Acts 28:3,4 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

And when Paul Who had learned to make himself servant of all, and would stoop to any thing by which he might be serviceable, was laying on the fire a bundle of sticks Which he had gathered; there came a viper Which had been concealed among the wood; out of the heat, and fastened on his hand Round which it probably twisted itself, and bit it. And when the barbarians saw the venomous beast Or the fierce animal, as θηριον should rather be translated; the word beast being a very improper term for it; they said Seeing also his chains; No doubt this man is a murderer “They concluded he was a murderer, (says Elsner,) rather than a person guilty of any other crime, because they saw the viper hanging on his hand, which therefore they judged to have been the offending member, according to the rule which prevailed among the ancients, that persons were often remarkably punished in that part of the body which had been the immediate instrument of their sin;” whom, though he hath escaped the sea Hath not been destroyed by the tempest and shipwreck; yet vengeance suffereth not (Greek, ουκ ειασεν, hath not suffered) to live They looked upon him as, in effect, a dead man already, after having been bit by that venomous creature. The poison of a viper so inflames the blood, that a person infected with it is usually tormented as with fire, and quickly dies. For this reason, the ancient Scythians, in war, used to dip their arrows in the blood and gaul of vipers, that their enemies wounded by them might die a painful and sudden death. And, in some remote times, some condemned criminals were put to death by vipers set to their breasts: by this means Cleopatra despatched herself. Though δικη, (justice, or judgment,) here rendered vengeance, may be understood of the divine vengeance in general; yet, as these were the words of heathen idolaters, possibly they might refer to a deity worshipped among them under that name; as we know the Greeks and Romans had a goddess whom they termed Νεμεσις, Nemesis, the daughter of Justice, who, they supposed, punished the wicked. It must give us pleasure to trace among these barbarians the force of conscience, and the belief of a particular providence; which some people of more learning have stupidly thought it philosophy to despise. But they erred in imagining that calamities must always be interpreted as judgments. Let us guard against this error, lest, like them, we condemn, not only the innocent, but the excellent of the earth.