Acts 21:12Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

The Apostle’s words made a deep impression on the hearts of his hearers (Acts 20:36). All wept. All fell upon Paul’s neck. All kissed him. The travelers could hardly tear themselves from their hands (21:1). This scene was afterward repeated in Tyre, and finally in Caesarea Philippi. The nearer Paul came to Jerusalem, the more clearly and strikingly the fate awaiting him there appeared before him. In Caesarea, Agabus came to him. This was the same man who, fourteen or fifteen years earlier, had opened Paul’s way to Jerusalem with alms by his prophecy of famine. Now, meeting him again with alms, he bound the hands and feet of the benefactor himself with his own belt. This means, said the prophet, that this man will be bound in Jerusalem and delivered into the hands of the Gentiles.

At this time the prophet Agabus came to Caesarea from Judea (Acts 11:28). By the symbolic act of binding his own hands and feet with Paul's belt, he foretold that the Jews in Jerusalem would bind the Apostle in this way and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles. This moved the Caesarean Christians to beg the Apostle together not to go up to Jerusalem. But Paul answered that he desired not only to be a prisoner, but was ready even to die for the name of Christ. By the feast of Pentecost he arrived in Jerusalem.

In Caesarea the Apostle Paul received a new warning of the danger threatening him. The prophet Agabus came there from Judea. Adopting the symbolic manner of the ancient prophets, he approached the Apostle Paul. He untied the belt with which Paul’s tunic was girded. Binding his own hands and feet with it, he said: "Thus says the Holy Spirit: the man whose belt this is, the Jews will bind in this way in Jerusalem and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles." The brethren themselves already knew of the danger bound up with the impending visit. Yet until now they had not received such definite notice of it. Nor had they foreseen that a Jewish assault could end in Roman imprisonment. Hearing this, the Apostle Paul’s companions earnestly begged him to remain in Caesarea.

They besought him, and so forth. Here, as with the brethren of Tyre, the request rested on loving concern to avert dangers from Paul. It was not a direct revelation of the Spirit that Paul should not go to Jerusalem. It was the personal desire and counsel of the brethren, not an inspiration or demand of the Holy Spirit.

Paul’s attitude toward those who wept out of compassion for his bonds is remarkable for its loving-kindness and its power of admonition and edification. In admonishing all concerning the futility of their pity, he said nothing like what Jesus Christ said in a similar case, when He called the Apostle Peter Satan (cf. Matt 16:23). Instead he exhorts them not to weep, for by this they cause him great grief. As for bonds and sufferings in Jerusalem, he himself desires this. He is even ready to die in Jerusalem for the name of Christ. "No one was more loving than Paul," says Saint John Chrysostom. "He was grieved when he saw them weeping, but he did not grieve over his own sufferings. You wrong me, he says, by doing this. Am I grieving? I weep for you, he says, not for my own sufferings.