🌊WEB · Acts 20:13
What does Acts 20:13 mean?
"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."
— Acts 20:13 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
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.
For Paul had determined to sail past Ephesus, that he might not have to spend time in Asia; for he was hastening, if it were possible for him, to be in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost.
Explanation
Acts 20:13 is a small, almost incidental travel note tucked into Luke's larger account of Paul's journey back toward Jerusalem near the end of his third missionary journey. In plain language, the verse simply says that Paul's traveling companions boarded a ship and sailed ahead to a coastal town called Assos, planning to pick Paul up there, while Paul himself chose to walk the shorter overland route by foot. It's a logistical detail—nothing more dramatic than a scheduling arrangement among friends on a trip.
The context matters here. Luke, the author of Acts, was one of Paul's traveling companions at this point in the narrative—notice the shift to "we," which indicates Luke was present and writing as an eyewitness. This section of Acts (often called one of the "we-passages") covers Paul's final journey to Jerusalem, where he anticipated hardship and possibly arrest. Just before this verse, Paul had spent an emotional night in Troas, where he preached until midnight and raised Eutychus from the dead after the young man fell from a window (Acts 20:7-12). After that eventful stop, the group prepared to continue by sea, but Paul deliberately chose to walk about 20 miles overland from Troas to Assos while the others sailed around the cape.
Theologically, this verse doesn't carry heavy doctrinal weight on its own, but it fits within Luke's broader purpose of presenting a historically reliable, carefully documented account of the early church's growth and Paul's ministry (compare Luke's stated pur
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