The high priest was holding the apostles to an order the council had already given. Earlier the council "commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus" (Acts 4:18). Barnes reads the question as "Did we not command you with a 'threat?'" Gill adds that they had given "strict orders, with severe threatenings." The question is less a request for information than a charge of defiance.

The rest of the verse shows what troubled him most. The apostles had "filled Jerusalem" with their teaching, and the rulers felt it would "bring this man's blood upon us." Barnes explains that this phrase means "to hold or to prove him guilty of murdering the innocent." Gill says the apostles were "charging us with the murder of him."

"Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29). They did not soften the charge about Jesus' blood: "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree" (Acts 5:30). Yet they also offered hope, for God had exalted Him "to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins" (Acts 5:31). The council "took counsel to slay them" until Gamaliel advised, "Refrain from these men, and let them alone" (Acts 5:33-38). The apostles were beaten and released, and they left "rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name" (Acts 5:40-41).

The council was the ruling body of the Jews, called here "the council... and all the senate of the children of Israel" (Acts 5:21). The high priest and those with him were of "the sect of the Sadducees" (Acts 5:17).

"Straitly command" translates two related Greek words, parangelia parengeilamen, literally "with a charge we charged." The Greek manuscripts differ here. The Textus Receptus and Byzantine texts begin with ou ("not"), which makes the sentence a question, as in the KJV. The critical editions (Westcott and Hort, Nestle 1904, SBL) do not have ou, which is why the ESV reads it as a statement: "We strictly charged you."

Barnes notes that the complaint "ye have filled Jerusalem" was, without meaning to be, a tribute to the zeal and faithfulness of the apostles.

God was at work behind this question. The apostles were standing before the council because an angel had opened the prison and told them, "Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life" (Acts 5:19-20). The rulers' order and God's order could not both be obeyed.

Matthew Henry points out the irony in the rulers' fear. They said, in effect, that the apostles wanted to bring "the guilt of it before God, the shame of it before men, upon us." Yet at Jesus' trial the people had cried, "His blood be on us, and on our children" (Matthew 27:25). Henry says that in the heat of the moment "they could cry daringly enough." Now that charge troubled them. The apostles' answer did not leave them in guilt. The same Jesus they killed was exalted to give "repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins" (Acts 5:31). And Gamaliel's warning stands over the whole scene: "if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it" (Acts 5:39).