Aeneas at Lydda, Tabitha at Joppa
32 As Peter went throughout all those parts, he came down also to the saints who lived at Lydda. 33 There he found a certain man named Aeneas, who had been bedridden for eight years because he was paralyzed. 34 Peter said to him, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and make your bed!” Immediately he arose. 35 All who lived at Lydda and in Sharon saw him, and they turned to the Lord. 36 Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha, which when translated means Dorcas. This woman was full of good works and acts of mercy which she did. 37 In those days, she became sick and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room. 38 As Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, hearing that Peter was there, sent two men to him, imploring him not to delay in coming to them. 39 Peter got up and went with them. When he had come, they brought him into the upper room. All the widows stood by him weeping, and showing the tunics and other garments which Dorcas had made while she was with them. 40 Peter sent them all out, and knelt down and prayed. Turning to the body, he said, “Tabitha, get up!” She opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter, she sat up. 41 He gave her his hand and raised her up. Calling the saints and widows, he presented her alive. 42 This became known throughout all Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. 43 He stayed many days in Joppa with a tanner named Simon.
Two miracles on the coastal plain move Peter steadily westward toward the sea, and leave him lodging in a house no strict Jew would have chosen.
The narrative leaves Saul and returns to Peter, who is traveling among the settled congregations. The transition looks like a change of subject and is in fact the approach to the book's largest turning point: each place named moves Peter further from Jerusalem and closer to the coast, and he ends the chapter in a house by the sea, on a roof, at noon.
At Lydda he finds Aeneas, bedridden eight years with paralysis. The healing is three words of speech and no ceremony: Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and make your bed. The credit is assigned in the sentence itself, in the present tense, before anything happens — Peter does not heal and then explain, he names the healer as the act occurs.
The instruction to make his bed is a small, practical, slightly comic detail. A man who has been carried and served for eight years is told to do the most ordinary household task there is, immediately, which is a way of returning him to normal life rather than making him a spectacle. The result is regional: all who lived in Lydda and in the plain of Sharon saw him and they turned to the Lord.
At Joppa the case is harder. Tabitha, also called Dorcas, is a disciple — the feminine form of the word, used here alone in Scripture — and she is described entirely by what she did: full of good works and acts of mercy. Then she becomes sick and dies.
What happens next is the most touching scene in the chapter. The widows stand around Peter weeping and showing the tunics and other garments which Dorcas had made while she was with them. They are wearing her work, and they hold it out. It is a funeral in which the mourners produce the evidence of a life, and the evidence is clothing for people who could not buy their own.
Peter sends them all out, kneels, and prays — and only then speaks to the body. The order is the opposite of a wonder-worker's. He asks first, alone, and the raising is done in two words: Tabitha, get up. She opens her eyes, sees him, and sits up. He gives her his hand and raises her, and presented her alive to the saints and the widows he had just put outside the door.
The last verse is dropped in as an itinerary note and is nothing of the sort. He stayed many days in Joppa with a tanner named Simon. Tanning handled the skins of dead animals and was ritually defiling work; a tannery had to sit outside a town, downwind, which is why the house is by the seaside. A Jewish apostle is lodging long-term with a man whose trade made him permanently unclean.
Nobody remarks on it, and the writer sets it down as an address. But Peter is already living somewhere his stricter contemporaries would not have entered, which is worth remembering when, on that roof, he protests that he has never eaten anything common or unclean.
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