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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - Acts 27:21 - 27:21
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
When they had been long without food (pollēs te asitias huparchousēs). Genitive absolute, the old word asitia from asitos (Act 27:33) a privative and sitos, food, here alone in N.T. Literally, “There being much abstinence from food.” They had plenty of grain on board, but no appetite to eat (sea-sickness) and no fires to cook it (Page). “Little heart being left for food” (Randall). Galen and other medical writers use asitia and asitos for want of appetite.
Stood forth (statheis). As in Act 1:15; Act 2:14; Act 17:22. Pictorial word (Page) that sets forth the vividness and solemnity of the scene (Knowling).
Ye should have hearkened unto me (edei men peitharchēsantas moi). Literally, “It was necessary for you hearkening unto me not to set sail (mē anagesthai).” It was not the “I told you so” of a small nature, “but a reference to the wisdom of his former counsel in order to induce acceptance of his present advice” (Furneaux). The first aorist active participle is in the accusative of general reference with the present infinitive anagesthai.
And have gotten this injury and loss (kerdēsai te tēn hubrin tautēn kai tēn zēmian). This Ionic form kerdēsai (from kerdaō) rather than kerdēnai or kerdēnai is common in late Greek (Robertson, Grammar, p. 349). The Revised Version thus carries over the negative mē to this first aorist active infinitive kerdēsai from kerdaō (cf. Mat 16:26). But Page follows Thayer in urging that this is not exact, that Paul means that by taking his advice they ought to have escaped this injury and loss. “A person is said in Greek ‘to gain a loss’ when, being in danger of incurring it, he by his conduct saves himself from doing so.” This is probably Paul’s idea here.