Acts 26

Acts 26:1-32 . PAUL'S DEFENSE OF HIMSELF BEFORE KING AGRIPPA, WHO PRONOUNCES HIM INNOCENT, BUT CONCLUDES THAT THE APPEAL TO CÆSAR MUST BE CARRIED OUT.

This speech, though in substance the same as that from the fortress stairs of Jerusalem ( Acts 22:1-29 ), differs from it in being less directed to meet the charge of apostasy from the Jewish faith, and giving more enlarged views of his remarkable change and apostolic commission, and the divine support under which he was enabled to brave the hostility of his countrymen.

1-3. Agrippa said--Being a king he appears to have presided.
Paul stretched forth the hand--chained to a soldier ( Acts 26:29 ,

3. I know thee to be expert, &c.--His father was zealous for the law, and he himself had the office of president of the temple and its treasures, and the appointment of the high priest [JOSEPHUS, Antiquities, 20.1.3].
hear me patiently--The idea of "indulgently" is also conveyed.

4, 5. from my youth, which was at the first . . . at Jerusalem, know all the Jews; which knew me from the beginning--plainly showing that he received his education, even from early youth, at Jerusalem.

5. if they would--"were willing to"
testify--but this, of course, they were not, it being a strong point in his favor.
after the most straitest--"the strictest."
sect--as the Pharisees confessedly were. This was said to meet the charge, that as a Hellenistic Jew he had contracted among the heathen lax ideas of Jewish peculiarities.

6, 7. I . . . am judged for the hope of the promise made . . . to our fathers--"for believing that the promise of Messiah, the Hope of the Church ( Acts 13:32 , 28:20 ) has been fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth risen from the dead."

7. Unto which promise--the fulfilment of it.
our twelve tribes--( James 1:1 ; and
instantly--"intently";
serving God--in the sense of religious worship; on "ministered,"
day and night, hope to come--The apostle rises into language as catholic as the thought--representing his despised nation, all scattered thought it now was, as twelve great branches of one ancient stem, in all places of their dispersion offering to the God of their fathers one unbroken worship, reposing on one great "promise" made of old unto their fathers, and sustained by one "hope" of "coming" to its fulfilment; the single point of difference between him and his countrymen, and the one cause of all their virulence against him, being, that his hope had found rest in One already come, while theirs still pointed to the future.
For which hope's sake, King Agrippa, I am accused of the Jews--"I am accused of Jews, O king" (so the true reading appears to be); of all quarters the most surprising for such a charge to come from. The charge of sedition is not so much as alluded to throughout this speech. It was indeed a mere pretext.

8. Why should it be thought a thing incredible . . . that God should raise the dead?--rather, "Why is it judged a thing incredible if God raises the dead?" the case being viewed as an accomplished fact. No one dared to call in question the overwhelming evidence of the resurrection of Jesus, which proclaimed Him to be the Christ, the Son of God; the only way of getting rid of it, therefore, was to pronounce it incredible. But why, asks the apostle, is it so judged? Leaving this pregnant question to find its answer in the breasts of his audience, he now passes to his personal history.

16-18. But rise, &c.--Here the apostle appears to condense into one statement various sayings of his Lord to him in visions at different times, in order to present at one view the grandeur of the commission with which his Master had clothed him [ALFORD].
a minister . . . both of these things which thou hast seen--putting him on a footing with those "eye-witnesses and ministers of the word" mentioned in Luke 1:2 .
and of those in which I will appear to thee--referring to visions he was thereafter to be favored with; such as Acts 18:9 Acts 18:10 , 22:17-21 , 23:11 , 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 , &c. ( Galatians 1:12 ).