Bible Commentaries
Acts 23

Verses 1-35

XXIII 1. In preaching the Gospel St Paul has been obeying God. ’In all good conscience’ is found twenty times in the Epistles.

2. The high-priest is exasperated at the appeal from his judges to the invisible Judge. Ananias, high-priest from a.d. 47 till he was deposed in 59, was a violent, rapacious man. He was murdered by the Sicarii extremists in a.d. 66, and the prophetical words of 3 were fulfilled.

3. St Paul spoke not to curse but to assert, ’God will punish you’. There is an allusion to Matthew 23:27; cf.Ez 13:10. Ananias was proposing an illegal outrage, very offensive from one Jew to another. St Paul’s cause would suffer if he, a Roman citizen, allowed himself to be so treated before the Tribune. cf.John 18:23, our Lord’s more wonderful conduct.

5. St Paul who may have been looking round the Sanhedrin to see whom he could recognize, heard the high-priest’s order, without knowing from whom it had come.

6. St Luke only records a part of the speech.

9 shows that St Paul again recounted his conversion, and our Lord’s appearance to him, which proved that Jesus had risen. This led on to the General Resurrection. Perhaps St Paul noticed the different reception the account of our Lord’s Resurrection received from the two parties, and hoped to win over the Pharisees, of whom he was one himself; cf. 22:3; 26:5. Our Lord had supported the Pharisees on this very question. The ’hope’ is the Messianic hope that God’s Kingdom would be set up, of which the resurrection of the dead is a corollary; cf. 26:6-8. Accused of attacking the Law, 21:28, St Paul defends himself by claiming to preach that spiritual kingdom and its consequences, wherein lies the true fulfilment of the Law; cf. 26:22-23. 8. The Sadducees deny a Resurrection, the existence of angels and the immortality of the soul, ’but the Pharisees confess all of them’ (’both’ meaning ’all’ as in 19:16). 9. Some Pharisees admit that an angel spoke to St Paul in 22:7, 18.

11. The Vision of Our Lord —As amid the trials of Corinth, 18:9, so amid those of Jerusalem, Jesus reassures St Paul, with praise for the past and light for the future. He is to preach in Rome, see on 19:21, and with that climax St Luke’s history will end. ’Be constant’, the same word often on our Lord’s lips in the Gospels is there tr. ’Be of good heart’, Matthew 9:2; John 16:33.

12-22 The Jewish Plot —12. There are other examples of such oaths under a curse. On the general insecurity see 21:15 and 38, and note the precautions in 23.

16. Nothing further is known of this nephew.

20. The better reading makes it the Tribune who was ’to inquire something more certain’.

23-30 The Letter of Claudius Lysias —23. Glad to rid himself of responsibility, the Tribune acted at once and ordered a large escort, perhaps a third of the garrison. The spearmen were probably light infantry. The third hour was about 9 p.m., when in the dark they would attract less attention.

24. Felix the Procurator of Judaea from a.d. 52 to 60, was a freedman of the imperial household. His brother Pallas was the favourite of Agrippina wife of Claudius and mother of Nero. Strong in this protection, the government of Felix was venal and rapacious, and his cruelties during these critical years paved the way for the final tragedy. Tacitus says of him that ’indulging in every kind of barbarity and lust, he exercised the power of a king in the spirit of a slave’, Hist. V, 9. He delighted to marry into royal families, and Suetonius describes him as ’the husband of three queens’; cf. 24:24.

25. The part in brackets is an interpolation. Lysias sends the Elogium or letter to his superior magistrate explaining the matter that is being referred to him. St Luke probably obtained a copy while waiting at Caesarea.

26. ’Excellency’ was the title of a procurator.

27. Lysias alters the facts to his advantage. He did not find out that St Paul was a Roman citizen till he was about to scourge him.

28-29. He writes contemptuously of the Jewish Law.

31-35 St Paul is taken to Caesarea —31. Antipatris, a pleasure resort in the foothills of Judaea, 30 m. from Jerusalem, was reached by a forced march.

32. On the plain of Sharon the danger of an attack by conspirators was remote. The 400 infantry being badly needed returned to Jerusalem.

35. ’Herod’s Palace’ was built by Herod the Great; see 8:40. It was used by the Procurators as a residence and prison, hence Lk’s reference to it as the ’praetorium’.