Not Too Bad

 

Acts 16:16-24 (Daily Office Reading Wednesday 7-28-21)

I don’t have much today. I suppose I could say it was a ‘down-in-the-weeds’ sort of day.

I got meaninglessly stuck on the translation of ‘distaff’ vs ‘crutch’ in Samuel; and as far as the gospel reading went, I realized that I had already done several blog posts in the past on that passage, including a poem, and then I got bogged down in Acts and the strange translations regarding what sort of spirit the slave girl had. The Complete Jewish Bible had it as “a snake-spirit,” which I could find no justification for, although it was intriguing, and I wished I could have found out the reason. All the others say “a spirit of divination.” But the Greek just says she “had a spirit.” (echō pneuma) That’s it. Not a word about what kind of spirit until the next line, in which we are informed that she made a lot of money for her owners by fortune-telling or divination. The interesting thing is that to “have” something means that it isn’t part of you. It’s extra. This girl had an extra ‘moving force’ (‘breath’ or ‘wind’) inside of her, besides her own. All this rustling around in the weeds took me several hours, without any good results. I ended up abandoning all those trains of thought and wondering what the point of the story actually was.

The fact that Paul was able to shut her up is not the point, at least I don’t think it is. The text specifically says that Paul was very annoyed, or ‘vexed’ by her behavior. She followed them and yelled constantly at them. What she was saying was the truth, though: “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.” So, Paul couldn’t have been annoyed about what she was saying, but only by the way that she was saying it— shrill, loud, abrasive, and repetitive; for ‘many days’ she followed them around literally screaming at them.

Then Paul did something that was presumptuous at the very least: he used the name of Jesus for no other reason than to relieve himself of an annoyance. The girl wasn’t doing anything wrong, and he certainly wasn’t motivated by love or compassion to do what he did. Furthermore, there was no way to undo what he did. He shut that girl up permanently, and took away her livelihood. (Yes, I know she was a slave and it was her owners who profited; but nevertheless, as a result of Paul’s action, her life was ruined.) That means that Paul’s arrest was justified. He really did do harm to their business. But, just as today, they couldn’t go with the supernatural explanation when they hauled Paul into court. They couldn’t say, “This man exorcised our slave girl, and now she can’t do divination anymore, and we’ve lost a great money-making scheme.” So, instead they said that Paul was ‘disturbing the peace’ and inciting people to follow Jewish customs which were unacceptable for Romans to practice.

It was all Paul’s fault that they got thrown into jail. If he’d been patient and put up with the annoying girl none of it would have happened.

But what a great story! Maybe Acts ought to be re-titled, “The Adventures of the Apostles”! I honestly don’t think this story is about spreading the Word, rather, it’s a vivid and engaging tale of a dashing escapade. I have to sneak a peek at tomorrow’s reading— but it has guards and earthquakes; jailbreaks and rescues; midnight snacks and last minute reprieves; judges getting intimidated and apologizing, and finally, our heroes getting to say “neener-neener” to the authorities before getting (more-or-less politely) thrown out of town.

 

I think that’s the real point of this story.

It reminds me of the beginning of the movie “The Princess Bride”—

 

 

“Has it got any sports in it?”

 

“Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles...”

 

“Doesn't sound too bad. I'll try to stay awake.”