it — some render it as a man nearly won over, others as a dry deflection about how little persuasion Paul thinks is needed. Both readings preserve the same fact: he refuses the question by making a remark about the questioner, which is what people do when a question has reached them and they do not intend to answer it.
Paul's response has no edge in it at all. I pray to God, that whether with little or with much, not only you, but also all that hear me today, might become such as I am, except for these bonds. The wish takes in the whole room — the king, the governor, the tribunes, the leading men. And the exception at the end is the finest touch of his life: he would give them everything he has, and keep the chains.
The verdict is delivered in private, and it is unanimous. This man does nothing worthy of death or of bonds. Then Agrippa's closing remark, heavy with an irony he does not intend: This man might have been set free if he had not appealed to Caesar.
It is true as law and false as history. The appeal is what saved him from Jerusalem, and it is what will carry him to Rome — which is where he was told, two years earlier in a barracks, that he must testify.
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