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God Himself lamented over the hard hearted Jewish people. He called them all throughout the Old and New Testament but they refused Him:

1. Ezekial 18:31-32 “Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, saith the Lord God. Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin. Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye.”

2. Luke 19:41-42 “And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, Saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.”

3. Romans 10:21 “But to Israel he saith, All day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people.”

4. Matthew 23:37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!”

Now in the same manor, we see Paul and Barnabas placing the blame on the Jews and stating they are rejecting everlasting life by refusing what they are hearing.

The immediate context identifies God as the one who appointed Paul's Gentile mission (Acts 13:47), and Scripture elsewhere explicitly describes Christ as sending Paul to the Gentiles (Acts 26:17–18).

What “ordained” means in the Greek

The word translated “ordained” in Acts 13:48 comes from the Greek verb τάσσω (tassō; Strong's G5021), whose semantic range includes arranging, placing, setting in order, assigning, and appointing. The key word in Acts 13:48 is τεταγμένοι (tetagmenoi), a perfect participle. Interpreters dispute whether it is best understood as:

1. Passive: "Had been appointed," "had been arranged," or "had been set in order" by an implied agent, traditionally understood by many interpreters to be God. However, the identity of the implied agent must still be determined from the context, and the immediate context provides a basis for understanding the agent as Paul:

   1. v. 42: The Gentiles hear Paul's gospel message and ask that “these words” be preached to them again. This is significant in understanding how they were “arranged/appointed” toward eternal life in v. 48.

   2. v. 44: The next week “almost the whole city together” came to hear Paul, clearly a much larger gathering than the initial group described in v. 42, indicating that many who came the following week had not necessarily heard Paul’s Gospel the previous week.

   3. v. 46: Paul and Barnabas explicitly say, “lo, we turn to the Gentiles.” and v. 47 Paul says God has appointed him “a light of the Gentiles” and for salvation to the ends of the earth.

   4. v. 48: Only some of the Gentiles had heard Paul’s Gospel the prior week; the next week “almost the whole city” came (v. 44). Thus, “as many as were ordained” distinguishes those who had been arranged/appointed toward the Gospel from the larger crowd.

   5. v. 48: “they were glad” and then “believed” “when the Gentiles heard” that Paul was “to be a light” (v. 47) for them, and God’s “salvation” (v. 47) and “everlasting life” (v. 46) were intended for them.

   Here is a Greek scholar that also views it this way:

   1. J. Michael McKay Jr - Passive:

      Claim: “They were arranged [by Paul] for eternal life.”

      McKay rejects “enrolled” and the usual divine-predestination reading. He takes the participle as passive, but argues that the relevant arranger is Paul: through the pattern in the narrative, he first proclaimed to Jews and then turned to receptive Gentiles. They believed, essentially, as many as were arranged by Paul for eternal life believed, through his Jew-first-then-Gentile proclamation pattern

      Date: 2024

      Source: J. Michael McKay Jr., “A Reexamination of τάσσω in Acts 13.48: ‘Enrolled,’ ‘Appointed,’ or ‘Arranged’?” The Bible Translator 75, no. 1 (2024): 50–64.

      URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/20516770241234305

   A pushback someone might make is that when a passive verb in Koine Greek has a specific human agent performing the action, the writer uses a preposition of agency—specifically ὑπό (hypo) + genitive (e.g., hypo Paulou = “by Paul”). But this is not true, here are two examples:

   1. Acts 1:19

      Shows that Luke can use a passive κληθῆναι (“to be called”) without explicitly introducing an ὑπό + genitive agent phrase, even where a human agent is readily inferred from the context. Therefore, the absence of ὑπό + genitive in Acts 13:48 cannot, by itself, determine who is the agent of τεταγμένοι.

   2. Matthew 9:25

      An even stronger example saying: “The people were put forth” (ἐξεβλήθη) is passive and has no ὑπό + genitive agent, yet the context identifies Jesus as the one who put them forth, confirmed explicitly in Mark 5:40. Thus, a passive construction does not require an expressed ὑπό + genitive agent; the agent can be determined from context.

2. Middle/reflexive: "Had arranged themselves," "had aligned themselves," or "had disposed themselves" toward eternal life. This interpretation understands the subjects as participating in the action rather than receiving it from an external agent.”

   The passive is the dominant interpretation in modern translations, lexicons and many commentaries. Nevertheless, the middle/reflexive reading is a real historical interpretive option. The expression can describe people who had come to be positioned, aligned, or disposed toward eternal life, without the verse itself specifying who did the arranging or when it occurred. The following interpreters either identify someone other than God as the relevant agent or understand the hearers themselves as the ones who arranged or disposed themselves:

   1. Richard B. Rackham - Reflexive:

      Claim: ”as many as had marshaled themselves [for eternal life] believed.”

      Rackham is one of the most direct examples of a reflexive/self-arrangement reading: the Gentiles themselves are understood as having put themselves in position for eternal life.

      Date: 1901

      Source: Richard B. Rackham, The Acts of the Apostles: An Exposition (London: Methuen, 1901).

      URL: https://archive.org/search?query=Richard%20Belward%20Rackham%20Acts%20of%20the%20Apostles%20Exposition

   2. Jack Cottrell - Reflexive:

      Claim: “As many as arranged themselves unto eternal life believed”

      Cottrell also gives “turned themselves toward eternal life” and “disposed themselves toward eternal life.” He explicitly argues that the Greek form can be read as middle/reflexive and connects the phrase to Acts 13:46, where the opposing Jews “judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life.”

      Date: 2011; revised online 2013

      Source: Jack Cottrell, “Acts 13:48 and Calvinism.”

      URL: https://jackcottrell.com/acts-1348-and-calvinism/

   3. See also: Henry Alford, Robert Shank and Brian Abasciano

Acts 13:48 does not state that God “ordained” them

The text does not identify God, the Father, or any other as the agent of tetagmenoi “ordaining.” Therefore, the verse alone does not explicitly state that God individually and determinatively selected the Gentiles who believed. A reading with God as the agent is an interpretation rather than an agent directly named in the verse. It creates tension with multiple clear passages of Scripture that present God as desiring the repentance and salvation of all, such as Acts 17:30–31, 2 Peter 3:9, and 1 Timothy 2:4.

Notably, when Scripture explicitly identifies God or Jesus as the agent performing the action described by tassō ("appoint," "ordain," or "arrange"), the agent is stated, whether the verb is used in the passive or middle voice::

1. In the Passive voice:

   Romans 13:1 “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained (tassō) of God.”

2. In the Middle voice:

   Matthew 28:16 “Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed (tassō) them.”

Acts 13 context shows human rejection, not divine exclusion

In the context of Acts 13, verse 46 shows that it was not God who denied the Jews eternal life; rather, the Jews themselves rejected it: “seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life.” Turning to the Gentiles, they are given the same opportunity to accept or reject everlasting life. We know this to be true because just three chapters earlier we are told that God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34–35). He does not favor certain individuals or groups over others.

So if the agent who tasso (ordained) were God here, God's “ordering” could be understood in terms of His providentially establishing the Gentile mission and bringing these people into the sphere where they heard and believed, rather than assuming the text implies an unconditional individual selection of some people to salvation inconsistent and in direct contradiction with other scriptures.

In conclusion, “ordained” describes positioning contrasting Acts 13:46

This kind of language is used elsewhere to describe people being placed, aligned, or ordered within a situation, often in response to circumstances rather than by an eternal decree of God. For example:

1. Active Voice: Acts 15:2 “...they determined (tassō) that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question”

2. Passive Voice: Acts 22:10 “...go into Damascus; and there it shall be told thee of all things which are appointed (tassō) for thee to do.”

3. Active Voice: 1 Corinthians 16:15 “...that they have addicted (tassō) themselves to the ministry of the saints”

Within Acts 13 itself, Luke has just contrasted two groups:

1. the Jews who rejected the word and judged themselves unworthy of eternal life (v.46), and

2. the Gentiles who received it with gladness (v.48).

In v. 46, the Jews “put it from” themselves, meaning they were actively rejecting what God desired for them (cf. John 1:11). This stands in direct contrast to the Gentiles in v. 48, who did not put the message from themselves but instead “were glad, and glorified the Lord.” It is important not to miss the clear contrast between these two parallel verses.

Throughout the book of Acts we consistently see many Jews rejecting the gospel while Gentiles respond in faith (Acts 18:5–7,12–17; 28:23–28). Cornelius in Acts 10 is a clear example, described as “a devout man, and one that feared God with all his house.” Acts 10:2. These unregenerate Gentiles were already seeking God and were prepared to receive the message. They were people with ears to hear.

Luke’s point is not that one group was eternally selected to believe and the other eternally excluded, but that as many as were already positioned (ordained) toward eternal life, those who did not resist the message, believed when they heard it. Cornelius’s entire household feared God, and this is why, when the word was preached, they received the Holy Spirit (Acts 10:44).

The term naturally fits a descriptive, situational sense: people positioned on the side of previously held understanding responded accordingly and believed when they heard the way of salvation was also for them.