Paul Begins His Testimony

Seeking to quell the riot that broke out when some Jews from Asia accused Paul of bringing gentiles into areas of the Jerusalem temple that were off-limits to non-Jews, the Roman tribune arrested Paul in the Holy City (Acts 21:27–36). The tribune mistook Paul for a man who had incited an uprising, but once the Apostle clarified that he was not that rebel, the tribune allowed Paul to speak to the crowd in their native language (21:37–22:2). Probably he thought that having Paul address the riotous crowd as a Jew would have a better chance of getting the people to calm down than would sending in more troops to disperse those who were demanding the Apostle’s death.

In today’s passage, Luke begins the record of what Paul actually said to the Jerusalem crowd. Since the case against him amounted to charges that he was violating Jewish law, Paul began by assuring them that the accusation was false. He explained that he was indeed a true Jew, born in Tarsus but “brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel” (Acts 22:3). Most likely, this means that Paul had received his formal rabbinic training in Jerusalem. Gamaliel, whom we met earlier in Acts 5:33–42, was one of the most respected rabbis of that day, and he was a Pharisee who schooled Paul “according to the strict manner of the law” (22:3) of the Jews and was also known for being fair and sober-minded in his judgments.

Paul also described himself as “zealous for God,” a trait that he held in common with the Jews whom he was addressing (22:3). The Apostle could see that many in the crowd were not malicious toward him but sincerely believed that they were upholding the honor of God. They had a zeal without knowledge (see Rom. 10:2), and Paul held out hope that he could perhaps convince them that he was not an enemy of the true faith but rather had come to help them see the full truth revealed in Christ Jesus.

The Apostle went on to describe his persecution of the church and how Jesus had appeared to him on the Damascus road. His description in Acts 22:6–9 matches Luke’s account in 9:1–7 except that Paul says that the men with him on the Damascus road did not hear the voice of Jesus (22:9), whereas Luke says that they did (9:7). (“Understand” in the ESV of 22:9 translates the Greek word that means “hear.”) This is not a contradiction; Paul meant that they did not hear the voice in the sense of not understanding it. He did not mean that the other men heard no sound.