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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 670. Bernice and St. Paul
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Bernice and St. Paul
Cæsarea on the Sea is, next after Jerusalem, the most prominently mentioned city in the pages of the New Testament. It was indeed less ancient than Corinth or Ephesus, or even than Antioch or Thessalonica. Only about twenty years before the Christian era it was built and named in honour of the Roman emperor on a part of the coast of Palestine where merely a tower and a poor village had existed before. But the new city rapidly grew to be a place of large population and of no inconsiderable renown. Its magnificent harbour became the usual place of approach and departure for travellers to and from the Holy Land (Act_18:22; Act_25:1; Act_27:1-2). The seat of government (Act_23:23; Act_23:33; Act_25:13), and the place where the largest military force of the country was quartered (Act_10:1; Act_25:23), it was connected by good roads with Jerusalem and the interior (Act_23:31-33) and also (along the coast-line) with ptolemais and all the north in one direction (Act_10:5; Act_10:8; Act_10:23-24). The greatness, however, of Cæsarea decayed almost as rapidly as it rose. In the course of a very few centuries it passed altogether out of the field of history; and now that city which in St. Paul's day was the most eminent and magnificent in Palestine is a mere collection of utter ruins on a desolate shore. It might seem as if these buildings had been raised up to be the scene of impressive Biblical histories. All their chief interest is connected with the family of the Herods, and with those Roman governors under whom the Jews were provincials.1 [Note: J. S. Howson, Scenes from the Life of St. Paul, 138.]
1. Felix had been about a year in office, as procurator of Judæa, when Agrippa the younger, who had continued at Rome, and was now about twenty-six, received from the Emperor, 53 a.d., an accession of dignity. He was removed from the kingdom of Chalcis, which he had held for four years, and was promoted to the tetrarchy of Herod Philip, comprising Trachonitis, Gaulanitis, Batanaea, and Ituraea, with the addition of Abilene. These yielded him an income of one hundred talents, or about £25,000 per annum, a moderate sum for royalty, but not so contemptible if we take into account the high value of money at that day. Agrippa now took leave of the Emperor, and embarked for his kingdom. He fixed his ordinary residence at Cæsarea Philippi, the capital, but he had also a palace, the patrimony of his family, at Jerusalem, on the brow of Sion, opposite the Temple, and he frequently made his abode there, particularly at the celebration of the principal festivals. It seems that Bernice also accompanied her brother Agrippa from Rome, and scandal, whether justly or not, still followed her into her own country.
2. It was during the procuratorship of Felix that St. Paul was arrested at Jerusalem and sent down to Cæsarea, for trial. Bernice's youngest sister, Drusilla, was now the wife of Felix, and in this way was destined, like her sister, to come into contact with the Apostle.
For two years Felix kept St. Paul in prison at Cæsarea in the hope that he would tire him out, and so at last force him to seek his liberation by means of a bribe. During all this time Felix would often send for his captive and hold conferences with him. St. Luke significantly informs us that Drusilla the wife of Felix was a Jewess, connecting this statement with the fact that the Roman governor “sent for Paul, and heard him concerning the faith in Christ Jesus.” The implied suggestion is that the nationality of the wife of Felix prompted his interest in his prisoner. Perhaps Drusilla was drawn to the Apostle at first only from the idle motive of curiosity. We have no information as to any impression he may have made on her. Since her dissolute husband was deeply affected by the Apostle's trenchant words on the great moral principles of temperance and righteousness, and alarmed to trembling at the warnings he heard of coming judgment, it can scarcely be that they meant nothing to Drusilla. And yet no permanent effect was left on Felix, and we have no ground for supposing that his wife yielded to the truth in which she had shown some interest.
3. About the year 60, Felix was recalled, and was succeeded in the governorship by Porcius Festus. Festus seems to have been a better ruler, and probably he was a better man, than Felix, but he cared little for religion, and could not understand religious earnestness. He was perplexed about this Jewish prisoner; it occurred to him that he might try the case at Jerusalem; and it was then that St. Paul, apprehending the danger he was in, took the great step of appealing to Cæsar.
Only a day or two had elapsed after the appeal, when Agrippa ii. and his sister came down to Cæsarea to pay their respects to the new procurator. It was a compliment which they could never safely omit, and we find that they paid similar visits to each procurator in succession. The regal power of Agrippa, such as it was, depended on no popular support, but simply and solely on the will of the Emperor. As a breath had made him king, first of Chalcis, then of the tetrarchy of Philip, and finally of various other cities, so on any day a breath might unmake him. He was not, like his father, “the king of the Jews,” and therefore St. Luke, with his usual accuracy in these details, calls him only “the king”; but as he had succeeded his uncle Herod of Chalcis in the guardianship of the Temple, with its sacred robes, and the right of nomination to the high-priesthood, he practically became a mere gilded instrument to keep order for the Romans, and it was essential for him to remain on good terms with them. They in their turn found it desirable to flatter the harmless vanities of a phantom royalty.
4. Festus received Agrippa and Bernice very graciously, and mutual hospitalities soon established an intimacy. In the course of conversation, Festus alluded to a subject which he rightly conceived would not be uninteresting to his guests. One may imagine the languid air of the palace when the conversation flagged, and Festus, for lack of other topics and because his guests were Jews, “laid Paul's case before the king.” He relates the story (finely preserved by St. Luke) with an air of nonchalance and a tone of superiority to St. Paul and Jesus natural to this Roman governor of easy manners and morals. He stands for his adherence to Roman usage in the matter of the request at Jerusalem, and expresses his surprise at the pettiness of the Jewish charges against St. Paul, merely “certain questions against him of their own religion, and of one Jesus, who was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive.”
“There is a certain man,” he said, “left in bonds by Felix; about whom, when I was at Jerusalem, the chief priests and the elders of the Jews informed me, desiring to have judgment against him. To whom I answered, It is not the manner of the Romans to deliver any man to die, before that he which is accused have the accusers face to face, and have licence to answer for himself concerning the crime laid against him. Therefore, when they were come hither, without any delay on the morrow I sat on the judgment seat, and commanded the man to be brought forth. Against whom when the accusers stood up, they brought none accusation of such things as I supposed; but had certain questions against him of their own superstition, and of one Jesus, which was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive. And because I doubted of such manner of questions, I asked him whether he would go to Jerusalem, and there be judged of these matters. But when Paul had appealed to be reserved unto the hearing of Augustus, I commanded him to be kept till I might send him to Cæsar.” Agrippa expressed a desire “to hear the man” himself. Next day, at Festus' commandment, Paul was brought forth.
5. It was not, as is commonly represented, a new trial. That would have been, on all grounds, impossible. Agrippa was without judicial functions, and the authority of the procurator had been cut short by the appeal. It was more of the nature of a private or drawing-room audience-a sort of show occasion designed for the amusement of these princely guests, and the idle aristocracy of Cæsarea, both Jewish and Gentile. Festus ordered the auditorium to be prepared for the occasion, and invited all the chief officers of the army, and the principal inhabitants of the town. The 5th, 10th, and 15th legions or regiments of the line, besides five cohorts or auxiliary corps, with accompanying squadrons of cavalry, were usually stationed at Cæsarea, and the gleaming armour and gay attire of the great captains of the Roman army of Judæa, with the furred gowns and flowing robes of the municipal authorities, must have presented a most imposing spectacle, well calculated to stimulate the energies of the Christian advocate.
The Herods were fond of show, and Festus gratified their humour by a grand processional display. He would doubtless appear in his scarlet paludament, with his full attendance of lictors and bodyguard, who would stand at arms behind the gilded chairs which were placed for himself and his distinguished visitors. We are expressly told that Agrippa and Bernice went in state to the Prætorium, she, doubtless, blazing with jewels, and he in his purple robes, and both with the golden circlets of royalty around their foreheads, and attended by a suite of followers in the most gorgeous apparel of Eastern pomp. It was a compliment to the new governor to visit him with as much splendour as possible, and both he and his guests were not sorry to furnish a spectacle which would illustrate at once their importance and their mutual cordiality.
It was before this notorious brother and sister that St. Paul was now to present his case, as he had previously done before the younger sister Drusilla.
6. In their private conversation Festus had told the king that the main charge against him turned upon the fact that “one Jesus, which was dead,” was affirmed by St. Paul to be alive. If Agrippa's heart had not been hardened, the bare mention of the Name would have stirred unpleasant memories. Did he think of his great-grandfather Herod, and the massacre of the innocents? of his great-uncle Antipas, and the murder of John the Baptist? Did he realize how closely, but unwittingly, the faith in that “one Jesus” had been linked with the destinies of his house? It was James, an Apostle of Jesus, whom his father had beheaded; it was Peter, another Apostle of the same Jesus, whom he had cast into prison; and immediately after those two events he had gone down from Judæa to Cæsarea, and there, probably in the very hall where they were then assembled, while he was making an oration to the people, “immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost.” The persecution of the followers of Jesus and the first Agrippa's death had been, we should imagine, inseparably linked together in history.
7. St. Paul had now before him one whose moral responsibility was greater than that of Festus, and to whose conscience a direct path was open through the remembrance of early religious impressions. Thus turning to him abruptly, after the brief dialogue with Festus, he exclaimed, “King Agrippa, believest thou the prophets? I know that thou believest.”
Here it is that Agrippa uttered the words which are popularly understood as an acknowledgment that, under the pressure of this appeal, he was “almost persuaded to become a Christian”; and it is with reluctance that we deviate from this interpretation, remembering how often it has been used to point a most serious moral. But we really gain more than we lose by the correct translation, which may be given thus on the highest authority: “What? In so short a space, and on so slight a summons to become a Christian-to forfeit perhaps fortune and rank, and to become the brother and the fellow of an outcast like thee-to part with all, as the result of listening, in a casual visit, to a poor prisoner's self-defence-such changes are not for me!” It was a scornful retort, either uttered to disguise his real feelings, or the true expression of a cold heart; and derisive smiles from Festus and Bernice very probably accompanied the words.
The substance of the Apostle's reply, intensely earnest, but tenderly delicate, may be given on the same authority. “Well! be it sooner or later; be it on the sudden or on long reflection; be it by my brief words, or by any other process which God may see fit in His wisdom and in His mercy to employ; my heart's desire and prayer is that thou, with all that hear me, mightest become such as I am, except these bonds.” What a royal courtesy, what a commanding dignity, is in these memorable words! The true king here was the manacled and suffering prisoner, not the monarch seated in state by the side of the Emperor's representative and surrounded by all the pomp of office.
8. Now Bernice was present throughout this memorable scene. She heard the Apostle's thrilling account of his conversion; she heard his declaration about Christ; she heard him speak of the resurrection. What an utterly different world this Jew lived in from that in which she had been brought up! What an entirely new range of ideas he was setting before her! For a moment the golden gates were opened, and she looked into a realm of the very existence of which she had previously had no conception. It was her first introduction to the spiritual world. Like Balaam, she saw the star afar off. Faint and dim must have been her conception of it. We do not know whether it dwelt much with her. Yet she could not easily forget so impressive a scene. We may suppose it not unlikely that in rare quiet moments the memory of this inspired Jew and his startling message would float back into her mind and perhaps stir some slumbering thoughts of better things than she ever saw in her daily life at court.
You have had such visions of Christ as have caused you to overflow with love. You have felt love within you as a river that has burst its banks and deluged your very nature. It was by the ministry of the Holy Ghost. Your glimpses, your visions, you wished them to abide there; but no, they passed on, and yet after they had gone, their very memory was to you inspiration, strength, and heaven in pledge.1 [Note: J. Parker.]