And when he had given him licence, Paul stood on the stairs, and beckoned with the hand unto the people. 'What nobler spectacle (exclaims Chrysostom, or some other in his name, quoted by Hackett) than that of Paul at this moment! There he stood, bound with two chains, ready to make his defense to the people. The Roman commander sits by, to enforce order by his presence. An enraged populace look up to him from below. Yet in the midst of so many dangers, how self-possessed is he, how tranquil!'
And when there was made a great silence - the people awed at the permission given him by the commandant, and seeing him sitting as a listener,
He spake unto them in the Hebrew tongue - the Syro-Chaldaic, the vernacular tongue of the Palestine Jews since the captivity. Remarks:
(1) It will be observed that the predictions of impending suffering, in connection with this visit of the apostle to Jerusalem, became not only more frequent but more and more clear the nearer the time for their fulfillment came to be. So was it with the Old Testament predictions of the first appearing of our Lord in the flesh, and His own predictions of His last sufferings. And like foreshadowings of suffering for the truth, waxing clearer and more unmistakeable as the time approaches, prepare the faithful servants of Christ for meeting calmly, and enduring triumphantly, what in earlier stages of their testimony they might probably have shrunk from.
(2) 'To find disciples (says Lechler finely) was an important event in the journal of the traveling apostles. If the learned, the naturalists, the judges of the fine arts, inquire in their travels after the curiosities of science, nature, and art, a servant of Jesus, on the contrary, directs his eye to the rarities in the kingdom of Jesus; and his most delightful discovery is to meet with the children of God.'
(3) In what passed between Paul and the official brethren at Jerusalem, with James at their head, we have a beautiful example-deeply worthy of study and imitation-of firm adherence to essential principles on the one hand, and, on the other, of forbearance and concession in things subordinate. As James had in the famous council (Acts 15:1-41) maintained the freedom of the Gentile believers from the bondage of Jewish ordinances, so he and the elders associated with him glorify God on this occasion for the conversion of so many Gentiles through Paul's instrumentality, never proposing that any ceremonial yoke should be imposed upon them. In one who appears to have had an intensely conservative reverence for all the observances of the ancient economy-insomuch that Josephus testifies to the reverence in which he was held by the whole Jewish community (by whom he was known as JAMES THE JUST) - this joy at the accession to Christ of uncircumcised Gentiles, and firmness in resisting the imposition of the ceremonial yoke upon the Gentile converts, was very admirable.
But, on the other hand, representing, as James and the elders did, the church of the metropolis of Judaism, whose members entirely Jewish, were strongly tinctured with Jewish prejudice, and jealous of whatever tended to loosen the hold of Jewish peculiarities on the minds of the chosen people, they deemed it highly expedient that Paul, who had been industriously represented as "teaching all the Jews which were among the Gentiles to forsake Moses," should give some public evidence that this was a calumny. And James having suggested a way by which this could be at once done, our apostle immediately falls in with it and carries it into effect. It may, indeed, be said that this proved a fatal step, since it was by entering into the temple, to announce to the priest the completion of the days of his ceremonial purification that he was supposed to have "brought Greeks with him into the temple, and so to have polluted that holy place." But this was only the immediate occasion of a charge which his Jewish enemies were evidently waiting for some opportunity of fastening upon him-of being an enemy to Moses; and from their temper and treatment of him on this occasion there can be little doubt that, failing this, they would speedily have found some other plea for setting upon him. As the advice was in the circumstances a wise one, so the ready compliance with it on the part of Paul showed his entire freedom from narrowness and fanaticism in the advocacy even of great truths. (See the note at Acts 3:1-26, Remark 1, and on Acts 15:1-35 Remark 4, at the close of those sections.)
(3) What zeal for Christ was that which, when seized, hustled, and ready to be assassinated by an infuriated Jewish mob; when wrested out of their hands with difficulty by order of the tribune, who knew nothing of the circumstances, and only sought to preserve the peace; when bound with hand-chains, and in this condition-ascending the castle stairs on his way to the barracks, from whence he beheld the masses of the people that thronged the declivity below him-hurried to adds them; and-when permission to do so was asked in excellent Greek, to the astonishment of the tribune, and granted at once-prompted him to tell the story of his conversion, as the most convincing way of bringing the glory of the crucified Redeemer before them; a story whose narrative form and unvarnished, unimpassioned character only showed how sober was his present enthusiasm, how reasonable and resistless his surrender to Christ, and how entire was his devotion to His cause!