Affording Honey

Acts 28:1–2

And when they were escaped, then they knew that the island was called Melita. And the barbarous people shewed us no little kindness: for they kindled a fire, and received us every one, because of the present rain, and because of the cold.

Melita. Malta. Hitchcock: «affording honey.»

After fourteen days of storm, after the ship broke apart, after 276 people dragged themselves through the surf on boards and broken planks — sweetness. The island of honey receives them. The barbarous people (Luke’s term for non-Greek speakers, not a moral judgement) show «no little kindness.» They kindle a fire. They receive every one. And Fausset preserves an irony that Luke does not mention: shortly before Paul’s visit, Cilician pirates — Paul’s own countrymen from Tarsus — had used Malta as their haunt. The man from the city of wings arrives shipwrecked at the island his countrymen had plundered. But where the Cilicians came to take, the Cilician apostle comes to give. Honey, in Scripture, represents the goodness of the land God provides: «a land flowing with milk and honey» (Exodus 3:8). After the carnal sea and the trodden-down coast, God sets Paul’s feet on honey.

And then the viper.

Acts 28:3–5

And when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks, and laid them on the fire, there came a viper out of the heat, and fastened on his hand. And when the barbarians saw the venomous beast hang on his hand, they said among themselves, No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live. And he shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no harm.

Kentron number three. And note the word Luke uses for “viper” — echidna (G2191). It appears five times in the New Testament. Four of those are metaphorical: Jesus and John the Baptist calling the Pharisees «a generation of vipers» (Matthew 3:7; 12:34; 23:33; Luke 3:7). The fifth is here — the literal viper on Malta. The same word that described the religious leaders who rejected Christ now describes the serpent that fastens on Paul’s hand. The metaphorical sting meets the literal one. And Paul shakes it off.

Not the goad of the Damascus road. Not the city of the sting at Derbe. A literal sting — fangs in flesh, venom in blood. The people of Malta draw the obvious conclusion: this man must be a murderer. Justice has pursued him across the sea, and the serpent is its instrument. They wait for him to swell up and die.

He does not die. He shakes the viper into the fire and feels no harm.

Three stings, three survivals. The divine goad that could not destroy him because it was not meant to — it was meant to turn him. The city of the sting that could not hold him because he rose and walked to it the day after being left for dead. And now the serpent that cannot kill him because the sting of death has been answered — not yet in writing (1 Corinthians was written years before this voyage), but in the pattern of his life. The word he preached to the Corinthians — «O death, where is thy kentron»? — is being enacted on the shore of Malta.

The Maltese change their minds. «They said that he was a god» (Acts 28:6). The Lystrans said the same thing before they stoned him (Acts 14:11). Paul is neither. He is a vessel. He is the small one. And the small one, untouched by the viper’s sting, heals the sick of the island — beginning with the father of the chief man, Publius. Publius — from the Latin publicus, meaning «common; of the people.» The man of the people receives the man of God, and the man of God heals the man of the people’s father. The honey flows both ways: the island receives Paul, and Paul heals the island.

From Malta they sail to Puteoli — Hitchcock: «sulphureous wells.» The smell of volcanic fire. The last stop before Rome. The final approach to the seat of power smells of brimstone and heat. And there, at Puteoli, they find brethren — believers already in place — and tarry seven days (Acts 28:14). Even at the gates of power, the church has arrived before Paul.

Then Rome.

Acts 28:15–16

And from thence, when the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii forum, and The three taverns: whom when Paul saw, he thanked God, and took courage. And when we came to Rome, the centurion delivered the prisoners to the captain of the guard: but Paul was suffered to dwell by himself with a soldier that kept him.

Rome. Hitchcock: «strength; power.»

The small one arrives at power. Paulos — little — enters Roma — strength. A prisoner with a guard, dwelling by himself. And yet the final verses of Acts show him doing what he has always done: «preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him» (Acts 28:31). Chained, yet free. Small, yet powerful. From Tarsus — the city of wings — to Rome — the seat of power. The full arc of the winged one, completed.

But there is one letter from this Roman imprisonment that this book, of all books, must not pass over. Paul is in chains in Rome — the small one in the seat of power, preaching to all who come (Acts 28:30–31). And from that cell, among the letters to Ephesus and Philippi and Colossae, he writes a short personal note — twenty-five verses, the shortest of his epistles — that is built entirely, explicitly, playfully, theologically, on the meaning of a name.

The letter to Philemon.

Philēmōn (G5371) — from phileō (G5368), to love, to kiss. Hitchcock: «who kisses.» Philemon is a believer in Colossae, a man of means, whose house serves as a meeting place for the church. He owns a slave named Onesimus — Onēsimos (G3682), from oninēmi (G3685), to profit, to benefit. Literally: «profitable; useful.»

Onesimus ran away. He fled from Philemon, made his way to Rome, and there — in the most unlikely of providences — he encountered Paul in prison and was converted. The profitable one, who had been unprofitable to his master, became profitable again through the gospel.

And Paul, writing to Philemon, cannot resist the name. He makes the pun explicit:

Philemon 1:10–11

I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds: Which in time past was to thee unprofitable, but now profitable to thee and to me.

Look at the Greek. The word for “unprofitable” is achrēstos (G890) — which sounds, to a Greek ear, like a-Christos: without Christ. And the word for “profitable” is euchrēstos (G2173) — which sounds like eu-Christos: good in Christ. Paul is making a triple wordplay: on the slave’s name (Onesimus/profitable), on his former state (a-christos, without Christ), and on his new state (eu-christos, useful in Christ). The one who was without Christ has become good in Christ, and the profitable one is profitable again.

In a book about the hidden language of names, this is the passage where the hidden language breaks the surface and becomes the text itself. Paul does not merely use the name — he preaches through it. He sends Onesimus back to Philemon — the profitable one back to the one who kisses — and asks: «receive him, that is, mine own bowels… not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved» (Philemon 1:12, 16). The demanded one, who once demanded that slaves of the faith be dragged to prison, now begs a slave-owner to receive a runaway slave as a brother. The kenosis is complete. The one who demanded has learned to beseech.

And then, in verse 20, one more pun — the most hidden of all. Paul writes: «Yea, brother, let me have joy of thee in the Lord» (Philemon 1:20). The Greek word for “have joy” is oninēmi (G3685) — and it appears nowhere else in the entire New Testament. Paul invents a hapax legomenon to make one final wordplay on the name Onēsimos. The verb and the name share the same root. “Let me have an Onesimus-experience of you,” Paul is saying. “Let me profit from you as I have profited from your slave.” It is a name-pun wrapped inside a theological appeal wrapped inside a single Greek word that exists only here.

And the letter has a hidden architecture built on two words that appear together nowhere else in Scripture. The word anapauō (G373) — to rest, to refresh — and splanchnon (G4698) — bowels, the seat of compassion — co-occur in exactly two verses in the entire Bible: Philemon 1:7 («the bowels of the saints are refreshed by thee, brother») and Philemon 1:20 («refresh my bowels in the Lord»). They bookend the letter. And both words carry more weight than their English translations suggest. Abbott-Smith reveals that anapauō in the Septuagint chiefly translates the Hebrew nuach — the root of Noah’s name, the word for rest that runs from the flood to the fallow field to the Spirit of God alighting on the Messiah (Isaiah 11:2). The rest-word that bookends Philemon is the rest-word of Genesis, the rest of the Spirit descending. And splanchnon — translated “bowels” — is the Greek word for the sacred inner portions of a sacrifice, the parts reserved for those who offered. When Paul writes «receive him, that is, mine own bowels» (Philemon 1:12), he is using the language of the altar. Onesimus is his sacrifice, his sacred portion. The letter built on names uses the rest-word of Noah and the sacrifice-word of the temple.

And he signs the letter with a final flourish: «I Paul have written it with mine own hand… having confidence in thy obedience» (Philemon 1:19, 21). The closing greetings carry their own weight. Epaphras — «covered with foam» — a fellow-prisoner. Marcus — «shining» — the same John Mark who deserted at Perga, now restored. Aristarchus — «the best prince.» Demas — «popular.» And Lucas — «light-giving.» Paul does not yet know that Demas — the popular one — will desert him: «Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world» (2 Timothy 4:10). The man named “popular” chose popularity over Paul. But the shining one who once deserted came back. Even in the greetings, the names prophesy. The small one writes with his own hand from a Roman cell, staking his reputation on the meaning of a name — that the profitable one will indeed prove profitable, and that the one who kisses will receive him with a kiss.