Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 12:23

"And immediately an angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost." — Acts 12:23 (ASV)

The angel of the Lord smote him. Luke obviously regarded the angel's intervention as the only adequate explanation both of the death of the persecutor and of the escape of his victim. In the former, he recognized not only what has been called the irony of history, or an instance of the law of Nemesis—bringing down the haughty in the very hour of their triumph—but also a direct chastisement for an act of impiety.

Because he gave not God the glory. These words probably mean something more than that he did not ascribe to God the praise that was due to Him alone. To “give God the glory” was a phrase always connected with the confession of sin and weakness, as in Joshua 7:19. (See Note on John 9:24.)

He was eaten of worms. The specific form of the disease is not named by Josephus, and Luke's precision in describing it may fairly be regarded as characteristic of his calling.

The form of the disease, probably of the nature of phtheiriasis, or the morbus pedicularis, from its exceptionally loathsome character, had always been regarded as a divine chastisement.

The more memorable instances of it recorded in history are those of Pheretima of Cyrene (Herodotus 4.205), Sulla, Antiochus the Great , Herod the Great (Josephus, Antiquities 17.8), and Maximinus, among the persecutors of the Church (Eusebius 8.16; 9.10-11; Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum chapter 33).

The death of Agrippa took place in A.D. 44, in the seventh year of his reign, and at the age of fifty-three.