On the appointed day, Herod appeared before the people of Tyre and Sidon in all his royal splendor and delivered an eloquent speech (Acts 12:21). The Jewish historian Josephus noted that he wore a robe of silver, designed to sparkle in the sun.2 Impressed by this display, the people of Tyre and Sidon credited him with being a god, not a man (Acts 12:22). Herod’s heart was happy to agree with that assessment, but the angel of the Lord struck him, which makes this the second time in this chapter that the angel struck someone (Acts 12:23). Earlier he had struck Peter graciously in order to free him from death (Acts 12:7); now he struck in wrath, delivering Herod over to death.

Deliverance

Acts 12 opens on a very dark note. Herod the king—that is, Herod Agrippa—arrested a number of the Christians in Jerusalem and executed James, the first apostle to be martyred for the faith (Acts 12:1–2). Then he arrested Peter and planned to execute him too, as soon as the Passover festival was over (Acts 12:3–4). Staging a rescue was out of the question. Peter was guarded day and night by four squads of four soldiers. He was chained to one on his right and one on his left, with two guarding the door; each squad rotated every six hours (Acts 12:4). Humanly speaking, Peter seemed doomed, yet the church was praying to God for him.

And God answered their prayers. An angel of the Lord appeared in Peter’s cell and struck him on the side (Acts 12:7). He woke Peter up and brought him out past the guards, out through the outer door, and then left him there on the street, dazed but free. Only once he was outside did Peter realize that this was not simply a vision but reality (Acts 12:10–11). God had delivered him from the hands of Herod.

Peter saw in all this more than simply a random act of kindness on God’s part. He recognized a pattern here, a pattern that dated all the way back to the time of the exodus.1 Just as Israel had been in bondage in Egypt and God had sent his angel to deliver them, so also on this particular Passover night, God sent his angel once again to deliver his servant from the hand of God’s enemies. That was why Peter’s statement of his deliverance in Acts 12:11 contained a clear echo of the Septuagint of Exodus 18:4 and Exodus 18:10. When his people cried out to him, God once again answered and brought them—in this case, Peter—out of the house of bondage.

We should not, however, miss the irony of Peter’s words here. God delivered him not only from Herod but also from “all that the Jewish people were expecting” (Acts 12:11). On the night of Passover, of all nights, the Jewish people should have been remembering their deliverance out of Egypt and anticipating the Messiah to come. Instead, having failed to recognize the Messiah when he came, they themselves took the place of the Egyptian oppressors, from whom God had delivered his people. What a tragic reversal!

Once free, Peter went to the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark (Acts 12:12). This was also, probably not coincidentally, the place where many people had gathered to pray. The church in Jerusalem had an enviable commitment to prayer, yet their prayers, like the prayers of many of us, seem to have been offered more in hope than in faith.

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