5. Paul’s Defense to the People of Jerusalem (22:1–21)
1“Brothers and fathers, listen to me as I now speak in my defense.”
2When they heard him addressing them in the Hebrew speech, they listened to him even more quietly.
3“I am a Jew,” he went on, “born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strict interpretation of our ancestral law. I was a zealot for God,1 as you all are today.
4I persecuted this Way to the death; I bound both men and women with chains and handed them over for imprisonment.
5Indeed, the high priest2 can bear me witness in this, together with the whole body of elders. From them I received letters for our brothers in Damascus and was making my way there in order to bring those who had fled there3 to Jerusalem as prisoners, for punishment.
1–2 Speaking Aramaic, then, Paul asked the crowd to listen to what he had to say for himself, beginning with the same words as Stephen had used many years before at the outset of his defense.4 When they realized that the man whom they execrated as a renegade was addressing them in their vernacular, the silence which they had reluctantly accorded to his beckoning hand became deeper still, and they allowed him to go on.
3–4 His defense takes an autobiographical form, as he tells his hearers of his heritage and upbringing as a strictly orthodox Jew, of his call and commission by the risen Jesus on the Damascus road, and of his being sent to evangelize the Gentile world. This is the second account in Acts of Paul’s conversion; the first is related in the third person in 9:1–22, and the third (like this) is in the first person, on Paul’s own lips, as he makes a further defense—this time before the younger Agrippa (26:2–23). Along with the virtual identity of the subject matter in the three accounts, there are subtle divergences of style and presentation, especially between the two delivered in the first person, each of which is specially adapted to its audience.
Here Paul emphasizes that, while he was born in Tarsus, he was brought up in Jerusalem, exposed only to Jewish influences. Some writers have given rein to free imagination as they have described the Tarsian influences which would have made their mark on Paul in his formative years; according to this account, however, his formative years were spent in Jerusalem.5 When the time came for him to receive his higher education, it was to none of the academies of his native city that he was sent, but to the school of Gamaliel. We have met Gamaliel already as a leader of the Pharisees in Jerusalem and an illustrious teacher of the law.6 The “strict interpretation of our ancestral law” which Paul learned in his school accorded with Pharisaic tradition. What is said here may be compared with Paul’s account in Gal. 1:14 of his advancing in Judaism beyond many of his contemporaries and his zeal for the ancestral traditions. As in his letters, so here he emphasizes his persecution of the Way7 as the supreme manifestation of his zeal for God.8
5 He goes on to tell how, in pursuance of his campaign of repression against the disciples of Jesus, he went to Damascus, armed with letters accrediting him as an emissary from the high priest and Sanhedrin at Jerusalem. These authorized him to procure the arrest and extradition of those disciples who had sought refuge in that ancient Syrian city.
b. The Damascus Road (22:6–11)
6“So, as I was on my way to Damascus, I was approaching the city when suddenly, about noon, a great light from heaven flashed round about me.
7I fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to me,9 ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’10
8‘Who are you, Lord?’ I answered. ‘I am Jesus’, said he, ‘—Jesus the Nazarene, whom you are persecuting.’
9The men who were with me saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one who was speaking to me.
10‘What shall I do, Lord?’ said I. ‘Get up,’ said the Lord to me, ‘and go into Damascus; there you will be told about all that has been appointed for you to do.’11
11As12 I could not see13 because of the glory of that light, my companions led me by the hand and I came into Damascus.
6–9 Paul now describes the blinding light that flashed around him and his fellow-travelers about midday as they approached the walls of Damascus, and the voice that challenged him as he lay prostrate on the ground: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” “Who are you, Lord?” was Paul’s surprised question, and more astounding still was the swift reply: “I am Jesus of Nazareth,14 the one you are persecuting.” While this interchange was taking place between Paul and the glorified Lord, his companions stood by amazed. They too had seen the lightning flash and were momentarily stunned by it; now they heard Paul speaking, but neither heard nor saw the person to whom his words were addressed.15
10–11 That convicting word, “I am Jesus of Nazareth,” imposed on Paul a lifelong allegiance to the one whom in ignorance and unbelief he had hitherto withstood. Now he awaited the commands of one whom he henceforth acknowledged as Lord, and was told to go into Damascus, where further instructions would be given him. So in his blindness he was led by hand into Damascus.
c. Ananias of Damascus (22:12–16)
12“There was one Ananias, a devout man by the standards of the law, who enjoyed a good reputation among all the Jews who were resident there.
13He came to me, stood over me, and said, ‘Saul, my brother, look up.’16 That very moment I looked up and saw him.17
14Then he said, ‘The God of our fathers has chosen you to learn his will and see the Righteous One and hear words from his mouth,
15because you are to be his witness to all about the things which you have seen and heard.
16And now, why delay? Rise up and get yourself baptized and have your sins washed away, calling on his name.’
12 As Paul has emphasized his orthodox upbringing and his devotion to the law and the ancestral traditions, so now he emphasizes the part played in his conversion experience by Ananias of Damascus, portrayed as a devout and law-abiding Jew, enjoying the respect of all his fellow-Jews in the city.
13–16 The first thing Ananias did when he came into the house where Paul was staying was to announce the restoration of his eyesight in the name of the risen Christ. The command “Look up” might be otherwise rendered: “Receive the power of sight again.” Ananias’s first words to Paul, as reported here, summarize the fuller statement of 9:17. But his following words in verses 14–16 are fuller than anything ascribed to him there.18 It was important to stress on the present occasion that the commission which Paul received from the risen Christ was to a large extent communicated through the lips of this pious and believing Jew.19 In the later speech before Agrippa there was no need for this particular emphasis, and so the substance of what Ananias says to Paul here in the name of the Lord is there addressed to him directly by the Lord on the Damascus road. It must be said that in this regard the speech before Agrippa is more in line with the testimony of Paul’s letters, with their insistence on the unmediated character of Paul’s call and commission (Gal. 1:12).
The Jewish style of Ananias’s announcement contributes to the general presentation of his role in this narrative: the initiative in Paul’s call is taken by “the God of our fathers” (contrast “the Lord—that is, Jesus” in 9:17), and Jesus himself is identified as “the Righteous One.”20
Thus Paul received his commission. He had seen the risen Christ,21 he had heard his voice, and from now on he was to fulfil the ministry of a true witness, telling forth with confidence what he had seen and heard, with all that it implied—that Jesus of Nazareth, crucified by men, exalted by God, was Lord of all. But first he must get himself baptized, as the outward and visible sign of his inward and spiritual cleansing from sin.22 And in the act of being baptized his invocation of Jesus as Lord would declare the dominant power in his life henceforth.23
d. Paul’s Vision in the Temple (22:17–21)
17“When I came back to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, I fell into a trance
18and saw him saying to me, ‘Make haste; get out of Jerusalem quickly: they will not accept your testimony about me.’
19‘Lord,’ said I, ‘they know that I used to imprison and flog in synagogue after synagogue those who believed on you.
20And when the blood of your witness Stephen was being shed, I myself was standing by with approval, and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him.’
21‘Be on your way,’ he said to me; ‘I will send you far off to the Gentiles.’ ”
17–21 The vision in the Jerusalem temple which Paul now describes was probably experienced during his visit recorded in 9:26–30. The account of it may be influenced by that of Isaiah’s inaugural vision in Isa. 6:1–13.24 But this was no inaugural vision for Paul. His commission to preach Christ to the Gentiles had been received when the risen Lord appeared to him on the Damascus road.25 His testimony to this effect in Gal. 1:16 is confirmed by the account in 26:16–18. But it is entirely credible that, when he visited Jerusalem for the first time after his conversion, his “heart’s desire and prayer to God” for Israel’s salvation (of which he speaks in Rom. 10:1) should have made him eager to bear witness to his fellow-Jews. According to Luke, he began during that visit to engage in vigorous debate with the Hellenists of Jerusalem, and immediately aroused keen hostility, the more so because they remembered his former zealous opposition to the Jesus movement, and looked on him now as a traitor and turncoat (9:29).
The appearance of Christ which came to him in this moment of ecstasy26 reaffirmed what he had already learned on the Damascus road—that his call was to be Christ’s witness among the Gentiles. Jerusalem would not listen to his testimony. Paul tried to remonstrate: his former anti-Christian activity in that very city, he argued, was fresh in people’s minds, and many could remember the responsible part he had played in the martyrdom of Stephen.27 His point seems to have been that people who knew his former record would be the more readily convinced that his change of attitude must be based on the most compelling grounds. But as a matter of fact their knowledge of his former record made them the more unwilling to listen to him at all. The Lord therefore commanded him peremptorily to leave Jerusalem; his mission field was to be the Gentile world.
According to Luke’s account (9:29–30), the leaders of the Jerusalem church, getting wind of a plot against Paul’s life during that visit, escorted him to Caesarea and put him on board a ship bound for Tarsus. This is not the only place in our narrative where divine direction and human action coincide.
6. Paul Reveals His Roman Citizenship (22:22–29)
22They listened to him until he said this; then they started to shout, “Away with him! A scoundrel like that should not be allowed to live!”28
23They were yelling, waving their garments about, and flinging dust into the air,
24so the tribune ordered Paul to be brought into the fortress, and gave directions that he should be interrogated under the lash, so that he might find out why they were shouting against him like that.
25As they were stretching him out for flogging,29 Paul said to the centurion who was standing by, “Is it lawful for you to flog a Roman citizen who has received no proper trial?”30
26Hearing that, the centurion went to the tribune and reported it to him: “What are you proposing to do?” he said. “This man is a Roman.”
27The tribune came up and said to him, “Tell me: are you a Roman?” “Yes,” said he.31
28The tribune replied, “It cost me a great sum of money to acquire this citizenship.”32 “But I,” said Paul, “am a citizen by birth.”
29Then the men who were about to interrogate him withdrew from him immediately, and the tribune was afraid when he learned that the man whom he had put in chains was a Roman.
22–23 The crowd below in the outer court listened patiently enough to Paul, as he spoke from the top of the steps, until he mentioned his mission to the Gentiles. This word made all their resentment blaze up with redoubled fury. They screamed and gesticulated in a riot of abandoned rage. The tribune had not understood what Paul said, since he spoke to them in Aramaic (he might not have understood him much better had Paul used a language the tribune knew); but while it was impossible for him to discover the exact nature of their grievance against Paul, it was evident that they were bitterly hostile to him and were out for his blood. In a few well-chosen words Luke paints the scene; we can see them waving their clothes in the air33 and throwing dust about in their excitement. “In England,” as Lake and Cadbury remark, “mud is more frequently available.”34
24 Despairing, then, of getting any coherent explanation of all this sound and fury from the rioters themselves, the tribune decided to find out the truth from Paul himself, by interrogating him under torture. He therefore ordered him to be flogged. If the instrument used was the scourge (Lat. flagellum),35 that was a fearful instrument of torture, consisting of leather thongs, weighted with rough pieces of metal or bone, and attached to a stout wooden handle. If a man did not actually die under the scourge, he might well be crippled for life. Paul had been beaten with rods on three occasions (once at least at the hands of Roman lictors), and he had been sentenced five times to the disciplinary lash inflicted by Jewish synagogue authorities,36 but neither of these penalties had the murderous quality of the flagellum.
25 Fortunately for Paul, it was a form of treatment from which Roman citizens were legally exempt.37 In earlier days the exemption was total, and although under the empire it was sometimes inflicted on citizens as a penalty after conviction, they were all exempt from it as a third degree method of inquiry before trial. So, as some soldiers were tying Paul up in readiness for the flogging,38 he asked the centurion in charge of them if it was legal to treat a Roman citizen so, before he had received a fair trial.
26–28 Knowing very well that it was not legal, the centurion went at once and told the tribune what Paul had said. The tribune, alarmed at the news, came quickly to the place and asked Paul if it was true that he was a Roman citizen. “Yes,” said Paul. Perhaps he did not look like a Roman citizen at that moment: after being set upon by the crowd and dragged down into the outer court of the temple, along with other rough usage he had received, he must have presented a battered and undignified spectacle. Something of this sort may have been in the tribune’s mind as he said, “It cost me a very large sum of money to obtain Roman citizenship”—the implication being that the privilege must have become cheap of late if such a sorry-looking figure as Paul could claim it.39
He was the more astonished by the calm dignity of Paul’s reply. The tribune had virtually bought his citizenship; presumably, since his Gentile name was Claudius (23:26), he had done so in the principate of Claudius. Technically, the great price which he paid was “the bribe given to the intermediaries in the imperial secretariat or the provincial administration who put his name on the list of candidates for enfranchisement.”40 This form of bribery reached scandalous proportions under Claudius.41 But Paul, the man whom the tribune was interrogating rather contemptuously, was born a Roman citizen. This means that his father was a Roman citizen before him. How the citizenship was acquired by Paul’s father or grandfather we have no means of knowing, but analogy would suggest that it was for valuable services rendered to a Roman general or administrator in the southeastern area of Asia Minor, such as Pompey in 66–64 B.C. or Antony a generation later.42
29 The revelation of Paul’s Roman citizenship gave the whole business a different aspect. Rough-and-ready methods which might be all right for ordinary mortals must be avoided when the person affected was a Roman citizen. The tribune shuddered as he realized how near he had come to perpetrating a serious illegality; indeed, he had already begun to perpetrate it by giving the order for Paul to be flogged; but at least the flogging itself had been arrested.43 He was now responsible to his own superiors for the protection of this Roman citizen; he must therefore set up a formal inquiry in order to ascertain the true cause of the disturbance.
7. Paul Brought Before the Sanhedrin (22:30)
30The next day, wishing to learn with certainty the reason for his being accused by the Jews, he released him44 and ordered the chief priests and all the Sanhedrin to hold a meeting; then he brought Paul down and made him stand among them.
30 If the agitated Jewish crowd could give no coherent account of its grievance against Paul, the supreme Sanhedrin would surely be able to throw light on the situation. Whatever Paul was being charged with, it involved an offense of some kind against Jewish religious custom or sentiment, and the Sanhedrin was the appropriate body to deal with that. So the next day the tribune directed the Sanhedrin to hold a meeting. The Roman administration of Judaea was a military administration, and in the absence of the procurator the officer commanding the Antonia garrison was the chief representative of Roman authority in Jerusalem. If he ordered the Sanhedrin to meet, the Sanhedrin met. When the court was in session, he brought Paul down from the fortress to the council chamber on the western slope of the temple hill.45 It must be determined first of all that there was a prima facie case for trial by the Sanhedrin, and at least until that was determined Paul remained under military protection.