Acts 28:13 - Exposition

Made a circuit for fetched a compass, A.V.; arrived at for came to, A.V. ; a south for the south, A.V.; sprang up for blew, A.V.; on the second day we came for we came the next day, A.V. We made a circuit ; περιελθόντες . St. Luke only uses this word in one other passage, Acts 19:13 ," The strolling [or, 'vagabond'] Jews;" and it has the same sense of "wandering" in the only other passages where it occurs in the New Testament ( 1 Timothy 5:13 ; Hebrews 11:37 ). If it is the right reading here, the meaning must be "tacking," the wind not allowing them to sail in a direct course. "I am inclined to suppose that the wind was north-west, and that they worked to windward, availing themselves of the sinuosities of the coast. But with this wind they could not proceed through the Straits of Messina …. They were, therefore, obliged to put into Rhegium But after one day the wind became fair (from the south), and on the following day they arrived at Puteoli, having accomplished about one hundred and eighty nautical miles in less than two days". But Meyer explains it, "after we had come round," viz. from Syracuse, round the eastern coast of Sicily. Lewin thinks they had to stand out to sea to catch the wind, and so arrived at Rhegium by a circuitous course. The other reading is περιελόντες , as in Acts 27:40 ; but this seems to give no proper sense here. A south wind sprang up . The force of the preposition in ἐπιγενομένου shows that there was a change of wind. The south wind would, of course, be a very favorable one for sailing from Reggio to Puzzuoli. Hobart remarks of ἐπιγίνεσθαι (which is also found in Acts 27:27 , according to some good manuscripts) that it "was a favorite medical word constantly employed to denote the coming on of an attack of illness." It occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, but is common in Diodorus Siculus, Xenophon, Herodotus, Thucydides, etc., for the coming on of a storm, wind (adverse or favorable), or any other change. On the second day ; δευτεραῖοι . This particular numeral occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, but the analogous τεταρταῖος is used in John 11:39 . And Herodotus has τριταῖος ἀφίκετο , "he went away on the third day." τριταῖος is also common in medical writers with πυρετός , a tertian ague, a fever that recurs on the third day; τεταρταῖος , a quartan fever; πεμπταῖος , one recurring on the fifth day; ἑβδομαῖος , on the seventh day; ἐνναταῖος , on the ninth day. The forms δεκαταῖος πεντηκοσταῖος , etc., "doing anything on the tenth, the fiftieth day," also occur. Puteoli; now Puzzuoli. The Italian port to which ships from Alexandria usually came. Smith quotes a passage from Seneca (Epist., 77) describing the arrival of the Alexandrian wheat-ships at Puteoli. The whole population of Puteoli went out to see them sail into harbor with their topsails ( supparum ) , which they alone were allowed to carry, in order to hasten their arrival, so important to Italy was the corn trade with Alexandria.