Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 23:26

"Claudius Lysias unto the most excellent governor Felix, greeting." — Acts 23:26 (ASV)

A letter beginning with a salutation that (1) named the sender, (2) named the recipient, and (3) sent greetings was the standard form for a letter of antiquity and is common to every letter of the NT, except Hebrews and 1 John.

For the first time in Acts, the commander’s name is given. He was evidently a freeborn Greek who had worked his way up through the ranks of the Roman army and at some time paid an official of Claudius’s government to receive Roman citizenship (cf. comment on 22:28). At that time his Greek name Lysias became his Roman cognomen, and he then took the nomen Claudius in honor of the emperor. Felix was the governor of the Roman province of Judea from A. D. 52–59 . The title “Excellency” (GK 3196) here denotes an honorific title for highly placed officials in the Roman government (cf. 24:3; 26:25). 27–30 The body of the letter summarizes the events from the riot in the temple precincts to the commander’s discovery of a plot against Paul’s life. Paul may very well have smiled to himself when he heard how Lysias stretched the truth to his own benefit in claiming to have rescued Paul from the mob because “I had learned that he is a Roman citizen,” omitting any reference to the proposed flogging. The most important part of the letter, that concerning Lysias’s evaluation of the Jewish opposition to Paul, was clear: “I found that the accusation had to do with questions about their law, but there was no charge against him that deserved death or imprisonment” (v.29). That was of great significance not only for Paul’s fortunes but also for Luke’s apologetic purpose. 31–32 The soldiers carried out their orders and brought Paul during the night to Antipatris, a town built by Herod the Great in honor of his father Antipater. Having left Jerusalem at nine in the evening (cf. v.23), the detachment lost no time in covering the distance by morning. When the conspirators were left far behind and ambush was less likely, the infantry turned back to Jerusalem and the cavalry took Paul to Caesarea, some forty miles distant. 33–35 At Caesarea, the prisoner and Lysias’s letter were turned over to Felix, the governor. On reading the letter, he questioned Paul on the basis of its contents. Had Paul been from one of the client kingdoms in Syria or Asia Minor, Felix would probably have wanted to consult the ruler of the kingdom. But on learning that Paul was from the Roman province of Cilicia, he felt competent as a provincial governor to hear the case himself, when Paul’s accusers arrived from Jerusalem. In the meantime, Paul was kept under guard in the palace Herod the Great built for himself at Caesarea. It now served as the governor’s headquarters and also had cells for prisoners.