Paul and the Viper on Malta #44

Paul and the viper on Malta is a short episode near the end of Acts. After a shipwreck leaves Paul and his fellow travelers on the island of Malta, a viper bites Paul’s hand as he adds sticks to a fire. He shakes it into the flames and is not harmed, and the local people change their opinion of him from suspected criminal to divine being.

The Account

After a fourteen-day storm at sea, the ship carrying Paul, Luke, and 276 people runs aground and breaks apart, and everyone reaches land safely (Acts 27:37-44). Luke reports that the island is called Malta and that its people, whom he calls “native people,” show them unusual kindness, lighting a fire because of the rain and the cold (Acts 28:1-2).

Paul gathers a bundle of sticks and lays it on the fire. A viper, driven out by the heat, fastens onto his hand (Acts 28:3). The islanders see the creature hanging from his hand and say to one another, “among themselves, No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live.” (Acts 28:4). Paul, however, shakes the creature off into the fire and suffers no harm (Acts 28:5). The people expect him to swell up or suddenly fall down dead, but after waiting a long time and seeing nothing unusual happen, they change their minds and say he is a god (Acts 28:6).

Setting and Context

Malta lies in the central Mediterranean, south of Sicily, and the Greek name Luke uses is Melite. Paul is being taken as a prisoner to Rome to have his appeal heard by the emperor (Acts 25:11-12; 27:1). The island is only a stop along the way, and Luke says they stayed for three months (Acts 28:11).

The account continues with the hospitality of Publius, the chief man of the island, whose father is sick with fever and dysentery. Paul prays, lays his hands on him, and heals him, and the rest of the islanders who are sick come and are cured (Acts 28:7-9). The reaction of the locals resembles that at Lystra, where the crowd also decided that Paul and Barnabas were gods, though in the earlier case the apostles quickly rejected the honor (Acts 14:11-15).

What It Reveals

Luke does not explain the miracle beyond describing it, and Paul himself says nothing about it in the account. Some readers connect it with Jesus’s promise to the seventy-two that they would have authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and that nothing would hurt them (Luke 10:19), and with the longer ending of Mark, which mentions picking up serpents (Mark 16:18), though that ending is absent from the earliest manuscripts.

The islanders’ reasoning is worth noting. They interpret misfortune as divine justice, and then reverse their conclusion when the expected result does not follow. Luke uses this to show Paul’s vindication at a moment when he is a prisoner. Christian traditions read the story as a sign of God’s protection over his messenger until the mission to Rome is completed, in keeping with the promise Paul received during the storm that he must stand before Caesar (Acts 27:23-24).