Acts 23:11 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

Be of good cheer, Paul. — The day had been one of strange excitement, and most have roused many anxieties. Personal fear as to suffering or death he was, more than most men, free from; but was his work to be cut short? Was he to fall a victim to the malice of the Jews? Was the desire, which he had cherished for many years, to preach the gospel in the great capital of the empire (Romans 1:13; Romans 15:23) to be frustrated? These questions pressed upon him in the wakeful night that followed the exhausting day; and, with a nature like St. Paul’s, such anxieties could not but find expression in his prayers. To those prayers the “vision and apocalypse of the Lord” of which we now read was manifestly the answer. To him, tossed on these waves and billows of the soul, as once before to the Twelve tossing on the troubled waters of the Sea of Galilee (Matthew 14:27), there came the words, full of comfort and of hope, “Be of good cheer.” There might be delay and suffering, and a long trial of patience, but the end was certain; he was to reach the goal of Rome.