Acts chapter 12

vs 11

... as opposed to it being a vision, I assume.

vs 12

Is that the John Mark I wonder? I suppose that it is. An interesting choice. There is a tradition that Mark is the one who writes the gospel of Peter, so perhaps they were friends as far back as this?

vs 13

As servants should.

vs 14

Hehehe, oops.

You've got to ask - why does Luke include this story? What's is theological or narrative significance? It doesn't really have any, does it? It's just funny.

vs 15

Now there's a cultural difference for you - they think it's more likely to be an angel than it is to be him freed from prison. What does 'his angel' mean exactly? And why would Peter's angel sound like Peter? Do people really have their own angels? Or perhaps it was just a human messenger they were expecting, as angel is the same word.

vs 16

Dammit, let me in! Of all the things they were expecting, they weren't expecting Peter to be at the door.

vs 17

He wasn't staying - he just wanted to pass on the good news.

vs 18

Oh look, a literary device! If we read this literalistically, then we read that there wasn't a commotion, which is of course unbelievable. "No small" is shared across the KJV, NASB, NIV and TNIV.

vs 19

Eep! Herod was pissed. We might think that this is a bit harsh, especially when Peter was freed by an angel, but guards and centurions and so on were expected not to fail in their work, and death was a common punishment for their failure.

Herod was so upset that he decided to go and have a holiday.

vs 20

Interesting little bit of history there really. It seems unecessary to go into such detail - perhaps it is something that interested Luke, or he's using it as a time measuring device so that we know where we are. It certainly shows its contemporariness - this sort of stuff was probably a whole lot more interesting to the people of the time.