Eutychus

Biblical Account

Eutychus appears only in Acts 20:7-12. His name means "fortunate" in Greek. Traveling to Jerusalem at the close of his third missionary journey, Paul stayed seven days in Troas. On the day before his departure, "upon the first day of the week," the believers gathered "to break bread." Because Paul was to leave the next day, he "continued his speech until midnight" (20:7).

The gathering took place in an upper chamber where many lights were burning. The young man Eutychus, who was sitting in a window, sank into a deep sleep and "fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead" (20:9). Paul went down, fell on him, embraced him, and said, "Trouble not yourselves; for his life is in him" (20:10). Paul then went back up, broke bread and ate, talked a long while until daybreak, and departed. The people "brought the young man alive, and were not a little comforted" (20:11-12). This passage belongs to the so-called "we passages," in which the narrator speaks in the first person plural. For this reason it has traditionally been regarded as an eyewitness account by its author, Luke.

Significance Within Scripture

The scene of Paul lying upon the dead young man and restoring him to life recalls the accounts of Elijah and Elisha raising dead children (1 Kings 17; 2 Kings 4). Within Acts, many interpreters see it as a counterpart to Peter's raising of Tabitha (Acts 9), illustrating the continuity of God's power working through the apostles. The passage is also frequently cited as a record of early believers gathering on the first day of the week to break bread and hear the word.

Interpretation and Points of Debate

• Was he actually dead? Most church traditions take the text's statement that he "was taken up dead" at face value and therefore read the event as a miracle of raising the dead. Some scholars, appealing to Paul's words "his life is in him," interpret Eutychus as having only appeared to be dead.
• The breaking of bread: Some interpret the "breaking of bread" at this gathering as the Lord's Supper, while others see it as an ordinary meal (or an agape feast).
• The first day of the week: Many denominations cite this passage as one of the grounds for the early church's practice of gathering on the Lord's Day. Sabbath-keeping groups such as the Seventh-day Adventist Church either understand it, following the Jewish reckoning of days, as a Saturday-night meeting or argue that the passage does not establish regular Sunday worship. This issue is discussed further in the article The Sabbath and the Lord's Day.
• Details not in the text: Some commentators suggest that Eutychus was a slave who had come after a day's work, or that he grew drowsy from the smoke of the lamps. These are conjectures, not statements of the text. Nor can his exact age be known; the text calls him only a "young man."

In the Korean Church

In sermons and Sunday school lessons in the Korean church, Eutychus is often mentioned lightheartedly as a cautionary example of dozing off during worship. His story is also presented as an account of the grace that restored to life a young man who had suffered a fatal accident, and of the comfort the community received as a result.