Acts 8:4

Note

On the day Stephen was stoned, a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem. It was meant to finish the church. Instead it carried the gospel out of the city, and this verse is where the story turns.

Saul gave his approval to Stephen's death, and "all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria" (Acts 8:1). Saul went from house to house, dragging men and women off to prison (Acts 8:3). Then comes this verse, and in Greek it opens with a "therefore" (oun) that the BSB leaves unspoken: the scattering had a result, and the result was preaching. The risen Lord had said, "you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8). The second ring of that promise opens through persecution, and those who carry it are not the apostles but believers whom, apart from Philip in the next verse, Luke never names.

The verb is euangelizomai (εὐαγγελίζομαι), here the present middle participle euangelizomenoi, with "the word" (ton logon) as its object: they went about bringing the word as good news. The main verb, diēlthon, "they went through," is an aorist; the participle beside it is present. Going and telling are one movement: wherever they went, they told. "Scattered" is diasparentes, an aorist passive participle of diaspeirō, which is the verb for sowing seed (speirō) with a prefix meaning "throughout." Its root holds a picture of sowing, and the refugees can be read as seed flung across a field. In the next verse, when Philip goes down to Samaria and "proclaimed the Christ to them" (Acts 8:5), Luke uses a different verb, kēryssō, the word for a herald's announcement. He alternates the two for the same work.

The KJV says they "went every where preaching the word"; the BSB, that they "preached the word wherever they went." Both keep "the word" and say "preach," so the good news inside the verb drops out of sight. The LSV restores it in its literal way: "proclaiming good news—the word." The noun "gospel" is not in the Greek here, but the verb carries it, and a reader who knows that hears the verse differently. What the scattered carried was news, and it was good.

Matthew Henry draws the lesson for any time of trouble: "Though persecution must not drive us from our work, yet it may send us to work elsewhere" Matthew Henry. And: "Wherever the established believer is driven, he carries the knowledge of the gospel" Matthew Henry. Wesley notices how Luke builds his story. These words, he says, "are reassumed, after as it were a long parenthesis, chap. xi, 19" Wesley. Between the two verses stand Samaria, the Ethiopian, Saul's conversion and Cornelius's house; when the thread is picked up again, the scattered have reached Antioch (Acts 11:19–20).

Near the end of the second century Tertullian, defending the Christians before the governors of Rome, said that the blood of Christians is seed Tertullian, Apology 50. Long before him, the verb Luke chose for the scattering already held the same picture.

The preachers of this verse had no titles and no plan; the road they were driven down became the road the word travelled. Whoever finds their life moved somewhere they never meant to go may find that the gospel can reach them there too, and go on from there.