Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Acts 22:4
And I persecuted this way unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women.
4. And I persecuted this way, &c.] On “the Way” as the designation of the Christian religion, cp. note on Act 9:2 We are not told of any Christians who were put to death through Saul’s zealous persecution, for in the case of Stephen he was not a very active agent, but his own statement in this verse, and the stronger expression Act 26:10, “when they were put to death I gave my voice against them,” make it certain that the persecutions in which he took part were carried beyond imprisonment even to the martyrdom of the accused.
into prisons ] The original has the plural “prisons,” and it is probably intended to express by it, what in chap. 26 is given in more detail, the wide field over which Saul’s zeal was exerted, “being exceedingly mad against them, I persecuted them even unto strange cities.”
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
And I persecuted – Act 8:3.
This way – Those who were of this mode of worshipping God; that is, Christians. See the notes on Act 9:2.
Unto the death – Intending to put them to death. He did not probably put any to death himself, but he committed them to prison; he sought their lives; he was the agent employed in arresting them; and when they were put to death, he tells us that he gave his voice against them Act 26:10; that is, he joined in, and approved of their condemnation.
Delivering into prisons … – Act 8:3.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 4. I persecuted this way] ; This doctrine, the way of worshipping God, and arriving at a state of blessedness. See Clarke on Ac 9:2.
Binding and delivering into prisons] See Clarke on Ac 8:3; and See Clarke on Ac 9:2.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
This way; the doctrine and practice of Christianity.
Unto the death; as much as in him lies, being one of the most furious persecutors, that hunted for the precious life, breathing out threatenings and slaughters with every breath, Act 9:1.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
4. I persecuted, c.(See on Ac9:1,2 Ac 9:5-7).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And I persecuted this way unto the death,…. That is, the Christian religion, and the professors of it; whom the apostle breathed out threatenings and slaughter against, haled out of their houses, and committed to prison; consented to their death, as he did to Stephen’s; and whenever it was put to the vote, whether they should die or not, he gave his voice against them; so that he was a most bitter enemy, and an implacable persecutor of them; which shows how very averse he was to this way, and how great his prejudices were against it; wherefore it must be a work of divine power, and there must be the singular hand of God in it, to reconcile him to it, and cause him to embrace and profess it:
binding and delivering into prisons, both men and women: see Ac 8:3.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
And I ().
I who , literally.
This Way ( ). The very term used for Christianity by Luke concerning Paul’s persecution (9:2), which see. Here it “avoids any irritating name for the Christian body” (Furneaux) by using this Jewish terminology.
Unto the death ( ). Unto death, actual death of many as 26:10 shows.
Both men and women ( ). Paul felt ashamed of this fact and it was undoubtedly in his mind when he pictured his former state as “a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious (1Ti 1:13), the first of sinners” (1Ti 1:15). But it showed the lengths to which Paul went in his zeal for Judaism.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
Way. See on ch. Act 9:2.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) “And I persecuted this way unto the death,” (hos tauten ten hodon edioksa achri thanatou) “Who persecuted this way (of Jesus Christ) to the point of death,” killing and consenting to kill followers of Jesus Christ. While a zealot Pharisee, he held murder in his heart, and with premeditated intent set about to annihilate followers of Jesus and His church, Act 22:20; Act 26:10; Act 9:1; Act 9:13-14; Act 9:21.
2) “Binding and delivering into prisons,” (desmeuon kai paradidous eis phulskas) “Binding and delivering into prisons,” continually, repeatedly, zealously, even to strange cities, cities he actually did not know, in regions beyond Jerusalem and Judea, Act 26:11; Act 8:1; Act 8:3; Gal 1:13; Gal 1:23. He himself had often been bound since, for the name of Christ.
3) “Both men and women.” (andras te kai gunaikas) “Both mature and responsible men and women,” Act 8:3; 1Co 15:9; 2Co 11:23.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
−
4. I persecuted this way. This is the second point, that he was an enemy to Christ’s doctrine, and that he was more fervent in resisting the same than all the rest, until he was pulled back by the hand of God; which thing he saith the chief priests and elders can testify. Therefore, there can be no suspicion in such a sudden change. Whereas he saith, that he had letters given him to deliver to the brethren, it must be referred unto the Jews, as if he had called them his countrymen; but he meant to appease them with a more honorable title. For this is Paul’s drift, that he may declare his natural and lawful beginning which he took of that nation; − (501) and also how desirous he was to be linked with them in friendship.
(501) −
“
Ab ilia genta… originem,” origin from that nation.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(4) And I persecuted this way.The speaker obviously uses the current colloquial term (see Notes on Act. 9:2; Act. 19:23), used by the disciples as indicating that they had found in Christ the way of eternal life; used, it may be, by others with a certain tone of scorn, as of people who had chosen their own way, and must be left to take it.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
4. This way As yet Christianity had received no normal and permanent name. Hence this vague phrase repeatedly.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Act 22:4. And I persecuted this way unto the death, We know that he was concerned in the death of Stephen: ch. Act 8:1 and if he was not so in that of many more, it was not for want of zeal and rage, but merely of power. However, there is no reason to think that the sacred history contains a full account of all the outrages committed against Christians during the period to which it extends.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Act 22:4-5 . . . ] for Christianity was in his case the evident cause of the enmity. Comp. on , Act 9:2 , Act 18:25 , Act 19:9 ; Act 19:23 .
] Grotius appropriately remarks: “quantum scil in me erat.” It indicates how far the intention in the went, namely, even to the bringing about of their execution.
.] The high priest at the time (still living). See on Act 9:2 .
] not futurum Atticum , but: he is (as the course of the matter necessarily involves) my witness .
.] and the whole body of the elders . Comp. on Luk 22:66 , and the , Act 5:21 .
] i.e. to the Jews . See Act 9:2 . Bornemann: against the Christians . Paul would in that case have entirely forgotten his pre-Christian standpoint, in the sense of which he speaks; and the hostile reference of must have been suggested by the context, which, however, with the simple . . is not at all here the case.
( i.e. ) ] also those who were thither . Paul conceives them as having come thither (since the persecution about Stephen) and so being found there; hence does not stand for (so still de Wette), but is to be explained from a pregnant construction common especially with later writers (Lobeck, ad Phryn . p. 44; comp. Act 2:39 , Act 21:3 ).
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
XVI
SAUL, THE PERSECUTOR
Act 7:57-60
In a preceding chapter on Stephen we have necessarily considered somewhat a part of the matter of this chapter, and now we will restate only enough to give a connected account of Saul. In our last discussion we found Saul and other members of his family residents in Jerusalem, Saul an accomplished scholar, a rabbi, trained in the lore of the Jewish Bible and of their traditions, a member of the Sanhedrin, an extreme Pharisee, flaming with zeal, and aggressive in his religion, an intense patriot, about thirty-six years old, probably a widower, stirred up and incensed on account of the progress of the new religion of Jesus.
In considering this distinguished Jew in the role of a persecutor, we must find, first of all, the occasion of this marvelous and murderous outbreak of hatred on his part at this particular juncture, and the strange direction of its hostility. On three all-sufficient grounds we understand why Saul did not actively participate in the recent Sadducean persecution. First, the issue of that persecution was the resurrection, and on this point a Pharisee could not join a Sadducean materialist. Second, the motive of that persecution was to prevent the break with Rome, and Saul as a Pharisee wanted a break with Rome. Third, the direction of that persecution was mainly against the apostles and Palestinian Christians, who, so far, had made no break with the Temple and its services and ritual, or the customs of Moses. To outsiders they appeared as a sect of the Jews, agreeing, indeed, with the Pharisees on many points, and while they were hateful in their superstition as to the person of the Messiah, they were understood to preach a Messiah for Jews only and not for Gentiles. That is why Saul did not join the Sadducean persecution because of the issue of it, because of the motive of it, and because of the direction of it.
1. Five causes stirred him up to become a persecutor: First, the coming to the front of Stephen, the Hellenist, whose preaching evidently looked to a Messiah for the world, and not only looked to a break with Jerusalem and the Temple, but the abrogation of the entire Old Covenant, or at least its supercession by a New Covenant on broad, worldwide lines that made no distinction between a Jew and a Greek. That is the first cause of the persecuting spirit of Saul.
2. Stephen’s Messiah was a God-man and a sufferer, expiating sin, and bringing in an imputed righteousness through faith in him wrought by the regenerating Spirit, instead of a Jewish hero, seated on David’s earthly throne, triumphant over Rome, and bringing all nations into subjection to the royal law. This is the difference between the two Messiahs. So that kind of a Messiah would be intensely objectionable to Saul.
3. Stephen’s preaching was making fearful inroads among the flock of Saul’s Cilicean synagogue, and sweeping like a fire among the Israelites of the dispersion, who were already far from the Palestinian Hebrews.
4. Some of Saul’s own family were converted to the new religion, two of them are mentioned in the letter to the Romans as being in Christ before him, and his own sister, judging from Act 23 , was already a Christian.
5. Saul’s humiliating defeat in the great debate with Stephen.
These are the five causes that pushed the man out who had been passive in the other persecution, now to become active in this persecution. They account for the vehement flame of Saul’s hate, and the direction of that hate, not toward the apostles, who had not broken with the Holy City, its Temple, its sacrifice, nor the customs of Moses, but against Stephen and those accepting his broader view. We cannot otherwise account for the fact that Saul took no steps in his persecution against the apostles, while he did pursue the scattered Christians of the dispersion unto strange cities.
We may imagine Saul fanning the flame of his hate by his thoughts in these particulars:
1. “To call this Jesus ‘God’ is blasphemy.
2. “To call this convicted and executed felon ‘Messiah,’ violates the Old Testament teaching of David’s royal son triumphing over all of his enemies.
3. “That I, a freeborn child of Abraham, never in bondage, must be re-born, must give up my own perfect and blameless righteousness of the law to accept the righteousness of another, is outrageous.
4. “That I must see Jerusalem perish, the Temple destroyed, the law of the Mosaic covenant abrogated, and enter into this new kingdom on the same humiliating terms as an uncircumcised Gentile, is incredible and revolting.
5. “That this Hellenist, Stephen, should invade my own flock and pervert members of my own family, Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen [Rom 16:7 ], and my own sister [Act 23:16 ], and shake the faith of my other kinsmen, Jason and Sosipater [Rom 16:21 ], is insulting to the last degree.
6. “That I, the proud rabbi, a member of the supreme court of my people, the accomplished and trained logician, should be overwhelmed in debate by this unscholarly Stephen, and that, too, in my own chosen field the interpretation of the Law, Prophets, and Psalms, is crucifixion of my pride and an intolerable public shame. Let Stephen perish!
7. “But more humiliating than all, I find myself whipped inside. This Stephen is driving me with goads as if I were an unruly ox. His words and shining face and the Jesus he makes me see, plant convicting pricks in my heart and conscience against which I kick in vain; I am like a troubled sea casting up mire and filth. To go back on the convictions of my life is abject surrender. To follow, then, a logical conclusion, is to part from the counsel of my great teacher, Gamaliel, and to take up the sword of the Sadducee and make myself the servant of the high priest. Since I will not go back, and cannot stand still, I must go forward in that way that leads to prison, blood, and death, regardless of age or sex. Perhaps I may find peace. The issue is now personal and vital; Stephen or Saul must die. To stop at Stephen is to stop at the beginning of the way. I must go on till the very name of this Jesus is blotted from the earth.”
That is given as imagined, but you must bring in psychology in order that you may understand the working of this man’s mind to account for the flaming spirit and the desperate lengths of the persecution which he introduces.
Seven things show the spirit of this persecution, as expressed in the New Testament:
1. In Act 8:3 (Authorized Version), the phrase, “making havoc” is used. That is the only time in the New Testament that the word “havoc” is found. It is found in the Septuagint of the Old Testament. But it is a word which expresses the fury of a wild boar making havoc a wild boar in a garden: rooting, gnashing, and trampling. That phrase, “making havoc,” gives us an idea of the spirit that Saul had, which is the spirit of a wild boar.
2. In Act 9:1 , it is said of Saul, “Yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter.” How tersely expressed that is! The expiration of his breath is a threat, and death. Victor Hugo, in one place, said about a man, “Whenever he respires he conspires,” and that is the nearest approach in literature to this vivid description of the state of a man’s mind that the very breath he breathed was threatenings and slaughter.
3. The next word is found in Act 26:11 . He says, “being exceedingly mad against them.” That is the superlative degree. He was not merely angry at the Christians, but it was an anger that amounted to madness; he was not merely mad but “exceedingly mad.” So that gives you the picture of that wild boar.
4. “He haled men and women.” “Haled” is an old Anglo Saxon word. We don’t use it now, but it means “to drag by violence.” He didn’t go and courteously arrest a man; he just went and grabbed men and women and dragged them through the streets. Imagine a gray-haired mother, a chaste wife, a timid maiden, grabbed and dragged through the streets, with a crowd around mocking, and you get at the spirit of this persecution.
5. The next word is “devastate.” Paul used this word twice, and Ananias used it once (Act 9:21 ). That word is the term that is applied to an army sweeping a country with fire and sword. We say that Sherman devastated Georgia. He swept a scope of country seventy-five miles wide from Atlanta to the sea, leaving only the chimney stacks not a house, not a fence with fire and sword. And that word is here employed to describe Saul’s persecution.
6. Twice in Galatians he uses this word in describing it: “I persecuted them beyond measure,” that is, if you want to find some kind of a word that would describe his persecution, in its spirit, you couldn’t find it; you couldn’t find a word that would mean “beyond measure.”
7. The last phrase is in Act 22:4 , “unto death.” That was objective in spirit, whether men or women. These seven expressions, and they are just as remarkable, and more so, in the Greek, as they are in English, give the spirit of this persecution.
The following things show the extent of this persecution:
1. Domiciliary visits. He didn’t wait to find a man on the streets acting in opposition to any law. He goes to the houses after them, and in every place of the world. The most startling exercise of tyranny is an inquisition into a man’s home. The law of the United States regards a man’s home as his castle, and only under the most extreme circumstances does the law allow its officers to enter a man’s home. If you were perfectly sure that a Negro had burglarized your smokehouse, and you had tracked him to his house, you couldn’t go in there, you couldn’t take an officer of the law in there, unless you went before a magistrate and recorded a solemn oath that you believed that he was the one that did burglarize your place, and that what he stole would be found if you looked for it in his house.
2. In the second place, “scourges.” He says many times I have scourged them, both men and women, forty stripes save one; thirty-nine hard lashes he put on the shoulders of men and women. Under the Roman law it was punishable with death to scourge a Roman citizen. Convicts, or people in the penitentiary, can be whipped. Roman lictors carried a bundle of rods with which they chastised outsiders, but on home people they were never used. Cicero makes his great oration against Veres burn like fire when it is shown that Veres scourged Roman citizens. Seldom now do we ever hear of a case where a man is dragged out of his house and publicly whipped by officers of the law, just on account of his religion.
3. The next thing was imprisonment. He says, “Oftentimes I had them put in prison.” A thunderbolt couldn’t be more sudden than his approach to a house. Thundering at the door, day or night, gathering one of the inmates up, taking him from the home and taking him to jail. What would you think of somebody coming to your house when you were away in the night, and dragging your wife and putting her in jail, just because she was worshiping God according to the dictates of her conscience? We live in a good country over here. We have never been where these violent persecutions were carried on.
4. He says that when they were put to death he gave his voice against them. He arrested them and scourged them, and then in the Sanhedrin he voted against them.
5. In the next place he compelled them to blaspheme. The Greek doesn’t mean that he succeeded in making them blaspheme, but that he was trying to make them blaspheme. For instance, he would have a woman up, and there was the officer ready to give her thirty-nine lashes in open daylight: “You will get this lashing unless you blaspheme the name of Jesus,” Paul would say. Pliny, in writing about the Christians in the country over which he presided when he was ordered to persecute the Christians, says, “I never went beyond this: I never put any of them to death if when brought before me he would sprinkle a little incense before a Roman god. If he would Just do that I wouldn’t put him to death.”
6. Expatriation, ex , from, patria terra , “one’s fatherland” exiled from one’s country. It was an awful thing on those people at a minute’s notice either to recant or else just as they were, without a minute’s preparation, to go off into exile, father, mother, and children. The record says, “They were all scattered abroad except the apostles.”
7. Following them into exile into strange countries, and cities, getting a commission to go after them and arrest them, even though they had gotten as far from Jerusalem as Damascus.
8. The last thing in connection with the extent of this persecution is to see, first, the size or number of the church. Let us commence with 120 (that is, before Pentecost), add 3,000 on the day of Pentecost, add multitudes daily, add at another time 5,000 men and women, add twice more, multitudes, multitudes, then we may safely reach the conclusion that there were 100,000 Jewish communicants in that first church at Jerusalem. That represents a great many homes. This man Paul goes into every house, he breaks up every family. They are whipped; they are imprisoned; they are put to death or they are expatriated; and over every road that went out from Jerusalem they were fleeing, the fire of persecution burning behind them. The magnitude of the persecution has never been fully estimated.
There are eight distinct references by him in two speeches and four letters that show his own impressions of this sin. One of them you will find in the address that he delivered on the stairway in Jerusalem when he himself was a prisoner (Act 22 ); another one is found in his speech at Caesarea before King Agrippa (Act 26 ). You will find two references in Gal 1 of the letter to the Galatians (1:13, 23) ; there is one in 1Co 15:15 ; another in Phi 3 ; still another, and a most touching one, when he was quite an old man (1 Timothy). We may judge of the spirit and the extent of a thing by the impression that it leaves on the mind of the participator.
Everything that he inflicted on others, he subsequently suffered. He had them to be punished with forty stripes save one; five times he submitted to the same punishment. He had them put in prison; “oftentimes” he was imprisoned. He had them expatriated; so was he. He had them pursued in the land of expatriation; so was he. He had them stoned; so was he. He attempted to make them blaspheme; so they tried to make him blaspheme under Nero, or die, and he accepted death. He had them put to death; so was he. Early in his life, before a great part of his sufferings had yet commenced, we find his catalogue of the things that he suffered in one of the letters to the Corinthians, and just how many particular things that he had suffered up to that time.
Two considerations would naturally emphasize his unceasing sorrow for this sin:
1. His persecution marked the end of Jewish probation, the closing up of the last half of Daniel’s week, in which the Messiah would confirm the covenant with many. From this time on until now, only an occasional Jew has been converted. Paul did it; he led his people to reject the church of God and the Holy Spirit of God, the church which was baptized in the Spirit, and attested by the Spirit. He, Saul, is the one that pushed his people off the ground of probation and into a state of spiritual blindness judicial blindness from which they have not yet recovered.
2. The second thought that emphasized this impression was that he thereby barred himself, when he became a Christian, from doing much preaching to this people. In Rom 9 he says, “I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren’s sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” “I bear them witness,” he says in the next chapter, “that they have a zeal for God,” and in Act 22 he says that when he was in the Temple wanting to preach to Jews, wanting to be a home missionary, God appeared to him, and said, “Make haste, and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem; because they will not receive of thee testimony concerning me.” That was one of the most grievous things of his life, and we find it, I think (some may differ from me on this), manifested in the last letter of his first Roman imprisonment the letter to the Hebrews. He wouldn’t put his name to it. He didn’t want to prejudice its effect, and yet he did want to speak to his people.
Let us compare this persecution with Alva’s in the Netherlands, and the one following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In a few words, it is this: There were two great bodies of Christian people, so-called, in France the Romanists and the Huguenots. Henry of Navarre was a Huguenot. He became king of France, outwardly abjuring his Huguenot principles, but on the condition that liberty of conscience should be allowed to the people. His grandson, Louis XIV, revoked that great edict of toleration, and by its revocation, in one moment, commanded hundreds of thousands of his people to adopt the king’s religion. If they didn’t, troops or soldiers were placed in their homes with the privilege of maltreating them, and destroying their property, without being held responsible for any kind of brutal impiety that they would commit. Their young children were taken away from the mothers and put in the convents to be reared in the Romanist faith; the men had their goods confiscated, and in hundreds of thousands of instances were put to death. They were required to recant or leave France at once. Before they got to the coast an army came to bring them back, and when some of them did escape, my mother’s ancestors, the Huguenots, when that edict was revoked, came to South Carolina. Some of them went to Canada, some to other countries where there was extradition. The Romanists pursued them, and when they were able to capture them, brought them back to France to suffer under the law. Some of those that reached Canada left the settlements and went to live among the Indian tribes. There they were pursued.
When Alva came into the Netherlands (Belgium and Holland), the lowlands, under Philip, the King of Spain, the inquisition was set up and he entered the homes; he made domiciliary visits; he compelled them to blaspheme; he put to death the best, the most gifted, those holding the highest social and moral positions in the land, to the astonishment of the world. With one stroke of his pen he not only swept away all of their property, but anyone that would speak a kind word to them, or would keep them all night in the house, such a person was put to death. All over that country there was the smoke going up of their burning, and the bloodiest picture in the annals of the world was what took place when Alva’s soldiers captured a city. I would be ashamed before a mixed audience to tell what followed. The devastation was fearful.
This persecution illustrates the proverb, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” Whenever Saul put one to death, a dozen came up to take the place of that one. Indeed, he himself caught on his own shoulders the mantle of Stephen before it hit the ground, as God put the mantle of Elijah on Elisha, and as God made John the Baptist the successor in spirit to Elijah. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.
The effect of this persecution on the enlargement of the kingdom, and on missions, was superb. Those Jewish Christians in Jerusalem those terrapins would never have crawled away from there, if Saul hadn’t put fire on their backs, but when the fire began to burn and they began to run, as they ran, they preached everywhere. It was like going up to a fire and trying to put it out by kicking the chunks. Whenever a chunk is kicked it starts a new fire. When that persecution came, then Philip, driven out, preached to the Samaritans. Then men of Cyrene, pushed out, preached to Greeks in Antioch, and they opened up a fine mission field. Peter himself, at last, was led to see that an uncircumcised Gentile like Cornelius could be received into the kingdom of God. So it had a great deal to do with foreign missions.
The effect of this persecution in bringing laymen to the front was marvelous. They never did come to the front in the history of the world as they did in this persecution. The apostles were left behind. The preachers right in the midst of the big meeting in which 100,000 people had been converted, were left standing there, surrounded by empty pews, with no congregation. The congregation is now doing the preaching. A layman becomes an evangelist. These people carry the word of God to the shores of the Mediterranean, into Asia Minor, to Rome, to Ephesus, to Antioch, to Tarsus, to the ends of the earth, and laymen do an overwhelming part of this work.
It is well, perhaps, in this connection to explain how Saul, in this persecution, could put to death Christian people, since they, the Jews, had no such authority. In the case of Christ we know that it was necessary for the Jews to obtain Roman authority in order to put to death, but just as this time Pontius Pilate was recalled, the Roman Procurator was withdrawn, and a very large part of the Roman military force and the successor of Pilate had not arrived, so the Jews were left pretty much to themselves until that new procurator with new legions came to the country.
QUESTIONS 1. What of Saul already considered in a preceding chapter?
2. Why did not Saul participate actively in the Sadducean persecution?
3. What five causes stirred him up to become a persecutor?
4. How may we imagine Saul fanning the flame of his bate by his thoughts?
5. What seven things show the spirit of this persecution as expressed in the New Testament?
6. What things show the extent of this persecution?
7. What eight distinct references by him in two speeches and four letters which show his own impressions of this sin?
8. What were his own sufferings, in every particular? Were they such as he inflicted?
9. What two considerations would naturally emphasize the unceasing sorrow for this sin?
10. Compare this persecution with Alva’s in the Netherlands and the one following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
11. How does this persecution illustrate the proverb, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church”?
12. What was the effect of this persecution on the enlargement of the kingdom, and missions?
13. What was the effect of this persecution in bringing laymen to the front?
14. How do you explain that, in this persecution, Saul could put to death Christian people, since they, the Jews, had no such authority?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
4 And I persecuted this way unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women.
Ver. 4. See Trapp on “ Act 9:1 “
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Act 22:4 . , see above Act 9:2 . : sometimes taken to mean not that he prosecuted the Christians “unto death” (for if this was the meaning the following participles would sound feeble), but that this was his aim; Act 22:20 and Act 26:10 , however, seem fully to justify the former meaning. : plural, perhaps in relation to Act 26:11 , where Paul’s persecuting fury extends to strange cities; usually singular.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
this. Emph.
way. See Act 9:2.
unto = as far as.
the. Omit.
binding. Greek. desmeuo. Only here and Mat 23:4.
delivering. Same as “commit” in Act 8:3.
women. Compare Act 8:3; Act 9:2.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Act 22:4. , this way) Christianity. At first he speaks indefinitely.-, binding) An appropriate word, employed by one that was bound.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
I persecuted: Act 22:19, Act 22:20, Act 7:58, Act 8:1-4, Act 9:1, Act 9:2, Act 9:13, Act 9:14, Act 9:21, Act 26:9-11, 1Co 15:9, Phi 3:6, 1Ti 1:13-15
this: Act 16:17, Act 18:26, Act 19:9, Act 19:23, Act 24:14
Reciprocal: Lev 13:29 – General Psa 67:2 – thy way Luk 11:49 – and some Joh 16:2 – the time Act 5:14 – multitudes Act 8:3 – General Act 26:10 – I also Gal 1:13 – how
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
4
Act 22:4. This way means the Gospel system of living. Paul’s mention of persecuting its followers was to show that he had once shared the same opinion of them that was now being held by his hearers. That should at least suggest that he must have good reasons for his present position.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Act 22:4. And I persecuted this way unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women. In support of his assertion that he, too, was once a Jewish zealot, he reminds them that he was formerly a bitter persecutor of this way; there were doubtless those present in the listening crowd who well knew that these words of his were literally true.
He speaks of the Christian cause with the now familiar termfamiliar, apparently, to friends and enemies of the Nazarene brotherhoodof this way. It originated most likely from a loving memory of the Masters words, in which he claimed to be himself the way, and the truth, and the life (see, too, the great prophecy of Isa 40:3, where the word way may be said to have formed the burden of the solemn song). The significant words, unto the death, seem to tell us that in those first early persecutions of the Nazarenes, Stephen the deacon was by no means the only martyr for the cause of the Lord Jesus.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
See notes on verse 3
Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)
Verse 4
This way; those believing in this way; that is, the Christians.
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
His zeal for God was clear in that he persecuted Christians to death (cf. Act 9:1-2). This is precisely what his hearers wanted to do in Paul’s case. Paul did so as an agent of the Sanhedrin that gave him authority to pursue Christian Jews as far away as Damascus.