🌊WEB · Acts 20:12
What does Acts 20:12 mean?
"They brought the boy in alive, and were greatly comforted."
— Acts 20:12 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
A certain young man named Eutychus sat in the window, weighed down with deep sleep. As Paul spoke still longer, being weighed down by his sleep, he fell down from the third floor, and was taken up dead.
Paul went down, and fell upon him, and embracing him said, “Don’t be troubled, for his life is in him.”
When he had gone up, and had broken bread, and eaten, and had talked with them a long while, even until break of day, he departed.
They brought the boy in alive, and were greatly comforted.
But we, going ahead to the ship, set sail for Assos, intending to take Paul aboard there; for he had so arranged, intending himself to go by land.
When he met us at Assos, we took him aboard, and came to Mitylene.
Sailing from there, we came the following day opposite Chios. The next day we touched at Samos and stayed at Trogyllium, and the day after we came to Miletus.
Explanation
Acts 20:12 concludes a memorable and somewhat startling story from Paul's missionary travels. The verse simply states the outcome: the young man who had died was brought back alive, and the people who had gathered were deeply relieved and encouraged. It is a brief but powerful resolution to an incident that had caused great alarm just moments before.
The context is found in Acts 20:7-12, during Paul's visit to Troas near the end of his third missionary journey. Luke, the author of Acts, was traveling with Paul and appears to have been an eyewitness to this event, as the passage is told in vivid, personal detail. The believers had gathered on the first day of the week to break bread together, and Paul, knowing he would be leaving the next day, preached until midnight. A young man named Eutychus was sitting in a window on the third story, and as Paul talked on, he grew increasingly drowsy from the late hour and the many oil lamps in the crowded room. Eventually he fell fast asleep, dropped from the window, and was picked up dead. Paul went down, embraced him, and declared that his life was in him. Paul then went back upstairs, continued talking until daybreak, and finally left. It is at this point that the people brought the boy in, alive, and were greatly comforted.
Theologically, this account demonstrates that the power of God present in the apostles was the same
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