Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Acts 9:32-43, Lydda and Joppa
Peter heals a paralyzed man at Lydda and, at Joppa, raises Tabitha, a disciple known for her charity, while the widows she clothed stand weeping. He stays on with a tanner.
Acts 9:32-43, in every translation this tool compares.
At Lydda Peter finds Aeneas, paralyzed and bedridden for eight years, and tells him Jesus Christ heals him; he gets up, and people in Lydda and Sharon turn to the Lord. In Joppa a disciple named Tabitha, Dorcas in Greek, known for her good works and her gifts to the poor, falls sick and dies; they wash her body, lay it in an upstairs room and send for Peter. The widows stand weeping and show him the tunics and other clothing she had made; Peter sends them all out, kneels and prays, tells Tabitha to get up, and presents her alive to the believers and the widows. Many in Joppa believe, and Peter stays a long time there with a tanner named Simon.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/widows\/","n":"Widows","s":"A woman whose husband died usually lost her income with him and depended on a son, relatives or charity. A widow who stayed faithful to her husband's memory and did not remarry was honored.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/burial-and-mourning\/","n":"Burial and mourning","s":"Mourners came at once, the dead were buried the same day, wrapped in linen in rock tombs, and family carried the duty of burial. Pagan mourning, with little hope beyond a shadowy underworld, could be bleak.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/unclean-by-touch\/","n":"Unclean by touch","s":"Under the law, skin disease, bleeding, corpses, tombs and certain animals made a person ritually unclean, and touch could pass it on.","r":""}
Joppa was the only significant Jewish port (Keener and his notes). Tabitha in Aramaic and Dorcas in Greek both mean gazelle; many women of means were benefactors, and Jewish women were devoted to charity (Keener and his notes). Women prepared women's bodies for burial, and burial before sunset made the trip of about eleven miles urgent (Keener and his notes). Sending everyone out and presenting her alive recall Elijah and Elisha (1 Kings 17; 2 Kings 4) (Keener and his notes). Tanners handled carcasses and lived outside town near water; strict pietists avoided them as unclean, though many were more bothered by the smell, and later rabbis let a tanner's wife divorce him (Keener and his notes; the ESV Study Bible).
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Acts 9:32, 9:36, 9:37, 9:38, 9:40, 9:41 and 9:43
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Acts 9:32-36, 9:36, 9:37-38, 9:40, 9:41-42 and 9:43
- ESV Study Bible, study notes on Acts 9:36 and 9:43
