Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Acts 20:9 - 20:9
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
9. καθεζόμενος δέ … ἐπὶ τῆς θυρίδος, and there was sitting in the window. The window in that climate was only an opening in the wall, and not as in our country provided with a framework, the bars of which would have prevented the accident which is here described. The young man was sitting upon (ἐπί) the sill of the opening.
καταφερόμενος ὕπνῳ βαθεῖ, borne down with deep sleep. He is not represented as a careless hearer. But the hour was late, and he was young, and could resist sleep no longer. Here the verb is constructed with the dative, in the next line with ἀπό and a genitive. It would be hard to make a distinction between the two.
διαλεγομένου τοῦ Παύλου ἐπὶ πλεῖον, and as Paul discoursed yet longer. ἐπὶ πλεῖον refers either to the expectation of this youthful hearer or to his exhausted powers. Longer than he expected or longer than he could keep awake.
ἔπεσεν ἀπὸ τοῦ τριστέγου κάτω καὶ ἤρθη νεκρός, he fell down from the third storey and was taken up dead. The latticework with which such windows were closed in the East would be set wide open to admit the cool air into the crowded room. The lad fell out, and down to the floor of the court-yard. There has been much debate whether the restoration of Eutychus was meant to be described as miraculous; whether, that is, ‘dead’ may not be taken for ‘in a swoon like death.’ But St Luke’s expression (Act 20:12) ‘They brought him alive’ seems to leave no room for question. That life was gone by reason of the fall and was restored by the prayer of the Apostle is the natural reading of the story, which has all the vividness that marks the narrative of an eyewitness.