The Book of the Acts

32While Peter was making a general tour73 he came down to the saints who resided at Lydda.

33There he found a man named Aeneas, who was paralyzed and had been confined to bed for eight years.

34“Aeneas,” said Peter to him, “Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and make your bed.” He got up at once.

35All the residents of Lydda and the (Plain of) Sharon saw him, and they turned to the Lord.

32 We left Peter in 8:25 when he returned to Jerusalem with John from their visit to Samaria. Now we find him, taking advantage probably of the collapse of the recent persecution, engaged in an itinerant ministry of visitation among the dispersed Christian communities of Judaea. There was one such community in Lydda (the Greek name of Lod). The nucleus of this community was doubtless formed of fugitives from the persecution in Jerusalem; we should remember also that Philip passed through those parts preaching the gospel on his way from Azotus to Caesarea (8:40). Lydda was at this time the center of a Judaean toparchy or administrative district.

33–34 It is natural to suppose that Aeneas, the man whom Peter cured from his eight-year-old paralysis74 at Lydda, was a member of the local Christian group, though this is not expressly stated. The command, “Jesus Christ heals you,” may involve a play on words in the Greek.75 The following words, “Get up and make your bed,” might alternatively be rendered, “Get up and set the table for yourself”—that is, “Get yourself something to eat.”76 This has been thought to accord well with the interest shown by Luke and other New Testament writers in the provision of nourishment for convalescents.77 But the rendering “Make your bed” is more probable in the context. If Aeneas was already at home, he could not be told to roll up his mattress and go home with it, like the paralytic of Capernaum in Mark 2:9 and parallels (cf. John 5:8); but he could at least be told to roll it up and put it away.

35 The news of Aeneas’s cure spread throughout the neighborhood and all over the coastal plain of Sharon. Many of the people in that area came to see him, and the result was a further access of believers. Since much of this territory was semi-Gentile in population, a further widening of the range of the saving message is implied.

2. Peter at Joppa: The Raising of Dorcas (9:36–43)

36Meanwhile at Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha—her name means “Gazelle” (Dorcas in Greek). She spent all her time in the performance of good works and acts of kindness.

37About that time she fell sick and died, so they washed her and laid her in an upper room.

38The disciples at Joppa heard that Peter was at Lydda, so, as Lydda was near Joppa, they sent two men to him with the request: “Please come over to us without delay.”

39Peter got up and went with the men. When he arrived, they brought him up to the upper room, and all the widows came up to him and stood weeping, showing the dresses and coats which Dorcas made78 while she was with them.

40Peter put everyone out, knelt down, and prayed, and then, turning to the body, said, “Tabitha, get up.”79 She opened her eyes and, seeing Peter, she sat up.

41Then he gave her his hand and raised her up; he called in the saints and the widows and presented her alive.

42This became known throughout the whole of Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.

43Then Peter stayed in Joppa for a considerable time with one Simon, a tanner.

36–38 Joppa (Jaffa, Heb. Yafo) is on the Mediterranean coast, about ten or eleven miles northwest of Lydda. It is mentioned in Egyptian records of the fifteenth century B.C., and several times in the Old Testament. Today it is included in a large conurbation with the modern city of Tel-aviv.

In Joppa, as in Lydda, there was a group of believers in Jesus. While Peter was in Lydda, a member of this group fell sick and died. Her name, Tabitha, is Aramaic, meaning “gazelle”;80 Dorcas is the Greek equivalent. (The corresponding Hebrew form, Zibiah, occurs as a woman’s name in 2 Kings 12:1.) Dorcas’s works of Christian charity had specially endeared her to her friends and neighbors. The leaders of the believers in Joppa, having heard perhaps of Peter’s healing of Aeneas, sent to Lydda and begged him to come on to Joppa.81 (It is interesting to note how frequently in Acts, as here, a delegation consists of two men.)

39 Peter went to Joppa with the two messengers, and was brought without delay into the room where Dorcas’s body had been laid out, after being washed in accordance with the Jewish custom of purification of the dead.82 There stood the widows who had been the principal beneficiaries of her charity, displaying, as they wore them,83 the garments that Dorcas had made for them.

40–42 Peter sent them and the other mourners out of the room, as he had seen his Master do before he raised Jairus’s daughter from her deathbed; then he uttered a short sentence in Aramaic, differing only in one letter from Jesus’ words to Jairus’s daughter. Whereas Jesus had said Talitha qum (i) (Mark 5:41),84 Peter now said Tabitha qum (i))—“Tabitha, get up.” She opened her eyes and sat up, and Peter raised her to her feet and presented her alive to her wondering friends.85 “The circumstantial details of the gradual recovery of Tabitha,” says Hobart, “are quite in the style of medical description.”86 Many other inhabitants of Joppa inevitably joined the followers of a Master by whose power so marvelous an act of healing and restoration had been accomplished.

43 Peter stayed on in Joppa for a considerable time. His host, Simon the tanner, lived by the seaside; no doubt he used sea water in his work.87 It would not be surprising if he lived a little way outside the town; some degree of uncleanness was reckoned to attach to a tanner’s work, because it involved regular contact with the skins of dead animals. Luke shows an interest in the names of hosts and hostesses and in people’s occupations.88