Lives of Scripture

Eutychus was a young man present at a late-night gathering in Troas, where believers had assembled to break bread on the first day of the week and Paul, about to depart the next morning, "prolonged his message until midnight" (Acts 20:6-7). The room was crowded and lit with many lamps, likely warm and airless, and Eutychus, sitting in a third-story window, was overcome with sleep as Paul kept talking; he fell fast asleep and tumbled down from the window to the ground below (20:8-9). He was picked up dead. Paul went down, threw himself on the young man, and embraced him, telling the alarmed crowd, "do not be troubled, for his life is in him" (20:10) -- language that closely echoes similar accounts of the prophets Elijah and Elisha raising the dead (1 Kings 17:21-22; 2 Kings 4:34-35), and that Luke, the physician-author of Acts, records as a genuine raising to life rather than merely a survived fall. The gathering then returned upstairs, shared the meal, and Paul kept talking until daybreak before finally departing (20:11). Luke closes the account with a simple, understated line: "they took away the boy alive, and were greatly comforted" (20:12). The episode, part practical mishap and part genuine miracle, is one of the New Testament's more vivid, almost wry glimpses into the ordinary human texture of the early church's gatherings.