Acts 27

Acts 27 (ESV)✞: Paul Sails for Rome, The Storm at Sea, The Shipwreck

Passage

Kind of a long passage for me to blog all at once, but part of the reason it’s so long is that Luke fills it with so many place names. He’s recounting Paul’s sea voyage, intended for Rome (but instead getting shipwrecked at Malta), and lists every stop along the way, giving us a very full accounting of the trip – but I don’t know what to do with those details. 🙃 My favourite Study Bible had some thoughts, though:

Acts 27:1–44 Paul Journeys to Rome by Sea. … The voyage to Rome (which probably began in the autumn of A.D. 59) is given in great detail and with remarkable exactness, consistent with what is otherwise known about sea travel in that time and place. The keynote of the story is God’s providence, especially in preserving Paul for his Roman testimony. At a literary level the story is told to indicate how far and difficult the journey to Rome is, as the gospel heads toward the ends of the earth.

ESV Study Bible

The overall story is this:

Verses	Story	Comments
1–12	Covers the majority of the journey, up to a place called Fair Havens, arriving at a time of the year that they shouldn’t be doing any more sailing.	At this point Paul warns them to go no further, saying that not only the ship and the cargo but their very lives will be lost. They decide to go on (taking the pilot’s advice over Paul’s) because the harbour isn’t adequate to spend the winter in.
13–38	They encounter a fierce storm, threatening to break the ship apart. The sailors start throwing cargo overboard trying to lighten the ship.	Paul tells them that an angel of God has appeared to tell him that not a soul will be lost, though the ship will.
	At one point some sailors want to sneak off and escape on their own	Paul tells the soldiers that if the sailors escape the rest of the passengers cannot escape
39–44	The ship runs aground. The soldiers decide to kill the prisoners, to ensure that none escape, but the centurion prevents them from doing so, and eventually, floating on flotsam and jetsam1, they all make it to shore.	The reason the centurion prevents the soldiers from killing the prisoners is that he specifically wants to save Paul.

Thoughts

One thing I note about this passage—and, in fact, the previous passages covering Paul’s imprisonment and “trials”—is the way Paul is treated by his captors throughout. He is allowed to have friends caring for him whenever possible (including some stops along the way on this voyage), and the centurion saves all of the prisoners from being killed for Paul’s sake.

I’m guessing there are a few things going on here:

1. I keep coming back to the fact that Paul hasn’t actually been charged with anything, and those tasked with accompanying him probably all knew that.
2. He was a Roman citizen, which called for a certain amount of deference. In a previous passage the centurion in Rome had had a slightly lower status than Paul, having had to pay for his citizenship while Paul was born a Roman.
3. I think it’s safe to say that Paul was living out the Gospel in front of these men!

That last point is important. Paul wasn’t spending all day every day evangelizing; I’m guessing he probably got into a lot of conversations with various people explaining the Gospel, yes, but he also ate and slept and had “normal” conversations (i.e. not about the Gospel), and did all of the things a person normally does throughout the course of a day. As he did so, however, it would have been clear that he loved all of his fellow humans as images of God – even his captors. That he genuinely cared about their well being. If Paul was living the way he tells us to live when he wrote all of his letters, it would have been a joy to have him as a prisoner!

Even more important would be the fact that he would sometimes fail at living like that (because nobody is perfect except for Christ Himself), and would then repent of those actions. Paul wasn’t preaching a Gospel in which one has to be perfect in order to earn God’s favour; he was preaching a Gospel in which God has done all the work, and we strive to be perfect as a result – but because the work is already done, it doesn’t ruin one’s salvation when one fails; we seek God’s forgiveness, He is just to forgive us, and we continue on serving Him.

When we live rightly people will see that in us. So I’m not surprised at the way the Romans continue to treat Paul.

The Varying Predictions about the Shipwreck

Paul gives a number of predictions about what’s going to happen in this storm and it could get confusing, but I don’t think it actually is if you parse it out.

Verses	Prediction	Context
10	If we try to sail in this weather we’ll all perish	Seems to be Paul’s own judgement – no mention of a vision or anything
21–26	The ship is going to run aground and be lost, but everyone on board will be saved	This was directly told to Paul by an angel, and the angel even gave a reason: because Paul has to stand before Caesar
31	Paul tells the centurion and soldiers that the passengers cannot be saved unless the sailors stay with the ship	We’re not told of any divine intervention in this case
33–38	Paul suggests that they eat something, because they’ve been in suspense for so long that they haven’t been eating	Not actually a “prediction,” per se, but because Paul believes the prediction he knows that they’re going to be saved
42–44	The soldiers want to kill the prisoners but the centurion prevents them	Again, not a prediction, this is the prediction being fulfilled

This could be read in such a way that the predictions shift over time but I don’t think that’s the case.

The first prediction (in which Paul says that they’ll all die if they sail at that time of year), is just Paul’s opinion, and the second prediction (in which Paul says that they’ll all be saved regardless of the storm), is given to Paul by an angel, so this is no longer an opinion it’s a prophecy.

The third prediction in which Paul says that the passengers can’t be saved unless the sailors stay with the ship does give people some problems. Which is it? The angel said everyone would be saved, now Paul is saying the people can only be saved under certain circumstances. But the angel that gave the prediction to Paul already knew that the sailors weren’t going to leave, so therefore the prediction that they’d all survive stands; Paul’s “prediction” that they wouldn’t survive if the sailors left was hypothetical.

It is, in fact, interesting that Luke keeps in all of these details. It would have been easier to focus on just the prediction (from the angel) that they’d all survive, and then at the end of the passage point out that yes, they survived, just as the angel predicted, but Luke decided to keep in all of the interim predictions.

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Footnotes

• I’ve heard the phrase “flotsam and jetsam” before and it seemed appropriate for the context but I decided to look it up just to be sure. And yes, these are correct terms: according to the National Ocean Service, “Flotsam is defined as debris in the water that was not deliberately thrown overboard, often as a result from a shipwreck or accident. Jetsam describes debris that was deliberately thrown overboard by a crew of a ship in distress, most often to lighten the ship’s load. The word flotsam derives from the French word floter, to float. Jetsam is a shortened word for jettison.” So the people escaping from the shipwreck would indeed have been using both flotsam and jetsam to make their escape. ↩