When they heard that
This defence of the apostles, in which they still insisted upon it, that they had been the crucifiers of Christ, and yet that he was raised from the dead, and exalted in heaven, and was a spiritual Saviour of men:
they were cut; to the heart,
as if they had been cut asunder with a saw; the Ethiopic version renders it, "they were angry", and "gnashed with their teeth", as if a saw was drawn to and fro; they were filled with rage and madness:
and took counsel to slay them;
not in a legal and judicial way, but in a private manner, or by force; stirring up the zealots to rise up against them, and dispatch them at once, as blasphemers and heretics.