Chapter 21
[Acts 21:5] -- We set out, being escorted by wives and children, etc. The prophecy which sings of the Church is fulfilled: The daughters of Tyre will seek your favor with gifts, the rich among the people (Psalm XLIV), and the rest, up to the end of the Psalm. For no city received, held, or dismissed the Apostle with greater sweetness. Indeed, today the place in the sands where they prayed together is shown.
[Acts 21:10] -- A certain prophet came down from Judea. He says from Judea because Caesarea, where they were staying, belongs to the region of Samaria, situated at the border of Phoenicia and Palestine.
[Acts 21:11] -- Thus says the Holy Spirit: The man whose belt this is, will be bound by the Jews in Jerusalem in this way. He imitates the old prophets, who used to say: Thus says the Lord God. Because the Holy Spirit is equally Lord and God, as the Father and the Son, and their activity cannot be separated, whose nature and will is one. Whence we also read above: The Holy Spirit said: Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them (Acts XIII), that is, the apostleship. And Paul himself writes: Paul, an apostle not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ, and God the Father (Galatians I). We have said this, lest anyone, after the manner of Macedonius, thinks the Holy Spirit to be a creature or of lesser authority than the Father or the Son.
[Acts 21:18] -- The following day Paul went in with us to James. This James was the brother of the Lord, that is, of Mary, the sister of the Lord's mother, whom John the Evangelist mentions, and he was her son. Immediately after the passion of the Lord, he was appointed bishop by the apostles and ruled the Church in Jerusalem for thirty years, that is, until the seventh year of Nero. When the Jews, who were keen to kill Paul, could not do so, as soon as Festus died and Albinus had not yet arrived in the province, they turned their hands against James, who was buried next to the temple where he had been cast down.
[Acts 21:21] -- But they have heard about you, that you teach the Jews among the Gentiles to depart from Moses, etc.; that is, they claim that you say that what was administered to the fathers by Moses should be condemned as sacrilegious and not commanded by God due to the doctrine of Christ. This had been alleged of Paul, not by those who understood with what mind these things should have been kept then by the faithful Jews to commend the divine authority and the prophetic sanctity of those sacraments, not to attain salvation, which was already being administered in Christ through the sacrament of baptism; but by those who had spread this about Paul, who wished these things to be observed as if salvation in the Gospel could not be obtained without them. For they considered him a most vehement preacher of grace, teaching contrary to their intent, that one is not justified by those things, but by the grace of Christ, for whom these shadows in the law were ordained to foretell. Therefore, seeking to stir up envy and persecution against him, they accused him as an enemy of the law and divine commandments. He could not more fittingly avoid the envy of this false accusation than by himself observing those things which he was thought to condemn as sacrilegious, thus showing that neither the Jews at that time should be prohibited from them as impious, nor the Gentiles compelled to them as necessary. For if he indeed rejected them as had been heard, and yet undertook to celebrate them to conceal his opinion with a simulated action, James would not have said:
[Acts 21:24] -- And all will know that what they have heard about you is false; but would have said, All will think: especially since the apostles had already decreed in Jerusalem that no one should compel the Gentiles to Judaize. However, they had not decreed that no Jew should be prohibited from Judaizing then, although even the Jews were already not compelled by Christian doctrine.
[Acts 21:27] -- And when the seven days were nearly completed. These days were not yet completed, but their course was ongoing, the completion was awaited. Hence it is more clearly said in Greek: When the seven days were beginning to be completed. Otherwise, the statement he made after five days of being in Caesarea to the governor cannot stand: For it is not more than twelve days since I went up to worship in Jerusalem. For if you add these seven days and those five days of the council in which he dissociated the Pharisees and Sadducees, and that in which the Jews vowed to kill him, undoubtedly more than twelve days will be found there.
[Acts 21:28] -- Here is the man who speaks against the people, the law, and this place, teaching everyone everywhere. Because they saw that the followers of the new grace attended the ceremonies of the law and the solemnities of the temple less, they feared, as it is read in the Gospel, that the Romans would come and take away both their place and nation.
[Acts 21:37] -- He said: Do you know Greek? Are you not the Egyptian, etc.? For an Egyptian had come to Judea, who by magical art claimed prophecy for himself, gathered about thirty thousand Jews; and leading them through the desert, he came to the Mount of Olives, ready to rush from there into Jerusalem and subjugate the city for himself. But Felix anticipated his attempt, quickly meeting him with armed men. The Egyptian, having fled with a few, and others being killed, easily restrained the rash attempt.
[Acts 21:38] -- Four thousand men of the Sicarii. There is no controversy to be held between the tribune who spoke these things and Josephus who wrote about the Egyptian. For it could happen that he first came with a few, the same secretly leading a tyranny, but later joined many to himself by public deceit. It is read, however, that in the time of Felix, this kind of robber arose, who, not seeking hidden places or times, but carrying daggers, that is, short swords in hand, mixed among the people in the very light of day, attached themselves by blind wounds, to the point that death prevented a complaint, and the striker lay hidden. And if anyone were moved by the fact that such things were done in the middle of the city, he too perished. Thus, by fear of danger or dissimulation of the crime, the assassin was not apprehended.
[Acts 21:39] -- A townsman from Tarsus in Cilicia, a not unknown city. The Apostle was indeed born in the town of Giscala in Galilee. When it was captured by the Romans, he moved with his parents to Tarsus in Cilicia. From there, sent to Jerusalem for the study of the law, he was instructed by Gamaliel, a very learned man, as he himself recounts later. However, he calls himself not a citizen but a townsman, from the township, that is, the territory, of the same city in which he was raised. It is called a municipality, because it only pays duties or taxes. For noble and very famous causes, and those which derive from the emperor, belong to the dignity of the cities. And no wonder that he calls himself a Tarsian and not a Giscalite, since the Lord Himself, although born in Bethlehem, is not called a Bethlehemite but a Nazarene.