The Lord had been kind to Paul and his travelling companions (including Luke), fellow prisoners, passengers, soldiers and sailors. After more than two weeks adrift in a storm at sea, all 276 people on board the Alexandrian cargo/passenger ship were safe, even though the ship had broken up on the sandbar. After swimming towards the sandy beach or clinging to pieces of wreckage, the survivors assembled in the rain on a sandy beach at the northwest of the island of Malta.

After the dramatic shipwreck, Paul, his travelling companions and the military escort spent the winter on Malta. The unpredictably strong winds made commercial shipping impossible until springtime.

Paul, under house arrest in Rome, had invited the Jewish religious leaders to his home. As a committed Jew, he called them his 'brothers', explaining that he loved the Scriptures and his people. He had not broken any Roman law, but had appealed to Caesar because the authorities could not resolve, what they saw as, a religious dispute.

Paul's encounter with the Jewish leaders in Rome was to enable them to see how Jesus was the Messiah they had been anticipating (Acts 28:17-22). But, as he spoke, the leaders started arguing with each other.