Biblion Bible Commentary
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Driven fourteen days: an angel stood by me
Acts 27:13-26
13 When the south wind blew softly, supposing that they had obtained their purpose, they weighed anchor and sailed along Crete, close to shore. · WEB
A gentle south wind turns into two weeks of storm, and when all hope is gone the prisoner is the one with something to say.
When the south wind blew softly, supposing that they had obtained their purpose, they weighed anchor. The wind that persuaded them was exactly the wind they wanted, and it lasted a few hours. The verb for their supposing is the language of men who think a thing has been settled and find that it has not.
Then the wind changes and the account becomes technical. A stormy wind beats down from the high ground; the ship couldn't face the wind and they give way and are driven. Under the shelter of a small island they get the ship's boat aboard with difficulty — it had been towed and was filling. They pass cables under the hull to hold it together, and lower gear to slow the drift, because the great fear on that heading is the shoals off the African coast.
On the second day they throw cargo over. On the third they throw the ship's tackle with their own hands, which means the spare spars and rigging — the crew destroying its own means of repair, because staying afloat now outranks getting anywhere.
Then the sentence that ends the first half: When neither sun nor stars shone on us for many days, and no small storm pressed on us, all hope that we would be saved was now taken away. Navigation was by sun and stars, so days without either means they do not know where they are. The writer includes himself in the despair, and states it flatly. This is not a book that keeps its people brave for the record.
When they had been long without food, Paul stood up in the middle of them. His first sentence is not gracious and the text does not hide it: Sirs, you should have listened to me. It is said once, it is true, and he moves on.
What follows is the reason he is standing up. There will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship — and the ground for it is stated plainly. An angel stood by him that night, belonging to the God whose I am and whom I serve. Two relations in five words, and the second explains the first: he belongs, and therefore he serves.
The angel's message has three parts. Don't be afraid, Paul — so he had been afraid, which the narrative had not otherwise told us. You must stand before Caesar — the same word for necessity used in the barracks at Jerusalem, and now the promise is what keeps him alive. And the third is the most striking: God has granted you all those who sail with you.
Two hundred and seventy-six people, most of whom have never heard of the God in question, are given to a prisoner because he is going to Rome. The purpose of God for one man carries a shipload of soldiers, sailors and convicts through a storm they had all given up in.
And Paul's own footing is stated in four words that are the whole of faith: I believe God, that it will be just as it has been spoken to me. He is not claiming to know the sea. He is claiming to know who spoke.
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