Acts 16:34 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

He set meat before them, and rejoiced. — Literally, set a table before them. The two sufferers may well have needed food. If the tumult had begun, as is probable, as they were going to the proseuclia for morning prayer, at the third hour of the day (9 A.M.), they had probably been fasting for nearly twenty-four hours. They were not likely to have made a meal when they were thrust into the dungeon. The “joy” of the meal reminds us of that noted as a chief feature of the social life of the disciples at Jerusalem in Acts 2:46. The new hope, succeeding to the blank despair, brought with it what we may well describe as a new “joy in the Holy Ghost” (Romans 14:17). The absence of the specific term of “breaking bread” excludes the idea of its having been, in the later sense of the term, an eucharistic feast; and St. Paul would probably have hesitated to admit the new convert to the Supper of the Lord without further instruction, such as we find in 1 Corinthians 10:15-17; 1 Corinthians 11:20-34; but the meal at which the teachers and the disciples, so strangely brought together, now sat down may, at any rate, be thought of as an agape or “feast of charity.” (See Note on Jude 1:12.)