Paul Speaks to the Crowd
37 As the soldiers were about to take Paul into the barracks, he asked the commander, “May I say something to you?”
“Do you speak Greek?” he replied. 38 “Aren’t you the Egyptian who started a revolt and led four thousand terrorists out into the wilderness some time ago?”

39 Paul answered, “I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no ordinary city. Please let me speak to the people.”

40 After receiving the commander’s permission, Paul stood on the steps and motioned to the crowd. When they were all silent, he said to them in Aramaic[a]:

Acts 22
1 “Brothers and fathers, listen now to my defense.”
2 When they heard him speak to them in Aramaic, they became very quiet.
Then Paul said: 3 “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city. I studied under Gamaliel and was thoroughly trained in the law of our ancestors. I was just as zealous for God as any of you are today. 4 I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison, 5 as the high priest and all the Council can themselves testify. I even obtained letters from them to their associates in Damascus, and went there to bring these people as prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished.

6 “About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. 7 I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, ‘Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?’

8 “‘Who are you, Lord?’ I asked.

“ ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,’ he replied. 9 My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me.

10 “‘What shall I do, Lord?’ I asked.

“ ‘Get up,’ the Lord said, ‘and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.’ 11 My companions led me by the hand into Damascus, because the brilliance of the light had blinded me.




Dig Deeper
One of the hot button issues that is currently raging in the United States is the rise of citizens of the US who align themselves with Muslim terrorist groups and seek to oppose and even fight against their own country. This causes a very specific problem for a country that prides itself on being run by the rule of law. Citizens of the United States have certain rights and freedoms that come along with that citizenship. This becomes especially relevant when one is accused of committing a crime. Terrorists around the world, however, have been labeled as enemy combatants in a war and are treated as such. But what should be done with a citizen of the United States who is Muslim and decided to throw their lot in with the terrorists regardless of whether their illegal activities take place within the borders of the United States or somewhere abroad? Should these people be considered as enemy combatants based on their illegal activities and treated as such or should they be considered US citizens and be afforded all of the rights of a citizen accused of a crime? The answer to that bears large ramifications for the way that someone is treated within our legal system.

But imagine that some American citizen was arrested in Iraq or somewhere engaging in open terrorism against the interests of the United States and was arrested and brought back to the US. Imagine the anger of the people of the US that would be aimed at this traitor who they had been informed was in fact a citizen of America. People would be livid and want something done and probably not be very interested in hearing this man babble on about his reasons for betrayal. But what if he didn’t think that he was a traitor at all but was actually trying to help his countrymen? Imagine that as he was brought down a busy street in New York City, being transported to a courtroom, he turned to the angry mob surrounding the courthouse and asked to address them. After being given permission, he quickly turned to the crowd and addressed them in perfect English and even with a New York accent. That might surprise the crowd just enough to listen for a moment wouldn’t it? For how long, though, would depend on what he had to say once he began to speak.

Paul, of course, would not have considered himself to be a traitor at all to his Jewish brethren. In fact, he longed for them all to come to salvation and join God’s family in the Messiah (Rom. 9:1-6). But many of the Jews saw him as a traitor and they were more than ready to treat him like any foreign blasphemer. The crowd would seemingly have been happy to execute Paul on the spot but they contented themselves with protesting loudly, on the verge of rioting in their anger against Paul. But them something a bit surprising happened for the crowd, most of whom by now didn’t know much about Paul other than he was a betrayer of his people. He addressed them in their own language and he appealed to them politely as a fellow countrymen. This had to have been a bit shocking for the crowd as most people tend to imagine their enemies as violent brutes that are more beast than animal. This man spoke to them in their own tongue and he knew how to appeal to them as a fellow Jew. This would earn Paul, at least for a moment, the one thing he desired deeply: the chance to be heard out by his fellow Jews.

First though, we must look at some important historical background to this situation. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, there was an Egyptian who claimed to be a prophet who led as many as 30,000 men (Luke’s number of 4,000 seems a little more realistic and less exaggerated) to the Mount of Olives with the intent of taking Jerusalem and the Temple. He promised his men that the walls of Jerusalem would miraculously fall soon after they arrived but instead, Felix, the governor, attacked and killed or captured most of the Egyptian’s men, with the Egyptian himself narrowly escaping. He had whipped up the Messianic hopes of some but had sorely disappointed and was certainly reviled by most Jews. It makes a fair amount of sense, then, that with such an uproar going on that the commander, Lysias, mistook Paul for this Egyptian. It probably only helped to confirm that suspicion when Paul addressed him respectfully in Greek, something that he would have been expected from any Egyptian. Some English translations, including the NIV, give the impression that Paul’s Greek speaking stood in opposition to Lysias’ thoughts that this might be the Egyptian but the sentence should probably be translated something more like: “Do you know Greek? Then surely you are the Egyptian. . . “ It seems reasonable that the commander might even have been hoping that this was the Egyptian as that would have been quite a big moment for his own career to capture this rascal.

Much to the commander’s surprise, though, this was no Egyptian but a highly educated Jew from Tarsus, “a citizen of no ordinary city.” In this short sentence Paul established two things. The first is that he was a man of distinction and education, not the type that would start a riot in the Temple. The second important thing he did was establish that he was from no ordinary city. This wasn’t just a case of Paul taking pride in his home town. There was a belief in Paul’s day that the city one came from said a great deal about the measure of the man. Being from Tarsus gave Paul some credibility. Thus, even though he was bloodied and beaten, Paul was still calmly and coolly in control of the situation through the power of the Spirit and having both respected the commander’s authority while making significant honor and status claims for himself, he was given the permission to speak to this crowd who may have contained at least a few people who knew Paul from the old days as well as a large majority who did not recognize him by sight.

Paul began his speech in the same way that Stephen did in Acts 7:2 (an interesting irony from the man who had listened to Stephen’s speech and then had him put to death), confirming his solidarity with the crowd as fellow Jews. Just as Paul had wisely used his language abilities to catch the attention of the Roman commander, he now switched and apparently spoke to the crowd in the most common language for Jews in Jerusalem, Aramaic. Paul reiterated for the crowd that he was born in Tarsus, thus establishing his status and honor for the crowd, but he was no mere Diaspora Jew (a Jew who lived away from Jerusalem having been scattered after the 6th century BC defeat of Jerusalem). He had been born in Tarsus but had been brought up and educated in Jerusalem.

Beyond that, he was educated at the feet of the highly respected Gamaliel. We have already met Gamaliel in Acts 5 when he was urging his fellow Jews to back away from the tactic of persecuting Christians lest they find themselves fighting God. Gamaliel was of the more tolerant brand of Judaism of Paul’s day known as the school of Hillel, but Paul had developed his own convictions that didn’t line up with his famous teacher. This would be analogous in our day to a politician cutting his teeth as a staff for a rather moderate Independent, only to come on out in his own right as an extremely conservative far right candidate. Paul’s biggest credential of credibility with this crowd was that he was so zealous in defending the Law of Moses that he put more than one member of the Christian group to death (they called themselves “The Way” in the early days) and many more in prison. In simple terms, Paul was a big player in these matters. He personally knew the high priest, something few in the crowd would have been able to claim, and he and many members of the Council could verify the truth of Paul’s statements. He was no small-time rabble rouser.

But as he made his way to Damascus, something amazing happened. Something that Paul would have never expected. But at this point, it is worth asking an important question concerning the fact that this is the second time of three that Luke records Paul giving the story of his conversion. Why would Luke include this three times in one short book? We are probably left with two possibilities. Either Luke was a forgetful or careless writer and editor, or he intentionally wanted us to become extremely familiar with Paul’s story to the point where we start to know it almost as well as our own story. I’ll leave you to choose from those two options, although the answer seems rather obvious.

Before Paul could arrive in Damascus, he was stunned by a light that was so bright and powerful that it overpowered the light of the midday Sun. In piecing together the three accounts that Paul gives of this incident (Acts 9; 22; 26) it seems that his companions saw the light and heard a sound but could not understand specific words as Jesus confronted Saul and asked him why he was persecuting him. Those must have been chilling words for a man that was persecuting the church, but had no concept that he was truly persecuting a Messiah who stood in the presence of the Father in heaven.

Having been humbled and already prepared to recognize this heavenly figure as the Lord (Lord was the Greek term “kyrios” and could mean simply “sir” or “master” but was most often used by used in this context to refer to YHWH himself, the God of Israel). This was no small change in Paul’s worldview. The man that Paul saw as a failed Messiah at best had just radically changed everything he thought he knew. This Jesus, the man Paul was quickly realizing was nothing less than the Messiah and the Lord himself, told Paul to go into Damascus and wait for further instruction. Paul was carefully laying out his case to help his audience see that he had no other choice but to obey this heavenly voice. In fact, he wanted them to see that they would have likely down the same thing were they in Paul’s shoes.

At this point Paul has not yet gotten into the more controversial parts of his testimony but the foundation has been laid. Paul was no fool, though, he wasn’t just out to antagonize the crowd. Rather he desperately wanted to share the gospel with them in a way that they could best hear it. This meant that Paul deftly brought his audience in so that they could most easily identify with him and hear him out. The question is: Would they turn away from their desire to persecute him and listen to Paul, turning to the Messiah as Lord just as Paul had turned away from his persecution of the Messiah and turned to Jesus as Lord and Messiah?



Devotional Thought
Luke shares Paul’s conversion testimony no less than three times, and surely Paul shared it more often that that. It was one of his best vehicles to explain to people who Jesus was and why he was preaching the good news of Jesus. Do you have your own testimony of what Jesus has done in your life down so that you can share it powerfully with others? Take some time to think about that if you haven’t already done so.