Acts 22:22-30 shows how the crowd of hostile Jews do not want to hear Paul’s testimony anymore. They interrupt him and threaten him, calling for his death. The Roman soldiers take Paul into the barracks. The Roman commander decides to scourge Paul to make him explain why he has enraged the crowds. Paul reveals his Roman citizenship to the soldiers. The scourging is cancelled and the soldiers are horrified that they almost tortured a Roman citizen. The Roman commander calls for the Jewish council of elders to gather to help figure out what offense Paul has committed.
Acts 22:22-30Acts 22:22-30 commentary details the fallout of Paul speaking his testimony, how he was rejected by the Jews and avoids torture by the Romans.
In the previous sections, Paul has been taken into Roman custody after a mob of incensed Jews attacked him. On request, Paul was given the chance to speak to his accusers. He begins telling the murderous crowd about his entire life. He was educated in Jerusalem as a teacher of the Law and was zealous for God, as zealous as his audience is, though they falsely believe he preaches against the Jewish Law. Paul told the crowd how years ago he was the leader of the persecution against followers of the Way of Jesus.
On a journey to Damascus to imprison believers in hiding, the resurrected Jesus appeared to Paul. This changed Paul’s life. He stopped persecuting believers and became a believer himself. When Paul returned to Jerusalem, he had another vision of Jesus. Jesus commanded Paul to leave the city. Paul agreed, because many people remembered his past oppressive actions and did not believe he had changed. Jesus declared that He would send Paul to preach to the Gentiles.
The crowd was paying attention to Paul’s speech so far. When he first began his address, the crowd took notice that he spoke in the “Hebrew dialect” and so “became even more quiet” (Acts 22:2Acts 22:2 commentary). Paul had the ear of his would-be murderers. They had not reacted or interrupted so far. Even when Paul described his vision of the risen Jesus Christ, no one challenged him or called him a liar. But once he declared that Jesus commanded him to “Go! For I will send you far away to the Gentiles” (Acts 22:21Acts 22:21 commentary), the crowd erupts with murderous rage all over again:
They listened to him up to this statement, and then they raised their voices and said, “Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he should not be allowed to live!” (v. 22).
The crowd had, with some interest, listened to Paul’s testimony up to this statement: that he was sent by God to preach to the Gentiles. At this, the mob raised their voices into a shout, drowning out Paul, interrupting him and making sure he could not speak anymore. He is not able to share the rest of his testimony, to tell of the many Gentiles who now worshiped God, of the miracles God had worked among the Gentiles. The Jerusalem crowd would never hear of what their God was doing among the Gentiles, now that they cut Paul off and raised their voices to call for his destruction.
This mob was at odds with Paul because they believed a false rumor that Paul preached against the Jewish people, the Law, and the temple (Acts 21:28Acts 21:28 commentary). They were under the false impression that Paul had also brought a Gentile into the inner court of the temple where it was forbidden.
This was a lie, but it is perhaps the reason that at the mention of “the Gentiles,” the crowd raised their voices, remembering that Paul was accused of defiling the holiness of the temple by bringing an unclean Gentile into it. It was for a similar reason that the Jews revolted against the Greek king, Antiochus Epiphanes IV, a century before the events of Acts 22Acts 22 commentary. Antiochus (an unclean Gentile) entered and desecrated the temple and sacrificed a pig (an unclean offering) on the temple altar.
This zeal for the Law and for keeping the temple clean superseded the crowd’s concern for the truth; the truth was Paul did not preach against the Law, nor had he brought a Gentile into the inner temple. But the crowd wanted to hear no more from Paul. They expressed their rejection of Paul and his message in crystal clear terms, “Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he should not be allowed to live!” Not only did they want Paul sent Away from their presence and their city, they wanted him to be destroyed.
His association with the Gentiles was so offensive to this crowd that they wished for Paul to be struck from the earth itself. The crowd resumed its desire for his death, that he should not be allowed to live for what he had said. The Jews gathered here could not stand the claim Paul made that God told him to preach to the Gentiles. This claim reopened the wound in their minds that Paul allegedly was anti-Judaism.
The crowd makes a big show of their rage by crying out and throwing off their cloaks and tossing dust into the air (v. 23). They seem to be preparing to storm the stairway, Roman guards or not, and drag Paul back down with them where they can remove this fellow from the earth. The threat of their violence was audible and visible: they began crying out for Paul’s death, and they began throwing off their cloaks to free themselves up for action, all the while tossing dust into the air to further express their rage (and perhaps confuse and hinder the soldiers).
The escalation of the crowd concludes any further hope of dialogue. The Roman chiliarch (commander of a thousand troops) ushers Paul away from the scene so that no more violence can take place: the commander ordered him to be brought into the barracks, stating that he should be examined by scourging so that he might find out the reason why they were shouting against him that way (v. 24).
The Roman commander obviously thought there must be some legitimate reason for so many Jewish people to call for this man’s death. Surely Paul had done something heinous enough to bring such retribution on his head. So after having ordered that Paul be brought into the safety of the Roman barracks in the Tower of Antonia, the commander begins his investigation. He starts by stating that Paul should be examined by scourging.
A Roman scourging was an excruciating experience. The prisoner would usually be tied to a post and stripped naked. Roman whips were so long they could wrap around a person’s entire body. Attached to the leather whips were metal beads, pieces of bone, iron, glass, or nails. After only a few lashes, the victim would be covered in deep bloody wounds. The commander’s idea was that by torturing Paul with a scourging, Paul might finally explain his crime or offense, so that the commander might find out the reason why the mob were shouting against him that way—demanding for his death and beating him in the courtyard earlier.
Paul has been flogged several times before by Jewish authorities, and has been beaten with rods by Greek authorities (2 Corinthians 11:24-252 Corinthians 11:24-25 commentary, commentaryActs 16:22Acts 16:22 commentary). But as far as the biblical record shows, he has never suffered a Roman scourging. Paul decides to prevent this from happening. He has a trump card that spares him this awful torture:
But when they stretched him out with thongs, Paul said to the centurion who was standing by, “Is it lawful for you to scourge a man who is a Roman and uncondemned?” (v. 25).
Paul may have waited for them to first prepare him for this scourging, to add to the Romans’ humiliation when he declares his Roman citizenship. Or he may not have realized they meant to scourge him until they had stretched him out with thongs, binding his wrists to a post with restraints.
Either way, it is at the last second that Paul challenges their intent to whip him. As brutal as the Romans were, they were generally very rigid in keeping their own laws. Paul escapes punishment through legal means. Though he is their prisoner, he has rights as a Roman citizen. So he asks the centurion—a Roman captain—who was standing by to oversee his scourging, if he is willing to violate Roman law.
Paul asks, rhetorically, Is it lawful for you to scourge a man who is a Roman and uncondemned? The only answer to this question is, “No, it’s certainly not lawful to scourge a Roman man who has not been tried and judged for any crime.” The Romans could pretty much do whatever they wanted to non-Romans, condemned or uncondemned, when investigating a crime. But a man who is a Roman, a male Roman citizen, was not to be harmed until properly tried in court.
The centurion does not seem to answer Paul’s question, but instead rushes off to question his superior on this ill-advised act of torture. The centurion (a captain of one hundred soldiers) goes to the chiliarch (the commander of one thousand soldiers) to inform him that Paul should not be scourged:
When the centurion heard Paul’s declaration of Roman citizenship, he went to the commander and told him, saying, “What are you about to do? For this man is a Roman” (v. 26).
That they were about to do the scourging makes clear that it hasn’t happened yet, but is very close to happening. The centurion asks his boss, the commander, urgently What are you about to do? This order was given by the commander, and if carried out, it would come back to haunt the commander. The blame goes back to the top, to the one who gave the order. It seems the centurion may have believed the commander possibly knew Paul was a Roman, hence why he questions the order.
The centurion declares For this man is a Roman, meaning this order should not be carried out. This is against Roman law. He is essentially asking, “Why are we about to break our own law to illegally torture one of our own citizens? This is a disastrous idea.”
But the commander obviously did not know Paul was technically a Roman. This is strike two for the commander’s investigation skills. While he has successfully protected Paul from mob injustice and death in the street (Acts 21:32-33Acts 21:32-33 commentary), he has twice made incorrect assumptions about Paul’s identity.
First, the commander thought Paul was a wanted Egyptian insurrectionist (Acts 21:38Acts 21:38 commentary). Second, here, he has failed to do due diligence and determine if the man he is about to scourge is a Roman citizen or not. Plenty of Jews were Roman citizens by birth, as Paul was and will explain.
Paul has already displayed that he can speak Greek. He is an educated man, and told the commander earlier he is originally from Tarsus, Cilicia, a Romanized city in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) (Acts 21:38Acts 21:38 commentary).
The commander came and said to Paul, “Tell me, are you a Roman?”
And Paul said, “Yes” (v. 27).
The commander, shocked, and perhaps skeptical, answered, “I acquired this citizenship with a large sum of money.” People could purchase their citizenship and all its rights and benefits by paying a large sum of money. It is impossible to determine how much this large sum of money was, but it was significant to this commander, who was apparently not Roman by birth.
The Roman historian Cassius Dio describes how, during the reign of the Emperor Claudius, citizenship was purchasable for the right price, “large sums,” from the emperor, the emperor’s wife, and the imperial freedmen (Cassius Dio, “Roman History,” 60.17). It became an embarrassment to Claudius Caesar for how “indiscriminately” citizenship was distributed during his reign, but this commander seems to have benefited from the policy when it was in play. The commander may have even purchased his rank, since political and military positions were also for sale during Claudius’s reign, according to Cassius Dio.
We will learn that the commander’s Roman name was Claudius Lysias (Acts 23:26Acts 23:26 commentary), which further lends credibility to the idea that he paid a large sum of money to Claudius’s administration and named himself after the emperor, which new citizens sometimes did.
But Paul, who probably did not dress or appear to be someone with access to a large sum of money, explains to the commander that he did not have to purchase his citizenship. Paul acquired this citizenship by birth:
And Paul said, “But I was actually born a citizen” (v. 28).
That Paul was actually born a citizen may mean his father or grandfather were Roman citizens and passed the rights on hereditarily. Paul has mentioned citizenship before, years earlier in Philippi (Acts 16:37-39Acts 16:37-39 commentary). In that instance, Paul had already been beaten with rods and jailed for the night, before declaring his citizenship the next day to call the Philippian magistrates to account.
Here Paul voices his citizenship before he is punished physically. This allows Paul to escape the tremendous pain and potential permanent injury of a Roman scourging: Therefore those who were about to examine Paul immediately let go of him; and the commander also was afraid when he found out that he was a Roman, and because he had put him in chains (v. 29). The soldiers who had tied Paul to the post and were readying the whip immediately untied him.
In his prosecution of a magistrate who had unlawfully crucified another Roman, the famous orator Cicero (106-43 BC) said of the mistreatment of any Roman citizen, “To bind a Roman citizen is a crime, to flog him is an abomination…” (Cicero, “Against Verres,” 2.5, Section 170). It makes sense then that those who were about to torture Paul acted with such speed to release him.
The commanderalso was afraid for the same reason when he found out that Paul was a Roman. Roman citizens were considered free men, in contrast to everyone else. To abuse them before a conviction was beyond taboo, as well as very illegal. The commander was likewise anxious because he had put Paul in chains (Acts 21:33Acts 21:33 commentary). The fear probably was that Paul would report his mistreatment to someone higher up than the commander, possibly the Roman governor of Judea, Felix.
Afraid or not, the commander is no closer to finding out the reason why the people of Jerusalem were shouting and threatening Paul (v. 24). The commander did not believe that he could simply release Paul back into the public. He apparently reasoned that the violent mob may have had a legitimate grievance against Paul.
The bare facts of the matter were that the Romans had arrived on the scene of a mob trying to murder one man in the street, and after the violence was interrupted, the assailant mob failed to provide a clear accusation against the victim (Acts 21:34Acts 21:34 commentary). Paul had essentially been arrested for being the victim of a murder attempt. Nevertheless, although the commander was worried that he had mishandled a Roman citizen, he kept Paul detained, and arranged for an examination involving the Jewish leaders:
But on the next day, wishing to know for certain why he had been accused by the Jews, he released him and ordered the chief priests and all the Council to assemble, and brought Paul down and set him before them (v. 30).
Paul probably slept in the barracks or the prison that night, treated a little better than before now that they knew he was a Roman citizen. But he is still a prisoner. And so, on the next day after having been assaulted and arrested, Paul finds a trial being put together to investigate what offense he had caused.
The commander still does not understand the trouble between Paul and the Jews, and wishing to know for certain why Paul had been accused, the commander summons the Jewish leadership. The text also says that the commander released Paul, but this does not mean he released him into the city. The commander released him from imprisonment and transported him to the place of the trial.
The commander ordered the chief priests and all the Council to assemble, meaning the Sanhedrin of 70 elders plus the High Priest. The 70 elders were a mixture of chief priests and chief Pharisees, a sect of teachers of the Law. Throughout the New Testament, the Sanhedrin has been a source of persecution. It plotted to have Jesus put to death (Matthew 26:59Matthew 26:59 commentary), it tried to find reasons to execute the Apostles (Acts 5:33Acts 5:33 commentary), personally got its hands dirty in the stoning of Stephen (Acts 7:58-60Acts 7:58-60 commentary), and sponsored the persecution, imprisonment, and deaths of other believers (Acts 8:1Acts 8:1 commentary, 9:1-29:1-2 commentary, 22:4-522:4-5 commentary).
During Jesus’s ministry, a few of the Sanhedrin members were believers in Him, such as Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea (John 3:1-2John 3:1-2 commentary, 19:38-4219:38-42 commentary, Matthew 27:57Matthew 27:57 commentary, commentaryMark 15:43Mark 15:43 commentary) Also, during the early years of the church, some members of the Council exhibited wisdom and sought peace, such as Gamaliel (Acts 5:34-39Acts 5:34-39 commentary). But overall, the Council of the Sanhedrin was openly hostile to Jesus and His followers. They were a biased party.
Based on this action, it seems probable that the Roman commander did not know about these tensions between the Jewish elite and the “sect of the Nazarenes” (Acts 24:5Acts 24:5 commentary). From his perspective, the Council governed its people in religious matters (John 18:31John 18:31 commentary) and had insight and understanding into Jewish Law and customs that the commander knew little to nothing about.
As far as the Roman commander knew, this Council would be able to help sort out for certain what it was that the Jews had accused Paul of. So, having called the Council to assemble, the Romans brought Paul down and set him before the Sanhedrin. The Council traditionally held court in “the Hall of Hewn Stones,” a chamber inside the temple complex (Luke 22:66Luke 22:66 commentary).
With the Sanhedrin as his audience, Paul will give another defense and testimony of himself and the truth of the gospel, but he will not change anyone’s heart or better his circumstances. He is now on a long journey through trials both physical and legal, through more chains and more plots against his life, ultimately taking him to Rome. Through it all, he will continue to show himself to be a faithful witness imitating the example and mindset of Jesus Christ, rejected by the world but rewarded by God the Father (Philippians 2:5-11Philippians 2:5-11 commentary, commentaryRevelation 3:21Revelation 3:21 commentary).
Set to dark mode
Acts 22:22-30 meaning
Acts 22:22-30Acts 22:22-30 commentary details the fallout of Paul speaking his testimony, how he was rejected by the Jews and avoids torture by the Romans.
In the previous sections, Paul has been taken into Roman custody after a mob of incensed Jews attacked him. On request, Paul was given the chance to speak to his accusers. He begins telling the murderous crowd about his entire life. He was educated in Jerusalem as a teacher of the Law and was zealous for God, as zealous as his audience is, though they falsely believe he preaches against the Jewish Law. Paul told the crowd how years ago he was the leader of the persecution against followers of the Way of Jesus.
On a journey to Damascus to imprison believers in hiding, the resurrected Jesus appeared to Paul. This changed Paul’s life. He stopped persecuting believers and became a believer himself. When Paul returned to Jerusalem, he had another vision of Jesus. Jesus commanded Paul to leave the city. Paul agreed, because many people remembered his past oppressive actions and did not believe he had changed. Jesus declared that He would send Paul to preach to the Gentiles.
The crowd was paying attention to Paul’s speech so far. When he first began his address, the crowd took notice that he spoke in the “Hebrew dialect” and so “became even more quiet” (Acts 22:2Acts 22:2 commentary). Paul had the ear of his would-be murderers. They had not reacted or interrupted so far. Even when Paul described his vision of the risen Jesus Christ, no one challenged him or called him a liar. But once he declared that Jesus commanded him to “Go! For I will send you far away to the Gentiles” (Acts 22:21Acts 22:21 commentary), the crowd erupts with murderous rage all over again:
They listened to him up to this statement, and then they raised their voices and said, “Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he should not be allowed to live!” (v. 22).
The crowd had, with some interest, listened to Paul’s testimony up to this statement: that he was sent by God to preach to the Gentiles. At this, the mob raised their voices into a shout, drowning out Paul, interrupting him and making sure he could not speak anymore. He is not able to share the rest of his testimony, to tell of the many Gentiles who now worshiped God, of the miracles God had worked among the Gentiles. The Jerusalem crowd would never hear of what their God was doing among the Gentiles, now that they cut Paul off and raised their voices to call for his destruction.
This mob was at odds with Paul because they believed a false rumor that Paul preached against the Jewish people, the Law, and the temple (Acts 21:28Acts 21:28 commentary). They were under the false impression that Paul had also brought a Gentile into the inner court of the temple where it was forbidden.
This was a lie, but it is perhaps the reason that at the mention of “the Gentiles,” the crowd raised their voices, remembering that Paul was accused of defiling the holiness of the temple by bringing an unclean Gentile into it. It was for a similar reason that the Jews revolted against the Greek king, Antiochus Epiphanes IV, a century before the events of Acts 22Acts 22 commentary. Antiochus (an unclean Gentile) entered and desecrated the temple and sacrificed a pig (an unclean offering) on the temple altar.
This zeal for the Law and for keeping the temple clean superseded the crowd’s concern for the truth; the truth was Paul did not preach against the Law, nor had he brought a Gentile into the inner temple. But the crowd wanted to hear no more from Paul. They expressed their rejection of Paul and his message in crystal clear terms, “Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he should not be allowed to live!” Not only did they want Paul sent Away from their presence and their city, they wanted him to be destroyed.
His association with the Gentiles was so offensive to this crowd that they wished for Paul to be struck from the earth itself. The crowd resumed its desire for his death, that he should not be allowed to live for what he had said. The Jews gathered here could not stand the claim Paul made that God told him to preach to the Gentiles. This claim reopened the wound in their minds that Paul allegedly was anti-Judaism.
The crowd makes a big show of their rage by crying out and throwing off their cloaks and tossing dust into the air (v. 23). They seem to be preparing to storm the stairway, Roman guards or not, and drag Paul back down with them where they can remove this fellow from the earth. The threat of their violence was audible and visible: they began crying out for Paul’s death, and they began throwing off their cloaks to free themselves up for action, all the while tossing dust into the air to further express their rage (and perhaps confuse and hinder the soldiers).
The escalation of the crowd concludes any further hope of dialogue. The Roman chiliarch (commander of a thousand troops) ushers Paul away from the scene so that no more violence can take place: the commander ordered him to be brought into the barracks, stating that he should be examined by scourging so that he might find out the reason why they were shouting against him that way (v. 24).
The Roman commander obviously thought there must be some legitimate reason for so many Jewish people to call for this man’s death. Surely Paul had done something heinous enough to bring such retribution on his head. So after having ordered that Paul be brought into the safety of the Roman barracks in the Tower of Antonia, the commander begins his investigation. He starts by stating that Paul should be examined by scourging.
A Roman scourging was an excruciating experience. The prisoner would usually be tied to a post and stripped naked. Roman whips were so long they could wrap around a person’s entire body. Attached to the leather whips were metal beads, pieces of bone, iron, glass, or nails. After only a few lashes, the victim would be covered in deep bloody wounds. The commander’s idea was that by torturing Paul with a scourging, Paul might finally explain his crime or offense, so that the commander might find out the reason why the mob were shouting against him that way—demanding for his death and beating him in the courtyard earlier.
Paul has been flogged several times before by Jewish authorities, and has been beaten with rods by Greek authorities (2 Corinthians 11:24-252 Corinthians 11:24-25 commentary, commentary Acts 16:22Acts 16:22 commentary). But as far as the biblical record shows, he has never suffered a Roman scourging. Paul decides to prevent this from happening. He has a trump card that spares him this awful torture:
But when they stretched him out with thongs, Paul said to the centurion who was standing by, “Is it lawful for you to scourge a man who is a Roman and uncondemned?” (v. 25).
Paul may have waited for them to first prepare him for this scourging, to add to the Romans’ humiliation when he declares his Roman citizenship. Or he may not have realized they meant to scourge him until they had stretched him out with thongs, binding his wrists to a post with restraints.
Either way, it is at the last second that Paul challenges their intent to whip him. As brutal as the Romans were, they were generally very rigid in keeping their own laws. Paul escapes punishment through legal means. Though he is their prisoner, he has rights as a Roman citizen. So he asks the centurion—a Roman captain—who was standing by to oversee his scourging, if he is willing to violate Roman law.
Paul asks, rhetorically, Is it lawful for you to scourge a man who is a Roman and uncondemned? The only answer to this question is, “No, it’s certainly not lawful to scourge a Roman man who has not been tried and judged for any crime.” The Romans could pretty much do whatever they wanted to non-Romans, condemned or uncondemned, when investigating a crime. But a man who is a Roman, a male Roman citizen, was not to be harmed until properly tried in court.
The centurion does not seem to answer Paul’s question, but instead rushes off to question his superior on this ill-advised act of torture. The centurion (a captain of one hundred soldiers) goes to the chiliarch (the commander of one thousand soldiers) to inform him that Paul should not be scourged:
When the centurion heard Paul’s declaration of Roman citizenship, he went to the commander and told him, saying, “What are you about to do? For this man is a Roman” (v. 26).
That they were about to do the scourging makes clear that it hasn’t happened yet, but is very close to happening. The centurion asks his boss, the commander, urgently What are you about to do? This order was given by the commander, and if carried out, it would come back to haunt the commander. The blame goes back to the top, to the one who gave the order. It seems the centurion may have believed the commander possibly knew Paul was a Roman, hence why he questions the order.
The centurion declares For this man is a Roman, meaning this order should not be carried out. This is against Roman law. He is essentially asking, “Why are we about to break our own law to illegally torture one of our own citizens? This is a disastrous idea.”
But the commander obviously did not know Paul was technically a Roman. This is strike two for the commander’s investigation skills. While he has successfully protected Paul from mob injustice and death in the street (Acts 21:32-33Acts 21:32-33 commentary), he has twice made incorrect assumptions about Paul’s identity.
First, the commander thought Paul was a wanted Egyptian insurrectionist (Acts 21:38Acts 21:38 commentary). Second, here, he has failed to do due diligence and determine if the man he is about to scourge is a Roman citizen or not. Plenty of Jews were Roman citizens by birth, as Paul was and will explain.
Paul has already displayed that he can speak Greek. He is an educated man, and told the commander earlier he is originally from Tarsus, Cilicia, a Romanized city in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) (Acts 21:38Acts 21:38 commentary).
The commander came and said to Paul, “Tell me, are you a Roman?”
And Paul said, “Yes” (v. 27).
The commander, shocked, and perhaps skeptical, answered, “I acquired this citizenship with a large sum of money.” People could purchase their citizenship and all its rights and benefits by paying a large sum of money. It is impossible to determine how much this large sum of money was, but it was significant to this commander, who was apparently not Roman by birth.
The Roman historian Cassius Dio describes how, during the reign of the Emperor Claudius, citizenship was purchasable for the right price, “large sums,” from the emperor, the emperor’s wife, and the imperial freedmen (Cassius Dio, “Roman History,” 60.17). It became an embarrassment to Claudius Caesar for how “indiscriminately” citizenship was distributed during his reign, but this commander seems to have benefited from the policy when it was in play. The commander may have even purchased his rank, since political and military positions were also for sale during Claudius’s reign, according to Cassius Dio.
We will learn that the commander’s Roman name was Claudius Lysias (Acts 23:26Acts 23:26 commentary), which further lends credibility to the idea that he paid a large sum of money to Claudius’s administration and named himself after the emperor, which new citizens sometimes did.
But Paul, who probably did not dress or appear to be someone with access to a large sum of money, explains to the commander that he did not have to purchase his citizenship. Paul acquired this citizenship by birth:
And Paul said, “But I was actually born a citizen” (v. 28).
That Paul was actually born a citizen may mean his father or grandfather were Roman citizens and passed the rights on hereditarily. Paul has mentioned citizenship before, years earlier in Philippi (Acts 16:37-39Acts 16:37-39 commentary). In that instance, Paul had already been beaten with rods and jailed for the night, before declaring his citizenship the next day to call the Philippian magistrates to account.
Here Paul voices his citizenship before he is punished physically. This allows Paul to escape the tremendous pain and potential permanent injury of a Roman scourging: Therefore those who were about to examine Paul immediately let go of him; and the commander also was afraid when he found out that he was a Roman, and because he had put him in chains (v. 29). The soldiers who had tied Paul to the post and were readying the whip immediately untied him.
In his prosecution of a magistrate who had unlawfully crucified another Roman, the famous orator Cicero (106-43 BC) said of the mistreatment of any Roman citizen, “To bind a Roman citizen is a crime, to flog him is an abomination…” (Cicero, “Against Verres,” 2.5, Section 170). It makes sense then that those who were about to torture Paul acted with such speed to release him.
The commander also was afraid for the same reason when he found out that Paul was a Roman. Roman citizens were considered free men, in contrast to everyone else. To abuse them before a conviction was beyond taboo, as well as very illegal. The commander was likewise anxious because he had put Paul in chains (Acts 21:33Acts 21:33 commentary). The fear probably was that Paul would report his mistreatment to someone higher up than the commander, possibly the Roman governor of Judea, Felix.
Afraid or not, the commander is no closer to finding out the reason why the people of Jerusalem were shouting and threatening Paul (v. 24). The commander did not believe that he could simply release Paul back into the public. He apparently reasoned that the violent mob may have had a legitimate grievance against Paul.
The bare facts of the matter were that the Romans had arrived on the scene of a mob trying to murder one man in the street, and after the violence was interrupted, the assailant mob failed to provide a clear accusation against the victim (Acts 21:34Acts 21:34 commentary). Paul had essentially been arrested for being the victim of a murder attempt. Nevertheless, although the commander was worried that he had mishandled a Roman citizen, he kept Paul detained, and arranged for an examination involving the Jewish leaders:
But on the next day, wishing to know for certain why he had been accused by the Jews, he released him and ordered the chief priests and all the Council to assemble, and brought Paul down and set him before them (v. 30).
Paul probably slept in the barracks or the prison that night, treated a little better than before now that they knew he was a Roman citizen. But he is still a prisoner. And so, on the next day after having been assaulted and arrested, Paul finds a trial being put together to investigate what offense he had caused.
The commander still does not understand the trouble between Paul and the Jews, and wishing to know for certain why Paul had been accused, the commander summons the Jewish leadership. The text also says that the commander released Paul, but this does not mean he released him into the city. The commander released him from imprisonment and transported him to the place of the trial.
The commander ordered the chief priests and all the Council to assemble, meaning the Sanhedrin of 70 elders plus the High Priest. The 70 elders were a mixture of chief priests and chief Pharisees, a sect of teachers of the Law. Throughout the New Testament, the Sanhedrin has been a source of persecution. It plotted to have Jesus put to death (Matthew 26:59Matthew 26:59 commentary), it tried to find reasons to execute the Apostles (Acts 5:33Acts 5:33 commentary), personally got its hands dirty in the stoning of Stephen (Acts 7:58-60Acts 7:58-60 commentary), and sponsored the persecution, imprisonment, and deaths of other believers (Acts 8:1Acts 8:1 commentary, 9:1-29:1-2 commentary, 22:4-522:4-5 commentary).
During Jesus’s ministry, a few of the Sanhedrin members were believers in Him, such as Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea (John 3:1-2John 3:1-2 commentary, 19:38-4219:38-42 commentary, Matthew 27:57Matthew 27:57 commentary, commentary Mark 15:43Mark 15:43 commentary) Also, during the early years of the church, some members of the Council exhibited wisdom and sought peace, such as Gamaliel (Acts 5:34-39Acts 5:34-39 commentary). But overall, the Council of the Sanhedrin was openly hostile to Jesus and His followers. They were a biased party.
Based on this action, it seems probable that the Roman commander did not know about these tensions between the Jewish elite and the “sect of the Nazarenes” (Acts 24:5Acts 24:5 commentary). From his perspective, the Council governed its people in religious matters (John 18:31John 18:31 commentary) and had insight and understanding into Jewish Law and customs that the commander knew little to nothing about.
As far as the Roman commander knew, this Council would be able to help sort out for certain what it was that the Jews had accused Paul of. So, having called the Council to assemble, the Romans brought Paul down and set him before the Sanhedrin. The Council traditionally held court in “the Hall of Hewn Stones,” a chamber inside the temple complex (Luke 22:66Luke 22:66 commentary).
With the Sanhedrin as his audience, Paul will give another defense and testimony of himself and the truth of the gospel, but he will not change anyone’s heart or better his circumstances. He is now on a long journey through trials both physical and legal, through more chains and more plots against his life, ultimately taking him to Rome. Through it all, he will continue to show himself to be a faithful witness imitating the example and mindset of Jesus Christ, rejected by the world but rewarded by God the Father (Philippians 2:5-11Philippians 2:5-11 commentary, commentary Revelation 3:21Revelation 3:21 commentary).