Chapter 27

Chapter 27

Note 1: This Bible study is being created specifically for a friend of mine. It is not meant as an exhaustive study of the book of Acts. Please do your own research, using the commentary links as a starting point, for a better understanding of the book of Acts and other books of the Bible. Thank you for your dedication to studying the word of God!

Note 2: All Bible verse citations are from NKJV (New King James Version) unless otherwise stated.

Note 3: # This symbol will be used for any information from Dr.  Nunnally’s “A Commentary on the Book of Acts” (Source info below). This Bible study is heavily based on Dr. Nunnally’s work. I have not yet discovered if he has published his book, but I will post a link for his work if I find out that he has published it. Feel free to comment on this blog if you discover his published book (if it’s published) before I do!

- All notes that have this or no symbol in front of them are my interpretations of scripture.

*NIV Zondervan study Bible

+ other source (cited within hyperlink or in “Sources” at bottom of page)

Verse 1: It may be obvious to you, but of course they needed to sail to Italy in order to get to the Caesar in Rome. Paul had appealed to Caesar.

Verse 15: “we let her drive” means that they let the ship get driven forward by the wind, not holding it back with the sails. Most likely the sails were already being torn by the wind, so they would have tied up the sails to prevent them from further damage.

Verse 17: “We used cables to undergird the ship” I had always wondered how in the world they could get cables under the boat at this time, until one of my uncles explained it to me. If one sailor held the rope on one edge of the boat, and another sailor held it on the other, they could throw the rope over the boat and slide it underneath (imagine that they were playing jump rope with the boat, throwing the rope underneath the boat while still having the edges of the rope in their hands).

“struck sail” seems to mean lowering the sale, although I didn’t find an exact description when I researched online.

Verse 43: It may seem contradictory that the ship had struck land, yet the men still had to swim for shore. Remember that a ship is much bigger than a boat, therefore it could easily run into land much deeper than a boat would. They had already cut the skiff (boat) off the ship, so they had no choice but to run the ship into the ground and swim from there to the shore.

Source

W.E. Nunnally. A Commentary on the Book of Acts, 2008, Evangel University, 2008, Springfield, Missouri, 2017.