Acts 28:6

Verse 6. When he should have swollen. When they expected he would have swollen from the bite of the viper. The poison of the viper is rapid; and they expected that he would die soon. The word rendered "swollen"--pimprasyai--means, properly, to burn, to be inflamed, and then to be swollen from inflammation. This was what they expected here, that the poison would produce a violent inflammation. Or fallen down dead suddenly. As is sometimes the case from the bite of the serpent, when a vital part is affected. They changed their minds. They saw he was uninjured, and miraculously preserved; and they supposed that none but a god could be thus kept from death. That he was a god.