Tool Beta
Is It Actually in the Bible?
Phrases people quote as Scripture. The real verse, or the honest answer that there is not one.
"They fetched a compass" means the sailors used a navigational compass instrument to find their way
"Fetched a compass" meant made a circuit or sailed a curving loop, no instrument involved.
Acts 28:13, in every translation this tool compares.
Acts 28:13 describes Paul's sea voyage: "from thence we fetched a compass, and came to Rhegium." This is a now-obsolete idiom for tracing a circular or roundabout course, from the same root as the drawing tool called a "compass" (from Latin/Old French "compassare," to pace out or go around); the emphasis is on the circling motion, not a magnetized needle-and-dial device used for navigation.
Today "compass" almost exclusively means the navigational instrument, so modern readers naturally but wrongly picture the crew consulting a compass, when the verse is simply saying the ship sailed a curving, roundabout route along the coast.
