Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Acts · About this commentary
Scattered, and preaching wherever they went
Acts 8:1-8
1 Saul was consenting to his death. A great persecution arose against the assembly which was in Jerusalem in that day. They were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except for the apostles. · WEB
The persecution that was meant to end the movement is what carries it out of Jerusalem — and stage two of the commission begins without anyone planning it.
Saul was consenting to his death. The sentence belongs with the previous scene and starts this one, which is the writer's way of saying that the coat-holder was not a bystander. What follows is the first organized persecution: a great one, on that same day, and it scatters the whole church through Judea and Samaria — except for the apostles.
That exception is unexpected and is not explained. The leaders, the most identifiable and most frequently arrested members of the community, stay in the city while everyone else runs. Whatever the reason, the consequence shapes the next several chapters: there is a settled apostolic body in Jerusalem to which the scattered church can report, and to which it does report every time something unforeseen happens.
Two verses give the human cost without hurrying past it. Devout men buried Stephen and lamented greatly over him, which is a proper funeral with proper grief, conducted for a man executed as a blasphemer. And Saul ravaged the assembly, entering every house and dragging off men and women to prison. The verb is used of an army destroying a city or a wild animal tearing a body. He mentions the women specifically, and so does Paul when he later describes these months himself Acts 22:4.
Then the sentence the chapter turns on. Therefore those who were scattered abroad went around preaching the word. The word therefore is the whole theology of the paragraph. The scattering was the persecution's instrument and it became the mission's. Nobody decided this. There is no council, no strategy, no commissioning of church planters — refugees moved, and talked about what they believed while they moved.
It is worth measuring against the commission. They had been told they would be witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Seven chapters have passed and they are all still in Jerusalem. The second stage begins on the day the church is broken up, and its agents are ordinary believers whose names are not recorded.
One name is. Philip — the second of the seven, appointed to a food distribution — goes down to the city of Samaria and proclaims the Christ there. Samaria is not a neutral destination. Jews and Samaritans had centuries of mutual contempt behind them, a rival sanctuary, and a rival version of the Pentateuch. A Greek-speaking Jewish refugee, freshly driven out of his own city, walks into the one place his people despised and preaches.
The response is total. The multitudes listened with one accord, unclean spirits came out crying, the paralyzed and lame were healed, and the paragraph ends with a line that is not about doctrine at all: There was great joy in that city. A persecution designed to produce fear in Jerusalem has produced joy in Samaria within a single paragraph.
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