Matthew Henry on Acts 22:3-21
Paul here gives such an account of himself as might serve not only to satisfy the chief captain that he was not that Egyptian he took him to be, but the Jews also that he was not that enemy to their church and nation, to their law and temple, they took him to be, and that what he did in preaching Christ, and particularly in preaching him to the Gentiles, he did by a divine commission. He here gives them to understand,
I. What his extraction and education were. 1. That he was one of their own nation, of the stock of Israel, of the seed of Abraham, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, not of any obscure family, or a renegado of some other nation: "No, I am verily a man who is a Jew, anēr Ioudaios - a Jew…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on Acts 22:18
get . . . quickly out of Jerusalem--compare Act 9:29.
for they will not receive thy testimony . . . And I said, Lord, they know, &c.--"Can it be, Lord, that they will resist the testimony of one whom they knew so well as among the bitterest of all against Thy disciples, and whom nothing short of resistless evidence could have turned to Thee?"
Adam Clarke on Acts 22:20
When the blood of thy martyr Stephen was shed - See on Act 7:58 (note); Act 8:1 (note). All these things Paul alleged as reasons why he could not expect to be received by the Christians; for how could they suppose that such a persecutor could be converted?
John Gill on Acts 22:20
And when the blood of thy martyr Stephen was shed,.... Stephen was a martyr for Christ, both by confession with his mouth, and by the effusion of his blood; he was the proto-martyr, or "the first martyr" that suffered for Christ; and there are copies, as one of Stephens's, and the Complutensian edition, which so read in this place; his blood was shed by stoning:
I also was standing by; to see the inhuman action performed; nor was he an idle and indifferent spectator:
and consenting unto his death; being pleased and delighted with it, and rejoicing at it; see Acts 8:1.
and kept the raiment of them that slew him; the accusers of him, and witnesses against him, whose hands were first on him,…
