Acts 16


Acts 16 is the sixteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records the second missionary journey of Paul, together with Silas and Timothy. The book containing this chapter is anonymous but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that Luke composed this book as well as the Gospel of Luke.

Text

The original text was written in Koine Greek and is divided into 40 verses.

Textual witnesses

Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter are:
This chapter mentions the following places :
The second missionary journey of Paul took place in c. AD 49.

Verse 1

Verse 9

Verses 9 record a vision in which the Paul is said to have seen a 'man of Macedonia' pleading with him to "come over to Macedonia and help" them. The passage reports that Paul and his companions responded immediately to the invitation. The passage is considered to echo in which the men of Gibeon sent to Joshua saying "... come up to us quickly, save us and help us". The first seal of Massachusetts Bay Colony had an American Indian with a scroll coming out over his mouth with the words "Come over and help us", also said to echo the words of the man of Macedonia.

The woman of Filippi and the spirit of divination

Verses 16 to 18

But Paul, greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, "I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her." And he came out that very hour.''
The passage refers of woman who was possessed by a "spirit of divination", whose nature remains unclear. Paul ordered to the spirit to come out of her and this happened in the Name of Jesus Christ, like apostles were called to do against demons. Nevertheless, the spirit of divination affirmed for some days that Paul and Silas were servants of the Most High God.

Verse 31