What does Acts 28:6 mean?
Paul and 275 others have survived a raging storm on the Mediterranean Sea. This culminated in a shipwreck which destroyed everything but the lives of the people (Acts 27). The castaways find themselves on the island of Malta, south of Sicily and not far from Italy. They are so close to their destination—Rome—but they'll have to wait out the winter before they can find another ship to give them passage. For now, they just want to get warm (Acts 28:1–2).The locals have kindly built a fire for them in the rain. Paul reaches to grab sticks to place on the flames when a snake, attracted to the heat, fastens onto his hand. Malta has little history of venomous snakes, and the ones living there today are likely an invasive species. The reaction of the locals suggests one of two things. One possibility is that they think of this snake as extremely dangerous. This would either be because it is—and such snakes were in Malta before being formally recorded by western scientists—or because it looks like the more dangerous snakes found in Africa.
The other likelihood is that the locals know Paul is a prisoner. His bad luck suggests he must be a murderer: since the sea couldn't take him, perhaps the gods have sent the serpent. Paul, however, shakes the animal into the fire, completely unharmed (Acts 28:2–5).
In the minds of the islanders, a criminal might have escaped one intended judgment but fall to another; a god would be immune to any calamity. This is not the first time Paul has been mistaken for a god. On his first missionary trip, he healed a man who had been crippled from birth in Lystra. The people determined he was Hermes and Barnabas was Zeus. The two were horrified. They tore their garments and insisted they were merely men. In fact, they barely managed to keep the people from sacrificing to them (Acts 14:8–18).
Herod Agrippa I had a different response to being called a god. He established games in his capital of Caesarea Maritima in honor of Caesar. One day, he appeared in a cloak threaded with silver. The sunlight reflected off the metal, and the people declared him to be a god. Despite normally showing great respect for the Jewish God, Agrippa took a little too long to refute their worship. He died a few days later of intestinal worms (Acts 12:20–23).
Undoubtedly, Paul corrected the islanders, but he did accept the leader's invitation to stay with him. After Paul healed the leader's father and several other islanders, the castaways found all their needs filled for their three-month stay as well as their journey to the mainland (Acts 28:7–11).
