In this chapter, Festus shows up in Caesarea to take Governor Felix’s place, around AD 59. Immediately Paul’s accusers in Jerusalem use the arrival to request a new trial hoping for another ambush attempt. Festus doesn’t move Paul, but hears them out. Lacking evidence of their accusations, he questions Paul who lays out his defense. He asks if Paul wants to face them in Jerusalem, but Paul says wants to go to Rome and see Caesar instead. While Festus initially agrees, something else happens first.

King Agrippa II (grandson of Herod the Great) and Bernice (sister of both Agrippa II and Drusilla, former governor Felix’s wife) show up for a state visit. Governor Festus intrigues them with his inherited prisoner, especially the ongoing debate about a curious person named Jesus of whom the two parties claim is either dead or alive. They decide to hear out Paul in the tribunal. 

The motives of the Roman government are mixed. Festus wants to uphold justice and peace in the region, but he also wants to establish his strength and popularity with other leaders. Both the religious leadership of the Jews and the imprisonment of Paul fall under his jurisdiction.

King Agrippa and Bernice are what remains of the Jewish nobility, figureheads of ethnic leadership under Roman occupation. They oversaw the renovated Temple built by their grandfather. What each group says and does may appeal to wisdom, power or pride. Paul is eager to both defend the legitimacy of Christianity and gain the largest audience, but his judges are not necessarily motivated by pure dedication to truth or justice.