Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 27:21

"And when they had been long without food, then Paul stood forth in the midst of them, and said, Sirs, ye should have hearkened unto me, and not have set sail from Crete, and have gotten this injury and loss." — Acts 27:21 (ASV)

After long abstinence . . .—We find from Acts 27:35-38 that there was still a fair supply of food on board, but, as they could not tell how long it might be before they reached a harbor, the crew (amounting, with passengers, to two hundred and seventy-six men (Acts 27:37)) had naturally been put on reduced rations, and the storm, and the sacrifice which they had been obliged to make of all their goods that could be spared, probably made cooking all but impossible.

Paul stood forth in the midst of them.—The narrative implies that while others had burst into wailing cries of despair, calling, we may believe, like the sailors in Jonah 1:5, every man unto his god, the Apostle had passed his hours of darkness in silent communion with God and now came forward with the assurance that his prayers were heard. With the feeling natural to one whose counsel had been slighted, he reminds them that if they had followed it, they would have been spared the harm and loss (the same words are used in the Greek as in Acts 27:10) to which they were now exposed. “Sirs,” as in Acts 14:15 and Acts 19:25, answers to the Greek for “men.”

And to have gained this harm and loss.—Better, to have been spared. The English reads as if the words were ironical, but parallel passages from other Greek writers show that to “gain” a harm and loss meant to escape them—to get, as it were, a profit out of them by avoiding them. This, St. Paul says, they would have done had they listened to his advice. The Geneva version adds an explanatory note: “that is, you should have saved the loss by avoiding the danger.” Tyndale and Cranmer take the words as the English reader, for the most part, takes them now: “and have brought unto us this harm and loss.”