The Pursuer Is Led by the Hand

“Yet” reaches back to 8:3, where Saul was already dragging believers from their houses. “Breathing out” is empneo, which more naturally means breathing in: threat and slaughter are the air he lives on. The high priest was most likely Caiaphas, in office until AD 36, the same man who had handed Jesus to Pilate.

Damascus lay some 135 miles north-east, about a week on foot, with a Jewish community large enough that Josephus counts thousands killed there in AD 66. Whether a high priest’s letters bound synagogues abroad is debated; 1 Maccabees 15:21 records Rome granting the high priest a right to have fugitives handed back.

Paul’s later accounts add that it was about noon and that the light was brighter than the sun (22:6, 26:13). “Shined round about” is periastrapto, to flash around like lightning, a rare word used only here and in 22:6. The light arrives “suddenly”, just as he comes within reach of his goal.

A name spoken twice is how God calls in the Hebrew Scriptures: “Abraham, Abraham” (Genesis 22:11), “Moses, Moses” (Exodus 3:4), “Samuel, Samuel” (1 Samuel 3:10). The Greek here spells his name Saoul, the Hebrew form rather than the Greek Saulos, which fits Paul’s later remark that the voice spoke “in the Hebrew tongue” (26:14).

“Lord” may be no more than a respectful “sir”; Saul does not yet know whom he addresses. The line about kicking against the pricks is not in the Greek manuscripts of this chapter. It came into the King James from the Latin tradition, borrowed from 26:14, where Paul himself reports it; the proverb was already old in Greek drama.

Everything before “Arise” in this verse is also missing from the Greek manuscripts of chapter 9 and was supplied from Paul’s retelling in 22:10. What remains in every text is a single instruction. Saul is told the next step, to go into the city, and nothing beyond it.

In 22:9 Paul says his companions “heard not the voice of him that spake”. A common explanation turns on the Greek: here the verb for hearing takes the genitive, suggesting a sound registered, and in 22:9 the accusative, suggesting words understood. Others see the two accounts as simply told from different angles. Either way, they perceived something and received nothing.

His eyes are open and he sees nothing. “Led him by the hand” is cheiragogeo, a single Greek verb, and Acts uses its noun in 13:11, where Paul himself strikes the sorcerer Elymas blind so that he goes about “seeking some to lead him by the hand”. The man who blinds a sorcerer has been led the same way.

No food and no water for three days is close to the limit a body can bear. The only other fast of exactly that shape in Scripture is Esther’s, “neither eat nor drink three days, night or day” (Esther 4:16), kept before she risked her life. Acts gives no reason for the fast and does not supply one.

This is the third Ananias in Acts, neither the liar of 5:1 nor the high priest of 23:2. The name is Hananiah, “the LORD has been gracious”. His “Behold, I am here” is the Hebrew hineni, the reply of Abraham (Genesis 22:1) and Samuel (1 Samuel 3:4) when called. Paul later calls him devout by the law and well spoken of by the Jews of Damascus (22:12).

The street called Straight was the Via Recta, the colonnaded east to west main street of Roman Damascus, about a mile long; a street on the same line still carries the name. Judas was presumably a Jewish householder with lodging for travellers. This is the first time the book says where Saul comes from: Tarsus, in Cilicia.

Saul’s vision is reported only here, second-hand, inside the Lord’s words to Ananias. Two people are shown each other before they meet, and the book will do it again in chapter 10, when Cornelius and Peter each receive a vision naming the other. The paired visions become one of the ways Acts marks a meeting as arranged.

“Saints”, hagioi, “holy ones”, is used here for the first time in Acts of the believers, and it recurs twice more in this chapter (9:32, 41). Ananias has heard “by many”: Saul’s record in Jerusalem has travelled 135 miles ahead of him. The verb “done” is epoiesen, which the Lord will answer in verse 16.

“All that call on thy name” is borrowed from Joel 2:32, which Peter quoted at Pentecost (2:21): “whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” In Joel the name is that of the LORD. Ananias uses the phrase to define believers as people who call on the name of Jesus.

“Chosen vessel” is literally “a vessel of choice”, skeuos ekloges. Paul will use vessel language of himself and others: “we have this treasure in earthen vessels” (2 Corinthians 4:7), vessels of mercy (Romans 9:23). The three audiences arrive in this order in his life, and the kings are real: Agrippa hears him in chapter 26.

The Lord’s reply is shaped to match Ananias’s complaint. Ananias said “how much evil” Saul had done (hosa kaka); the Lord answers “how great things” he must suffer (hosa pathein), the same word opening both. Paul’s own catalogue of what that meant, beatings, stonings, shipwreck, is in 2 Corinthians 11:23–28.

Ananias adds a purpose the Lord did not mention in verse 12: “be filled with the Holy Ghost”. He also names the road, “in the way as thou camest”, information he could have had only from the Lord. A disciple with no office lays hands on Saul, where in Samaria it took apostles (8:17).

“Scales” is lepis, a word Greek medical writers used for flakes shed from the body. The same picture appears in Tobit 11:13, where white films peel from the old man’s eyes when his son applies the fish gall. Here the King James rightly keeps “as it had been”: it looked like scales falling.

“Meat” is food in general. The three-day fast of verse 9 ends only after sight and baptism, so the order runs eyes, water, bread. “Certain days” is deliberately vague, and the book is content to leave it so.

Outside the disputed 8:37, this is the only place in Acts where Jesus is called “the Son of God”, and it comes from the new convert’s mouth. The place is significant too: the synagogues, the very bodies to which his letters of arrest were addressed in verse 2.

“Destroyed” is portheo, to sack or ravage, a word for armies taking cities. Paul uses the same verb of himself twice in Galatians 1:13 and 23: he “destroyed” the faith he now preaches. The hearers still remember his commission down to its detail, “bound unto the chief priests”.

“Confounded” is suncheo, to pour together, throw into confusion, the verb used of the Pentecost crowd in 2:6. “Proving” is sumbibazo, to put together or join, which suggests he argued by laying Scriptures side by side until they fitted. “Very Christ” means the Christ himself, the Messiah.

Paul’s own account of this plot names another enemy: the governor under King Aretas watched the city to arrest him (2 Corinthians 11:32). Aretas IV ruled the Nabataeans to the south. The two accounts need not conflict; local hostility and a Nabataean official could well have worked in concert.

“Laying await” is epiboule, a plot or ambush, the word Paul uses of the Jewish plots against him in 20:3 and 23:30. A walled city could only be left through its gates, which is why the watch was set there around the clock, and why the way out had to be over the wall.

The best manuscripts read “his disciples”: Saul already has followers of his own. The basket is spuris, a large hamper, the word for the baskets of leftovers after the four thousand were fed (Mark 8:8). Paul’s own telling calls it a rope basket let down “through a window” in the wall (2 Corinthians 11:33).

“Assayed” is the older English for tried or attempted. “Join himself” is kollao, the verb of 8:29, where Philip was told to join the chariot. In Jerusalem it runs the other way: the man trying to attach himself finds the door shut. The fear is plain arithmetic; the last they knew of him was the havoc of 8:3.

Barnabas was introduced in 4:36 as “the son of consolation”, and here he earns the name again. “Took him” is epilambanomai, to take hold of someone, often to help. Paul says that on this visit he saw only Peter and James the Lord’s brother (Galatians 1:18–19), so “the apostles” here may mean those two.

“Coming in and going out” is a Hebrew idiom for moving freely through ordinary life, used in 1:21 of the time Jesus “went in and out” among the apostles. The phrase marks full acceptance: Saul is now part of the daily company.

The Grecians are the Hellenists, Greek-speaking Jews, the group whose synagogue disputed with Stephen (6:9) and whose members brought him to his death. Saul steps into Stephen’s place in the argument and meets Stephen’s answer. Paul later recalls a warning in the temple to leave Jerusalem quickly (22:17–21).

From Caesarea he would have gone north by sea or along the coast to Tarsus, a university city Strabo ranked with Athens and Alexandria. He drops from the account there until Barnabas goes looking for him in 11:25, several years on. His home town is the next stage of his life, not a retreat from it.

The oldest manuscripts read the singular, “the church”: one church across Judaea, Galilee and Samaria. This is the only mention in Acts of believers in Galilee, the region where most of Jesus’ ministry took place. “Edified” is built up, the language of a house under construction.

Lydda is the Old Testament Lod (1 Chronicles 8:12), on the road from Jerusalem to the port of Joppa, about twenty-five miles north-west of the city. “Throughout all quarters” suggests a tour among the new congregations that 9:31 has just described. The saints are already there before Peter comes.

Aeneas is a Greek name, the Trojan hero of Virgil’s epic, so he may have been a Greek-speaking Jew. The phrase “eight years” can also be read “from the age of eight”, since the Greek ex eton okto allows both. The King James “palsy” is paralysis, as in 8:7.

“Maketh thee whole” is in the present tense: Jesus is healing you now. The command “make thy bed” is one Greek verb, stronnumi, “spread for yourself”, which some read as an instruction to set a table for a meal. Either way the order is practical, and he obeys at once.

Saron is Sharon, the coastal plain running north from Joppa to Mount Carmel, famous for its rose (Song of Solomon 2:1) and its pasture (Isaiah 65:10). The people who saw Aeneas had known him in his bed for years; the evidence walks among them.

Tabitha is Aramaic for gazelle, and Dorcas is the Greek word for the same animal, a name for grace and beauty. The Greek calls her mathetria, the feminine form of “disciple”, a word used nowhere else in the New Testament. “Almsdeeds” are acts of mercy to the poor.

Washing the body was a customary act of love; the Mishnah permits washing and anointing the dead even on the Sabbath. Laying her in an upper room instead of burying her promptly may suggest they already hoped for Peter, an inference only. Elijah and Elisha both raised a dead child in an upper chamber (1 Kings 17:19, 2 Kings 4:21).

Lydda to Joppa is about ten or eleven miles, three hours on foot. Two men make a proper delegation, as Cornelius will send two servants to this same town in the next chapter (10:7). “Would not delay” is a courteous but urgent request; they send for him after the death, not during the sickness.

“Coats and garments” are the chiton and the himation, the tunic worn next to the skin and the outer cloak, the two pieces of ordinary dress. The verb “shewing” is in the middle voice, which may mean the widows were displaying the clothes on themselves, wearing what she had made them.

Peter had watched Jesus put the mourners out of Jairus’s house (Mark 5:40) and now does the same. His words in Aramaic would be “Tabitha, qumi”, one letter away from Jesus’ “Talitha cumi”, “Damsel, arise” (Mark 5:41). The pupil kneels and prays where the teacher simply took the child’s hand.

“Presented her alive” uses the words of 1:3, where Jesus “shewed himself alive” to the apostles: the same verb paristemi and the same word for living. The saints and the widows are named separately, and the widows, the ones who wept and showed her work, receive her back.

Joppa is the port from which Jonah fled rather than go to the Gentiles of Nineveh (Jonah 1:3). Peter, whom Jesus called Simon Bar-jona, “son of Jonah” (Matthew 16:17), is about to be summoned from the same town to a Gentile’s house. The link is drawn by later readers; Acts itself does not spell it out.

A tanner handled hides from dead animals, work that left a man ritually unclean and smelling of it; the Mishnah required tanneries to stand fifty cubits outside a town (Bava Batra 2:9). A Galilean fisherman lodging with such a man for “many days” may already be crossing a line, though Acts makes no comment.