Bible Study series: Acts 23:1-11. This speech was also interrupted, before the highest council and court in Judaism.

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At the link to the original post, next, I write more commentary and dig a little deeper into the Greek. I also offer a section titled Observations for Discipleship at the end. Check it out!

Acts 23

In this post, links are provided in the commentary section for further study.

Let’s begin.

Scripture: Acts 23:1-11

¹ Paul stared down the high council and said: “Men, brothers! With an entirely good conscience I live as a citizen to God, to this day. ² The high priest Ananias ordered those standing near him to strike his mouth. ³ Then Paul said to him, “God is about to strike you, you whitewashed wall! You sit judging me by the law, and breaking the law, you order me to be struck?” ⁴ The ones standing nearby said, “You insult the high priest of God?” ⁵ And Paul said, “I had not known, brothers, that he is the high priest. For it is written, ‘You shall not verbally abuse the ruler of the people.’” [Ex. 22:28]

⁶ Paul, knowing that one part was Sadducee and the other was Pharisee, shouted in the High Council: “Men, brothers! I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees! I am on trial for the hope of the resurrection of the dead!” ⁷ When he said this, a dispute happened between the Sadducees and Pharisees, and the assembly was divided. ⁸ For the Sadducees say there is no resurrection nor angels or a spirit; the Pharisees acknowledge all of it. ⁹ A great shouting match took place, and some teachers of the law from the Pharisee faction stood up and waged a verbal battle: “We find nothing wrong with this man, if a spirit or angel spoke to him!” ¹⁰ When the huge dispute happened, the commander, being afraid in case Paul might be torn apart by them, ordered a contingent of troops to come down and whisk him away from the middle of them, to bring him to the barracks.

¹¹ The next night the Lord stood before him and said, “Take courage, for as you testified to the things about me in Jerusalem, in the same way you must testify also in Rome.” (Acts 23:11)

Comments:

For continuity, here is the previous pericope (pronounced puh-RIH-koh-pea) or unit or section in Acts 22:

³⁰ The next day, intending to find out exactly why he was accused by the Jews, he released him and ordered the chief priests and all the high council to gather and brought Paul down and stood him before them. (Acts 22:30)

1:

“stared down”: it comes from the verb that also means “stare intently or intensely” or “fix one’s gaze.” Luke is fond of it: Luke 4:20; 22:56; Acts 1:10; 3:4; 3:12; 6:15; 7:55; 10:4; 11:6; 13:9; 14:9; 23:1. Then Paul uses it twice: 2 Cor. 3:7, 13. You know you have God’s authority when you can stare at satanic and broken-human attacks right in the face (so to speak). If you cannot, please pray for the inner strength and grace and anointing to be able to stand and not to fold or flag during satanic and broken human attacks (I pray this almost every day). In the power of the Spirit (not soul power), stare down this kind of opposition. Don’t flinch.

“entirely good conscience”: “My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me” (1 Cor. 4:4, NIV). Paul did not rely on his conscience to be acquitted in the heavenly courtroom. But down here on earth, his conscience was clear. It is possible to do the right thing throughout your life. Don’t take the doctrine of total depravity too far. It just means you are unable to save yourself before a thrice-holy God; it does not mean you cannot enjoy life, like a walk on the beach or a good concert. It does not mean that you are so wicked that you cannot think happy thoughts, and the happy thoughts you do have are sinful. That’s extreme and a denial of how God made you.

“live as a citizen”: We live in God’s kingdom and a human kingdom. My translation is sound, and I like it because it reminds me that I am a citizen in God’s kingdom, and this citizenship enables me to live with a good conscience in human kingdoms.

2-5:

It is fantastic how Paul fought back verbally. He could have omitted the “whitewashed wall” bit, but maybe not. Jesus said about the scribes (teachers of the law) and Pharisees: “Woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you are like whitewashed tombs which from the outside appear beautiful, but on the inside they of full of the bones of the dead and all sorts of uncleanness” (Matt. 23:27). The contexts differ. In Jesus’s context, he was not speaking to an assembly of official leaders but excoriating a general class of leaders. In Paul’s context, he was standing before a specific collection of leaders in a legal setting.

But Luke’s readers may have known that Ananias (not to be confused with Annas), son of Nedebaeus, who ruled AD 48 to 58 or 59, was killed by Jewish nationalists (see below). So God really did strike him down, so to speak.

The Torah says that a man must have a fair trial and is innocent until proven guilty: “You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor” (Lev. 19:15, ESV). That verse says to judge justly and not favor the poor because he is poor or to be prejudiced against a rich man because he is rich. In other words, get all the fact and then decide guilt. Whether poor or rich, he is innocent until proven guilty.

¹⁶ And I charged your judges at that time, “Hear the disputes between your people and judge fairly, whether the case is between two Israelites or between an Israelite and a foreigner residing among you. ¹⁷ Do not show partiality in judging; hear both small and great alike. Do not be afraid of anyone, for judgment belongs to God. Bring me any case too hard for you, and I will hear it.” (Deut. 1:16-17, NIV)

One near-contemporary historian says that Ananias was corrupt, and people were glad when he died nine years later. Bruce says that the high priest at this time was Ananias, who got his office from Herod of Chalcis (younger brother of Herod Agrippa I) in A.D 47. He held it for eleven or twelve years. He was a bad high priest. He sent his servants to seize the tithes at the threshing floor, when the grain should have gone to the common priests. The Talmud preserves a mocking parody of Ps. 24:7 about him.

Lift up your heads, O ye gates;

That Yoḥanan [i.e. Ananias] ben Narbai [or Nabdai = Nebdebaeus], the disciple of Pinqai [pun on pinka or meat-dish] may go in

And fill his belly with the divine sacrifices! The ditty shows Ananias as being greedy for material, instinctive things.

Further, Ananias adopted a pro-Roman outlook and cracked down hard on Jewish nationalists, and when the war with Rome broke out in AD 66, he was dragged out of the aqueduct where he hid and put to death with his brother Hezekiah (Bruce, comment on v. 2).

In other words, he was a leader.

But why did Paul insult him? Here are some options. (1) When the order was given to hit Paul, was his head turned away so that he did not see who ordered the unjust strike. (2) Paul may not have been able to identify the high priest because Paul had not been in Jerusalem for a long time and the position was opened and filled in quick succession. And this was not an ordinary trial, but hastily called, so the high priest did not put on his full regalia. (3) Or his response could have been a display of his sarcasm, like this after he was struck: “Oh! I would not have known he was the high priest because he would not break the law like that! I couldn’t connect the dots! I shouldn’t verbally abuse such a righteous leader!” (4) Paul, being a human, lost his temper. He was infallibly inspired to write his letters, but outside of this unique call to write Scripture, he was not always inspired infallibly. I like what Longenecker says about our not being self-righteous at Paul’s reaction: “We cannot excuse Paul’s burst of anger, though we must not view it self-righteously. We are made of the same stuff as Paul, and his provocation was greater than most of us will ever face. Yet his quickness in acknowledging his wrongdoing (v. 5) was more than many of us are willing to emulate” (comment on v. 3). (5) Finally, Paul was exercising his prophetic call, as Jesus did. Here is Ezekiel’s prophecy about a whitewashed wall:

¹⁰ “‘Because they lead my people astray, saying, “Peace,” when there is no peace, and because, when a flimsy wall is built, they cover it with whitewash, ¹¹ therefore tell those who cover it with whitewash that it is going to fall. Rain will come in torrents, and I will send hailstones hurtling down, and violent winds will burst forth. ¹² When the wall collapses, will people not ask you, “Where is the whitewash you covered it with?”

¹³ “‘Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: In my wrath I will unleash a violent wind, and in my anger hailstones and torrents of rain will fall with destructive fury. ¹⁴ I will tear down the wall you have covered with whitewash and will level it to the ground so that its foundation will be laid bare. When it falls, you will be destroyed in it; and you will know that I am the Lord. ¹⁵ So I will pour out my wrath against the wall and against those who covered it with whitewash. I will say to you, “The wall is gone and so are those who whitewashed it, ¹⁶ those prophets of Israel who prophesied to Jerusalem and saw visions of peace for her when there was no peace, declares the Sovereign Lord.”’ (Ezek. 13:10-16)

Any one of those five options, or a combination of them, is valid. You can decide.

His apology and quotation from Scripture seems sincere (Exod. 22:28b), so he went back to Jewish law. Yet Schnable thinks the apology may not be sincere and Paul was speaking in the prophetic tradition (comments on vv. 4-5).

The abuse Paul took may have elicited sympathy with fair-minded Pharisees (Keener, p. 546).

In any case, it is good to fight back once in a while. The best example is Jesus. Maybe millions believe that throughout his ministry he did not answer his challengers. Where do they get this bad idea? The source must be at his trial. Is. 53:7 says he did not open his mouth before his accusers, but was like a lamb going to slaughter, and Peter repeats the same idea (1 Peter 2:22-23) (Matt. 27:12-14; Mark 14:60-61; 15:4-5; John 19:8-9.) Even during his trial he questioned his own beating (John 18:21-23), Yes, at his trial he did not defend himself or argue his case with the purpose of exonerating or clearing himself of the death sentence. He could have called on the Father who would send twelve legions of angels (Matt. 26:53). Instead, he was called to die for the sins of the world, so he let the unjust events take their course and remained silent in the sense of no self-defense. However, during his ministry he often replied to verbal challenges from the Pharisees and teachers of the law. He answered back and defeated them in their badgering him (Mark 2:6; 2:16; 7:1-5; 8:31; 9:14; 10:33; 11:18, 27-28; 14:1, etc.).

6-9:

It is also fantastic how Paul used the divide-and-conquer strategy. It may have saved his life, if a mob had formed and stoned him to death, which happened to Stephen (Acts 7). Back then Saul / Paul was probably the one dragging him out of the council room outside of the city to watch him be killed. I can only imagine how the “shouting match” must have been. I am glad Luke recorded some of the words. It seems as though he was there. Or he may have heard a report from someone else soon after the events. Maybe it was Paul’s nephew who seemed to have slipped through the cracks in society and could listen in. Who knows?

This divide-and-conquer may not be just an extra-clever ploy. Let’s remember that Paul was still proclaiming the resurrection of the dead, which he will also do before King Agrippa (26:6-8, 22-23) and in other contexts (24:15, 21; 28:20).

“son of Pharisees”: either it means his father or grandfather was a Pharisee or else he was a “disciple” in the “school” of the Pharisees. We don’t know for sure either way. But I say his ancestors were Pharisees because that’s the natural reading.

“resurrection”: The apostles and others preached their witness to resurrection. It is always beneficial to bring any discussion you have with a friend or family member or colleague at work back to the resurrection. The apostles saw it with their own eyes. We have not (unless you personally have seen the resurrected Jesus). We should study the evidence for the resurrection. Many resources are online. However, we can also speak about his resurrection in our hearts. We were once dead in our sins, but he has raised us up to new life.

Here are the basics about resurrection in the New Testament:

1.. It was prophesied in the OT (Ps. 16:3-11; Is. 55:3; Jnh. 1:17)

2.. Jesus predicted it before his death (Mark 8:31; 9:9, 31; 10:33-34; John 2:19-22)

3.. It happened in history (Matt. 28:1-7; Mark 16:1-8; Luke 24:1-8; John 20:1-8)

4.. Power used to resurrect Jesus:

a.. Power of God (Acts 2:24; Eph. 1:19-20; Col. 2:12)

b.. Christ’s own power (John 10:18)

c.. Jesus is the resurrection (John 11:25-26)

d.. Power of the Spirit (Rom. 8:11; 1 Pet. 3:18)

5.. Nature of Christ’s resurrection

a.. The same body that died was raised (Luke 24:39-40; John 20:27)

b.. It was a physical body

(1)) He ate (Luke 24:41-43; John 21:12-13; Acts 10:40-41)

(2)) He could be touched (John 20:27; 1 John 1:1)

(3)) It was a gloried body (1 Cor. 15:42-44; Phil. 3:21)

(4)) He passed through locked door (John 20:19, 26)

(5)) He ascended into heaven (Acts 1:9)

c.. It was also a transformed and glorified body

12. Do I Really Know Jesus? What Was His Resurrected Body Like?

And for a review of the basics, please click on this post:

11. Do I Really Know Jesus? He Was Resurrected from the Dead

You can also go to youtube to find out the evidence for it. Look for Gary Habermas or Mike Licona.

For a table of his appearances and other facts, please see:

14. Do I Really Know Jesus? He Appeared to His Disciples

“angels”: An angel, both in Hebrew and Greek, is really a messenger. Angels are created beings, while Jesus was the one who created all things, including angels (John 1:1-4). Renewalists believe that angels appear to people in their dreams or in person. It is God’s ongoing ministry through them to us.

Here is a multi-part study of angels in the area of systematic theology, but first a list of the basics.

Angels:

(a) Are messengers (in Hebrew mal’ak and in Greek angelos);

(b) Are created spirit beings;

(c) Have a beginning at their creation (not eternal);

(d) Have a beginning, but they are immortal (deathless).

(e) Have moral judgment;

(f) Have a certain measure of free will;

(g) Have high intelligence;

(h) Do not have physical bodies;

(i) But can manifest with immortal bodies before humans;

(j) Can show the emotion of joy.

See my posts about angels in the area of systematic theology:

Bible Basics about Angels

Angels: Questions and Answers

Angels: Their Duties and Missions

Angels: Their Names and Ranks and Heavenly Existence

Angels: Their Origins, Abilities, and Nature

The Torah (Pentateuch) has angels in its pages, so why would the Sadducees deny angels or spirits? Answer: Because the Pharisees may have believed that at the resurrection, people would be like or become angels and have a spiritual body or became pure spirit. The Sadducees denied either form of existence for people at the general resurrection (Marshall, comment on v. 8).

Paul was recognized as innocent (“nothing wrong with this man”). Throughout Luke’s narrative, Paul will be portrayed as innocent (Acts 23:29; 25:18-20, 25; 26:31-32). This is important in order to smack down the modern statement, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” In this case, the smoke and fire came from Paul’s enemies, not Paul or the Way (Christianity). If there is any fire, it is revival fire from the gospel.

10:

“whisked”: it comes from the verb harpazō (pronounced hahr-pah-zoh), which means to “catch up” or “snatch away.” It appears in 2 Cor 12:2 and 4, which says Paul was caught up to the third heaven. 1 Thess. 4:17 says that believers in Jesus will be snatched up or “raptured” (same meaning in the Latin word), to meet the Lord in the air. Philip was whisked or snatched away by the Spirit, when he was transported to another place, and then he was found in the town called Azotus (Acts 8:39).

11:

Apparently, this was not a vision. Jesus himself appeared to Paul. Peterson reminds us that the verb “take courage” in Greek is in the present tense, so it could be translated as “keep up your courage” (comment on v. 11).

Renewalists believe that visions and dreams and personal appearances still happen today. They get them all the time. It’s biblical. But your revelation must be submitted to the written Word because your revelation may not be right, but self-serving. In contrast, Scripture has stood the test of time. Your dream or vision has not. Scripture is infallible; you are not. See another similar appearance in Acts 18:10, but that was a vision.

Dreams and Visions: How to Interpret Them

Jesus tells him to take heart or courage. He was going though scary things—like his life was being threatened. Expect Jesus to speak to you in this way.

“must”: In this context, Jesus was guiding Paul towards Rome. He is going to get there. Paul needed to be reassured because as of right now, things looked bleak. But this direct word from the Lord kept in self-control and calm and dignified, making him the master of events rather then their victim.

GrowApp for Acts 23:1-11

1. Paul fought back in court. Sometimes you also may have to do this, and sometimes you do not. Have you ever had to fight for your basic rights? How did it go?

2. Paul used savvy to accomplish his goal: divine and conquer. Read James 1:5-7 and 3:17. How has God given you wisdom from above in a tight spot?

3. In a vision, Jesus encouraged Paul that no matter the opposition, he would reach his goal: testifying in Rome. Has God encouraged you when you were in a tight spot? What is you goal?

RELATED

The Historical Reliability of the Book of Acts

Book of Acts and Paul’s Epistles: Match Made in Heaven?

SOURCES

For the bibliography, please click on this link and scroll down to the very bottom:

Acts 23