Acts of the Apostles 9

¹ Meanwhile Saul was still breathing threats to slaughter the Lord’s disciples. He had gone to the high priest

² and asked for letters addressed to the synagogues in Damascus, that would authorise him to arrest and take to Jerusalem any followers of the Way, men or women, that he could find.

³ Suddenly, while he was travelling to Damascus and just before he reached the city, there came a light from heaven all round him.

⁴ He fell to the ground, and then he heard a voice saying, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’

⁵ ‘Who are you, Lord?’ he asked, and the voice answered, ‘I am Jesus, and you are persecuting me.

⁶ Get up now and go into the city, and you will be told what you have to do.’

⁷ The men travelling with Saul stood there speechless, for though they heard the voice they could see no one.

⁸ Saul got up from the ground, but even with his eyes wide open he could see nothing at all, and they had to lead him into Damascus by the hand.

⁹ For three days he was without his sight, and took neither food nor drink.

¹⁰ A disciple called Ananias who lived in Damascus had a vision in which he heard the Lord say to him, ‘Ananias!’ When he replied, ‘Here I am, Lord’,

¹¹ the Lord said, ‘You must go to Straight Street and ask the house of Judas for someone called Saul, who comes from Tarsus. At this moment he is praying,

¹² having had a vision of a man called Ananias coming in and laying hands on him to give him back his sight.’

¹³ When he heard that, Ananias said, ‘Lord, several people have told me about this man and all the harm he has been doing to your saints in Jerusalem.

¹⁴ He has only come here because he holds a warrant from the chief priests to arrest everybody who invokes your name.’

¹⁵ The Lord replied, ‘You must go all the same, because this man is my chosen instrument to bring my name before pagans and pagan kings and before the people of Israel;

¹⁶ I myself will show him how much he himself must suffer for my name’.

¹⁷ Then Ananias went. He entered the house, and at once laid his hands on Saul and said, ‘Brother Saul, I have been sent by the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on your way here so that you may recover your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit’.

¹⁸ Immediately it was as though scales fell away from Saul’s eyes and he could see again. So he was baptised there and then,

¹⁹ and after taking some food he regained his strength.

²⁰ he began preaching in the synagogues, ‘Jesus is the Son of God’.

²¹ All his hearers were amazed. ‘Surely’ they said ‘this is the man who organised the attack in Jerusalem against the people who invoke this name, and who came here for the sole purpose of arresting them to have them tried by the chief priests?’

²² Saul’s power increased steadily, and he was able to throw the Jewish colony at Damascus into complete confusion by the way be demonstrated that Jesus was the Christ.

²³ Some time passed,[*a] and the Jews worked out a plot to kill him,

²⁴ but news of it reached Saul. To make sure of killing him they kept watch on the gates day and night,

²⁵ but when it was dark the disciples took him and let him down from the top of the wall, lowering him in a basket.

²⁶ When he got to Jerusalem he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him: they could not believe he was really a disciple.

²⁷ Barnabas, however, took charge of him, introduced him to the apostles, and explained how the Lord had appeared to Saul and spoken to him on his journey, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus.

²⁸ Saul now started to go round with them in Jerusalem, preaching fearlessly in the name of the Lord.

²⁹ But after he had spoken to the Hellenists, and argued with them, they became determined to kill him.

³⁰ When the brothers knew, they took him to Caesarea, and sent him off from there to Tarsus.

³¹ The churches throughout Judaea, Galilee and Samaria were now left in peace, building themselves up, living in the fear of the Lord, and filled with the consolation of the Holy Spirit.

³² Peter visited one place after another and eventually came to the saints living down in Lydda.

³³ There he found a man called Aeneas, a paralytic who had been bedridden for eight years.

³⁴ Peter said to him, ‘Aeneas, Jesus Christ cures you: get up and fold up your sleeping mat’. Aeneas got up immediately;

³⁵ everybody who lived in Lydda and Sharon saw him, and they were all converted to the Lord.

³⁶ At Jaffa there was a woman disciple called Tabitha, or Dorcas in Greek,[*b] who never tired of doing good or giving in charity.

³⁷ But the time came when she got ill and died, and they washed her and laid her out in a room upstairs.

³⁸ Lydda is not far from Jaffa, so when the disciples heard that Peter was there, they sent two men with an urgent message for him, ‘Come and visit us as soon as possible’.

³⁹ Peter went back with them straightaway, and on his arrival they took him to the upstairs room, where all the widows stood round him in tears, showing him tunics and other clothes Dorcas had made when she was with them.

⁴⁰ Peter sent them all out of the room and knelt down and prayed. Then he turned to the dead woman and said, ‘Tabitha, stand up’. She opened her eyes, looked at Peter and sat up.

⁴¹ Peter helped her to her feet, then he called in the saints and widows and showed them she was alive.

⁴² The whole of Jaffa heard about it and many believed in the Lord.

⁴³ Peter stayed on some time in Jaffa, lodging with a leather-tanner called Simon.