Acts Chapter 24 verse 24 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 24. - But for and, A.V.; Felix came for when Felix came, A.V.; Drusilla, his wife for his wife Drusilla, A.V.; and sent for he sent, A.V.; Christ Jesus for Christ, A.V. and T.R. Came; παραγενόμενος, a very favorite word with St. Luke, occurring twenty-nine times in his Gospel and the Acts. It implies that Felix had been absent from Caesarea for some days after the trial. Drusilla. She was, according to Josephus ('Ant. Jud.,' 20. 7:1, 2) the daughter of Herod Agrippa I., who "killed James with the sword" (Acts 12:1, 2), and died shortly afterwards. She was first the wife of Azizus, King of Emesa; but Felix, becoming enamored of her on account of her singular beauty, employed a certain magician, a Jew named Simon, to entice her away from her husband, and persuade her to marry him, contrary, as Josephus says, to the institutions of her country. She perished, with Agrippa, her only son by Felix, in the eruption of Vesuvius, in the reign of Titus (Josephus, as above). Tacitus says that Drusilla, the wife of Felix, was granddaughter of Antony and Cleopatra. But he seems to have confounded her with another of the three royal wives of Felix, mentioned by Suetonius in 'Claudius;' unless, perchance, as has been conjectured, be had two wives of the name of Drusilla, of whom one was, as Tacitus says, granddaughter of Antony, by being the daughter of King Juba and Cleopatra Selene, Antony's daughter (see note in Whiston's 'Josephus,' and in Kuinoel, on Acts 23:24). But there is no certainty on the subject. Only Josephus's detailed account of Drusilla, the wife of Felix, agrees with St. Luke's statement that she "was a Jewess," and is beyond doubt true.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(24) Felix came with his wife Drusilla.--She was, as has been said (see Note on Acts 23:26), the daughter of the first Herod Agrippa and the sister of the second. In her name, the diminutive of Drusus, and borne also by a sister of Caligula's, we trace the early connection of her father with that emperor. She was but six years of age at the time of her father's death. She had been married at an early age to Azizus, king of Emesa, who had become a proselyte, and accepted circumcision. Felix fell in love with her, and employed the services of a Jewish magician named Simon, whom some writers have identified with the sorcerer of Samaria (see Note on Acts 8:9), to seduce her from her husband. By her marriage with Felix she had a son named Agrippa, who perished in an eruption of Vesuvius (Jos. Ant. xix. 7; xx. 5). It follows from the facts of her life that she could scarcely have been altogether unacquainted with the history of the new society. She must have known of the death of James and the imprisonment of Peter (Acts 12). She may have connected her father's tragic end at Caesarea with the part he had taken in persecuting the faith of which one of the chief preachers was now brought before her. It would seem, from her being with her husband at these interviews, that she was eager to learn more of "the faith in Christ." Felix, too, seems to have been willing at first to listen. This new development of his wife's religion, presenting, as it did, a higher aspect than that of the priests and elders of Jerusalem, was for him, at least, an object of more than common interest. The procurator and his wife were apparently in the first stage of an earnest inquiry which might have led to a conversion.