Right up to daybreak, Paul kept urging them all to eat: “Today is your fourteenth day in constant suspense, without taking any food.
33. And when the day began. Whatsoever the mariners think, Paul’s faith doth not quail; “Vacillat,” waver. but he leaneth steadfastly to the promise which was made to him. For he doth not only exhort them to take meat, as did he who, in extreme despair, uttered these words, Dine, soldiers, we shall sup in hell; “Apud inferos,” with the dead.
Paul stands forth among them not as a prisoner but as their counselor and comforter, rescuing them first from despair, for a man will starve himself in despair sooner than any storm can drown him. He assures them in God's name that all their lives shall be saved, and this word pulls them back from the grave when human hope is utterly gone.
AI summary
Commenting on Acts 27:21-44
Wherefore I pray you to take some meat,.... To sit down composedly, and eat meat cheerfully and freely: for this is for your health; the Alexandrian copy reads, "for our health"; it was for the health of them all, that they might be better able to bear the shock and fatigue of the shipwreck, and be in better spirits, and in a better capacity to...