⁶After he had spent not more than eight or ten days among them, he went down to Caesarea, and on the next day he took his seat on the tribunal and ordered Paul to be brought. ⁷After Paul arrived, the Jews who had come down from Jerusalem stood around him, bringing many and serious charges against him which they could not prove, ⁸while Paul said in his own defense, “I have committed no offense either against the Law of the Jews or against the temple or against Caesar.”

While Governor Felix let Paul’s case languish for two years (Acts 24:27), his replacement, Festus, would deal with the matter with much greater dispatch, and commence the trial in under two weeks.

On just a minor note, we note that Festus “went down” to Caesarea. Among Jews living in Israel, every city was considered “down” from Jerusalem, their capital and most prominent city. While Mt. Moriah, where Jerusalem was located, was not physically the tallest in Israel, its pinnacle housed the Jewish temple. As the place for meeting God, it was considered the highest in terms of its holiness. And Caesarea, the governing seat for Rome, was by the Mediterranean coast, which was lower in elevation.

Once back in the Roman seat of power, Festus called for Paul’s trial to commence. The scene Luke painted was quite dramatic. Paul stood alone, surrounded by his Jewish antagonists, evoking the experience in Psalm 22, the first line of which Jesus quoted while on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” A typical rabbinical practice was to direct his listeners to an entire psalm or section of Scripture by simply referring to the first line. So when Jesus quoted the first verse, He meant for us to see Him in the entire psalm. And indeed, Jesus was surrounded by those who were cursing and mocking him. The psalmist writes:

Many bulls have surrounded me; strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me. They open wide their mouth at me, as a ravening and a roaring lion. (Ps 22:12–13).

We can see this imagery in Paul’s situation. Yet his antagonists could provide no proof of their accusations. Despite the reputation the Roman overlords had for heavy-handed rule, they did have legal processes that had to be followed. Paul’s defense was a simple but concise denial. He was innocent in three arenas: he had committed no offense against the Jewish law, nor the symbol of God’s presence, the temple. Nor was he guilty of a Roman infraction—he did nothing “against Caesar.”

Lord, I commit to live my life by the laws of the land in which I live.