Priscilla

I’m weeks late in posting this article. It was supposed to go up on February 27, but Priscilla and her husband Aquila are too special to leave behind just because I’m a few weeks late.

It’s impossible to talk about Priscilla without her husband. Every mention of her in the Bible includes her name next to his. Aquila and Priscilla. Their names even rhyme! At least in English.

We only get glimpses of this dynamic duo in the Bible, but we can infer a lot from those glimpses. We are first introduced to Priscilla and Aquila in Acts 18 when Paul goes to Corinth. Verse two tells us Aquila was a Jew, born in Pontus, a province in the northeastern part of Asia Minor, an area that is now in Turkey. At some point, Aquila and his wife had moved to Rome. When we meet them, they are living in Corinth instead because Emperor Claudius had expelled all Jews from Rome.

The Bible text doesn’t tell us exactly how Paul met this couple. Acts 18:2 simply says Paul found a certain Jew…and he came to them. They were tentmakers by trade and so was Paul, so he began to work with them. They even invited him into their home to live with them. Now when I say tentmakers, I mean literal tentmakers. They made tents. I have no idea out of what or for whom. Was camping a recreational activity back then? I wish I knew, but I imagine not. And it’s not important. They worked together, lived together, and ministered together. Paul went through some scary times in Corinth, and since his residence was in the home of Priscilla and Aquila, they would have faced those struggles with him. Still they pressed on, and verse 8 tell us “Many of the Corinthians, hearing, believed and were baptized.”

Paul stayed in Corinth for a year and a half, and then when it was time for him to move on, he went to Ephesus and took Aquila and Priscilla with him. They must have been very important to him, and vice verse. Once Paul left Ephesus, the couple stayed behind and established a church in their home. (1 Corinthians 16:19).

When a renowned speaker named Apollos came through Ephesus, he preached about John the Baptist, but he didn’t really know or understand the importance of Christ’s death and resurrection. Aquila and Priscilla quietly took him aside, invited him into their home, and taught him all the things he was missing. They must have been excellent teachers, because Apollos went on to become a great evangelist. The Holy Spirit gets first mention in Apollos’s life and choice of following Christ, but God used Priscilla and Aquila along the way to set him straight and strengthen his faith.

We see them again in the second letter Paul wrote to Timothy. He mentions them as being in Ephesus working alongside this young pastor. Paul must have been quite at ease, leaving the new church behind in the hands of young Timothy, knowing such a godly couple was there to offer him support.

To focus specifically on Priscilla since the intent of this series of articles was to look at the lives of the ladies, let me draw up some of my conclusions. What a role model for women. Opening her home to so many others would have involved extra work for her. More mouths to feed. More people to clean up after. More time to spend entertaining guests and making sure her home was welcoming. And still spending time building and maintaining the marriage relationship she had with her husband. And that’s on top of the tent making work that supported them financially. I’m sure at the end of each day when Aquila closed his eyes, the last image he sought out before drifting off to sleep was this beautiful Proverbs 31 woman he’d chosen as his wife. What man could resist a woman who not only slept beside him, but worked, ministered, and entertained beside him? She must have done it all with a joyful spirit because God honored her in a special way, too, by naming her beside her husband whenever they are mentioned in His Word.