Chapter 22
Paul’s Defense Before the People
1 “Brothers and fathers, hear the defense I now make to you.”
2 And when they heard that he was addressing them in the Hebrew language, they became even more quiet. And he said:
3 “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but raised in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strict interpretation of our ancestral Law, being zealous for God just as all of you are today.
4 I persecuted this Way to the point of death, binding and delivering to prison both men and women,
5 as the high priest and the whole council of elders can testify about me. From them I also received letters to the brothers in Damascus, and I was on my way to bring those who were there back to Jerusalem in chains to be punished.
Translator’s Notes — vv. 1–5:
ἀδελφοὶ καὶ πατέρες (adelphoi kai pateres) — v.1: “Brothers and fathers” — the identical opening used by Stephen before his death (Acts 7:2). Whether Paul is consciously echoing the man whose execution he once supervised is an open question, but Luke’s readers would catch the connection. The address is formal and deeply respectful — Paul is speaking to the crowd as a fellow Jew addressing his own community.
ἀπολογία (apologia) — v.1: “Defense” — this is a formal legal term, the word from which we get “apology” in its original sense (not “saying sorry” but “making a reasoned defense”). Paul is framing what follows as a legal speech, not a sermon. Acts contains three accounts of Paul’s conversion (chapters 9, 22, and 26), each tailored to a different audience. This version is shaped for a Jewish crowd in Jerusalem.
v.2: The crowd’s reaction to hearing Aramaic is telling. They had already fallen quiet at the end of chapter 21 when Paul motioned for silence, but now they become “even more quiet” (μᾶλλον παρέσχον ἡσυχίαν). The language itself is doing rhetorical work: Aramaic signals that this man is one of them, not a foreign agitator. The crowd gives him a hearing because he sounds like home.
παρὰ τοὺς πόδας Γαμαλιήλ (para tous podas Gamaliēl) — v.3: “At the feet of Gamaliel” — this is not metaphorical. Rabbinic students literally sat on the floor at the feet of their teacher, who sat on a raised seat. Gamaliel I (Rabban Gamaliel the Elder) was one of the most revered rabbis in Jewish history, the grandson of the great Hillel, and the leader of the more moderate Pharisaic school. He appeared earlier in Acts 5:34–39, where he counseled restraint toward the apostles. Paul is name-dropping the most respected rabbi of the generation — the equivalent of saying “I studied under the leading professor at your most prestigious university.” Every person in the crowd would have recognized the name.
ζηλωτὴς ὑπάρχων τοῦ θεοῦ (zēlōtēs hyparchōn tou theou) — v.3: “Zealous for God” — Paul uses the loaded word ζηλωτής (zēlōtēs, “zealot”) and then immediately adds “just as all of you are today.” This is brilliant rhetorical strategy. He is identifying with the crowd, not distancing himself from them. The implicit argument: I was exactly where you are now. I had the same passion, the same convictions, the same willingness to use violence against people I believed were threatening our faith. My credentials in zealotry are better than yours.
vv.4–5: Paul offers verifiable evidence. He appeals to the high priest and the Sanhedrin as witnesses — these are people the crowd respects, and they can confirm his story. He received official letters of extradition. He was an authorized agent of the establishment. The man the crowd wants to kill was once the establishment’s most effective enforcer.
The Damascus Road
6 “But it happened that as I was on my way and approaching Damascus, about midday, a great light from heaven suddenly flashed around me.
7 And I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’
8 And I answered, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And he said to me, ‘I am Jesus the Nazarene, whom you are persecuting.’
9 Now those who were with me saw the light, but did not understand the voice of the one speaking to me.
10 And I said, ‘What shall I do, Lord?’ And the Lord said to me, ‘Get up and go into Damascus, and there you will be told about everything that has been appointed for you to do.’
11 But since I could not see because of the brightness of that light, I was led by the hand by those who were with me and came into Damascus.
Translator’s Notes — vv. 6–11:
This is the second of three accounts of Paul’s conversion in Acts (cf. 9:1–19 and 26:12–18). Comparing the three reveals deliberate tailoring. In this version, addressed to a Jewish audience, Paul emphasizes details that would resonate with them: the midday timing (showing the light outshone the full Mediterranean sun), the Aramaic form of his name (“Saul, Saul”), and Jesus’s self-identification as “the Nazarene” — a designation that would have been loaded for this crowd.
περὶ μεσημβρίαν (peri mesēmbrian) — v.6: “About midday” — this detail is absent from the account in chapter 9 and is added here for rhetorical effect. A light that outshines the noonday sun is not a hallucination or a trick of twilight. Paul is preemptively answering the objection that he imagined it. The detail also recalls Old Testament theophanies where God’s glory is described in terms of overwhelming brightness (Ezekiel 1:28, Daniel 10:6).
v.9: A well-known apparent contradiction exists between this verse and Acts 9:7. Here Paul says his companions “saw the light but did not understand the voice.” In Acts 9:7, Luke says they “heard the voice but saw no one.” The discrepancy likely involves different senses of the Greek verbs. In 9:7, ακούω (akouō) with a genitive can mean “to hear a sound” without comprehending it; in 22:9, the same verb with an accusative means “to understand/comprehend.” The distinction would be something like: they heard noise but didn’t grasp the words. Whether this fully resolves the tension is debated, but the Greek does offer more nuance than the English.
τεταγμένα (tetagmena) — v.10: “Appointed for you to do” — the word is a military term meaning “assigned” or “ordered.” Paul’s future is not presented as a set of suggestions but as orders from a commanding officer. The passive voice (“that has been appointed”) implies divine agency without needing to name it. Paul’s calling is not something he chose; it was assigned to him.
v.11: “Led by the hand” (χειραγωγούμενος) — the great persecutor, the authorized enforcer who was going to drag people back to Jerusalem in chains, enters Damascus blind and helpless, led like a child. The reversal is total. The man who set out to bind others arrives needing to be guided by the hand. Paul includes this humiliating detail deliberately — it demonstrates that what happened to him was not of his own making.
Ananias
12 “And a certain Ananias, a devout man according to the Law, well spoken of by all the Jews living there,
13 came to me, stood before me, and said, ‘Brother Saul, receive your sight.’ And in that very moment I looked up at him.
14 And he said, ‘The God of our fathers has appointed you to know his will, to see the Righteous One, and to hear a word from his mouth,
15 because you will be a witness for him to all people of what you have seen and heard.
16 And now, why do you delay? Get up and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name.’
Translator’s Notes — vv. 12–16:
v.12: Compare how Ananias is described here versus in Acts 9:10–17. In chapter 9 (written for a general audience), Ananias is simply called “a disciple.” Here, speaking to a Jewish audience, Paul emphasizes that Ananias was “a devout man according to the Law, well spoken of by all the Jews.” Paul is carefully presenting his conversion as something that happened within Judaism, through the agency of a Torah-observant Jew whom the Jewish community itself respected. This is not a story of leaving Judaism; it is a story of a faithful Jew receiving a revelation from the God of Israel through another faithful Jew.
ὁ θεὸς τῶν πατέρων ἡμῶν (ho theos tōn paterōn hēmōn) — v.14: “The God of our fathers” — this phrase is a deliberate flag planted in shared ground. It is the covenantal language of the Hebrew Bible (Exodus 3:13, 15; Deuteronomy 26:7), the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. By using it, Ananias (in Paul’s telling) frames Paul’s mission as coming from the same God the crowd worships. No foreign deity. No abandonment of the ancestral faith. The same God, the same story, continuing.
τὸν δίκαιον (ton dikaion) — v.14: “The Righteous One” — a messianic title drawn from Jewish tradition (cf. Isaiah 53:11, Jeremiah 23:5, and used by Stephen in Acts 7:52). Paul avoids using the name “Jesus” here, substituting a title his Jewish audience would associate with prophetic expectation rather than with the controversial figure they despise. The rhetorical choice is careful: keep them listening.
v.15: “A witness to all people” (πρὸς πάντας ἀνθρώπους) — Paul is building toward the word that will detonate the crowd: Gentiles. But he’s not there yet. He uses the more neutral “all people” first, laying the groundwork without triggering the explosion prematurely.
v.16: Ananias’s command is urgent — “Why do you delay?” (τί μέλλεις;) The baptism is presented as washing away sins, not as a break from Judaism but as a purification ritual — language that a Jewish audience steeped in the symbolism of ritual immersion (mikveh) would instinctively understand. “Calling on his name” (ἐπικαλεσάμενος τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ) echoes Joel 2:32: “Everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved” — a verse Peter had quoted at Pentecost (Acts 2:21).
Paul’s Vision in the Temple
17 “It happened that when I had returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, I fell into a trance
18 and saw him saying to me, ‘Hurry and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about me.’
19 And I said, ‘Lord, they themselves know that in synagogue after synagogue I used to imprison and beat those who believe in you.
20 And when the blood of your witness Stephen was being shed, I myself was also standing there approving, and guarding the cloaks of those who were killing him.’
21 And he said to me, ‘Go, for I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’”
Translator’s Notes — vv. 17–21:
vv.17–21: This temple vision is found nowhere else in Acts or Paul’s letters. It is unique to this speech, and Paul has apparently saved it for this specific audience. The strategic placement is clear: Paul received his Gentile commission not on the road to Damascus, not in some foreign city, but in the Jerusalem temple itself. The very place where the crowd just tried to kill him for allegedly defiling it is the place where God spoke to him and told him to go to the Gentiles. The implicit argument is devastating: if you have a problem with my Gentile mission, take it up with God — because he gave me my orders right here, in your temple, while I was praying.
ἐν ἐκστάσει (en ekstasei) — v.17: “I fell into a trance” — ἔκστασις (ekstasis) is the word from which we get “ecstasy.” In biblical usage it describes a state in which normal consciousness is suspended and the person receives a divine vision. Peter experienced the same state in Acts 10:10 before the vision that led him to the Gentile Cornelius. The parallel is suggestive: both Peter and Paul received their commissions to the Gentiles through an ekstasis.
vv.19–20: Paul’s protest to the Lord is psychologically fascinating. He argues that his violent past actually makes him the ideal witness to Jerusalem — precisely because everyone knows how zealous he was against the church, his conversion should be the most compelling testimony imaginable. If a man like me can be turned around, the evidence must be overwhelming. The Lord overrules this logic: they won’t accept it; go to the Gentiles instead. Paul is told that the very credential he considers his strongest argument is irrelevant to this audience.
v.20: The mention of Stephen is deliberate and painful. Paul is standing on the steps of the Antonia Fortress, perhaps within sight of the place where Stephen was stoned, and he confesses his role publicly. “I was standing there approving” (ήμην ἐφεστὼς καὶ συνευδοκῶν) and “guarding the cloaks” (φυλάσσων τὰ ἱμάτια) — Paul doesn’t minimize his involvement. The cloaks detail (first mentioned in Acts 7:58) places Paul not as a distant observer but as an active participant who facilitated the execution.
τοῦ μάρτυρός σου Στεφάνου (tou martyros sou Stephanou) — v.20: “Your witness Stephen” — the word μάρτυς (martys) means “witness,” but it is already on its way to acquiring its later meaning of “martyr” — one who witnesses to the point of death. This is one of the transitional uses in the New Testament where the original sense (“witness”) and the later sense (“martyr”) overlap. Stephen was both: he testified and he died for it.
ἔθνη (ethnē) — v.21: “Gentiles” — and there it is. The word the crowd has been waiting for, or rather the word they cannot tolerate. ἔθνη (ethnē, “nations”) is the standard term for non-Jewish peoples. Paul has carefully built his case — his Jewish credentials, his education, his zeal, his conversion by the God of their fathers, his vision in their temple — and the final word is the one that blows it all up. The command to go to the Gentiles implies that God’s purposes extend beyond Israel, and this is the claim the crowd will not hear.
The Crowd’s Reaction
22 They listened to him up to this word, and then they raised their voices and said, “Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he should not be allowed to live!”
23 And as they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and tossing dust into the air,
24 the commander ordered him to be brought into the barracks, saying that he should be examined by flogging, so that he might find out the reason they were shouting against him like this.
25 But when they had stretched him out for the lashes, Paul said to the centurion standing by, “Is it lawful for you to flog a man who is a Roman citizen and uncondemned?”
Translator’s Notes — vv. 22–25:
αἶρε ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς τὸν τοιοῦτον (aire apo tēs gēs ton toiouton) — v.22: “Away with such a fellow from the earth!” — literally “take away from the earth such a one.” The language is visceral — the crowd isn’t just calling for execution; they’re calling for Paul’s removal from existence. He should not be on the earth. The contempt in τὸν τοιοῦτον (“such a one,” “that sort of person”) is withering — they won’t even use his name.
v.22: Luke notes the precise trigger: “they listened to him up to this word.” Everything was tolerable — the conversion story, the heavenly light, the claim of a divine vision in the temple — until the word “Gentiles.” It is not Paul’s Christology that enrages them; it is his soteriology. The idea that God would bypass Israel and go directly to the nations is the intolerable claim. This is the same flashpoint that erupted in the Nazareth synagogue when Jesus mentioned God’s kindness to Gentiles (Luke 4:25–29). The pattern is consistent: the Gentile inclusion is the nerve.
v.23: The crowd’s actions are gestures of extreme outrage. “Throwing off their cloaks” may be preparation for violence (as in Stephen’s stoning, where the executioners laid aside their cloaks — at Paul’s feet) or a gesture of horror and revulsion. “Tossing dust into the air” is an ancient Near Eastern expression of grief, rage, or protest (cf. Job 2:12, 2 Samuel 16:13). The scene is primal — a crowd beyond rational discourse, expressing its fury through physical gestures and screaming.
μάστιξιν ἀνετάζεσθαι (mastixin anetazesthai) — v.24: “Examined by flogging” — this is not punishment but interrogation. The Roman method of “examination by scourging” (quaestio per tormenta) was a standard procedure used on non-citizens to extract information. The μάστιξ (mastix) was a Roman flagellum — a leather whip embedded with pieces of bone, metal, or lead. It routinely caused permanent injury and could be fatal. The tribune, unable to understand the Aramaic exchange and confused by the crowd’s fury, resorts to the simplest method available: beat the truth out of the prisoner.
v.25: Paul plays his Roman citizenship card at the last possible moment — after he has been stretched out and tied to the flogging post, but before the first blow falls. The timing is dramatic, perhaps deliberately so. The legal principle Paul invokes was enshrined in the Lex Porcia and the Lex Julia: a Roman citizen could not be beaten or bound without a trial, and doing so was a serious offense for the responsible officer. Paul phrases it as a question — “Is it lawful?” (εἰ ἔξεστιν;) — which is a rhetorically devastating move. He doesn’t threaten; he simply asks. The implication does the work.
Paul’s Roman Citizenship
26 When the centurion heard this, he went to the commander and reported it, saying, “What are you about to do? For this man is a Roman citizen.”
27 The commander came and said to him, “Tell me — are you a Roman citizen?” And he said, “Yes.”
28 The commander answered, “I acquired this citizenship for a large sum of money.” And Paul said, “But I was born one.”
29 So those who were about to examine him immediately withdrew from him; and the commander was afraid, realizing that he was a Roman citizen and that he had bound him.
Translator’s Notes — vv. 26–29:
v.26: The centurion’s alarm is immediate. The chain of command kicks in instantly: the centurion goes to the tribune, the tribune comes to Paul personally. A citizenship claim in the Roman system was extremely serious — falsely claiming citizenship was a capital offense, which meant that people rarely lied about it, which meant that claims were generally taken at face value pending verification.
ἐγὼ πολλοῦ κεφαλαίου (egō pollou kephalaiou) — v.28: “I acquired this citizenship for a large sum of money” — the tribune’s admission reveals how he became Claudius Lysias. His name “Claudius” (revealed in 23:26) was almost certainly taken when he received citizenship, probably during the reign of Emperor Claudius (AD 41–54), when citizenship was notoriously available for purchase. The historian Cassius Dio reports that under Claudius, citizenship was sold so widely that it became something of a joke. The tribune is admitting he bought his way in.
v.28: Paul’s reply — “But I was born one” (ἐγὼ δὲ καὶ γεγέννημαι) — is devastatingly brief. Birth citizenship was more prestigious than purchased citizenship. In three words, Paul establishes that he outranks the tribune in the Roman social hierarchy. The man who holds the chains is, in Roman legal terms, socially inferior to the man wearing them. How Paul’s family obtained citizenship is unknown — possibilities include a grant for services rendered, manumission of an ancestor from Roman slavery, or a grant associated with Tarsus’s civic status.
v.29: The tribune is now afraid. He has bound and nearly flogged a Roman citizen without trial — a career-ending offense and potentially a criminal one. The interrogation team “immediately withdrew” (εὐθέως ἀπέστησαν). The power dynamic has shifted: the prisoner has more legal standing than his captors.
Paul Brought Before the Sanhedrin
30 Now on the next day, wanting to know for certain why Paul was being accused by the Jews, he released him and ordered the chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin to assemble, and he brought Paul down and stood him before them.
Translator’s Notes — v. 30:
v.30: The tribune’s problem is practical: he has a Roman citizen in custody who has been accused of something by a large mob, but he doesn’t know what the charge actually is (he doesn’t speak Aramaic and the crowd was incoherent). He cannot flog the information out of a citizen, so he tries the next option: convene the Jewish council and make them explain the accusation in a formal setting. This is a Roman officer attempting to use the Jewish legal system as an investigative tool. The scene that follows (chapter 23) will not go as he planned.
The verb “released him” (ἔλυσεν) means he was unbound from the chains, though he remains in Roman custody. Paul goes before the Sanhedrin not as a prisoner in chains but as a Roman citizen being presented for examination. The distinction matters legally and symbolically.
General Notes on the Chapter
Acts 22 is a masterclass in adaptive rhetoric. Paul tailors every detail of his autobiography for his immediate audience. His Jewish credentials are emphasized (Gamaliel, Torah zeal, temple vision). Ananias is presented as a devout, Law-keeping Jew. The conversion is framed not as a departure from Judaism but as a revelation from the God of Israel. Jesus is called “The Righteous One” — a title from Jewish messianic expectation. The Gentile commission is placed in the temple. Every rhetorical choice is calculated to keep a hostile Jewish audience listening as long as possible. It works until the one word they cannot accept.
The three conversion accounts in Acts (9, 22, 26) are sometimes cited as contradictions, but they function more like a witness adapting testimony for different courtrooms. The core facts are consistent: light, voice, commission. The details emphasized shift: chapter 9 is Luke’s narrative version; chapter 22 highlights Paul’s Jewish identity for the Jerusalem crowd; chapter 26 will emphasize the universal scope of the mission for the Roman governor Agrippa. This is not inconsistency but communicative intelligence.
The citizenship exchange in vv.25–29 is one of the most tightly written scenes in Acts. In four verses, Luke captures a complete reversal of power: the Roman military machine, with its whips and chains and interrogation procedures, is stopped cold by three words (“I was born one”). The scene illustrates a theme running through the latter half of Acts: Paul’s dual identity as Jew and Roman citizen gives him a unique ability to navigate between two worlds. He can address a Jewish mob in Aramaic and invoke Roman law in the same afternoon. No one else in the New Testament occupies this double position, and it shapes everything that follows.
The chapter ends on a note of institutional confusion. The Roman tribune doesn’t understand the Jewish accusation. The Jewish crowd can’t articulate its rage in terms the tribune can process. Paul sits between two systems — Jewish religious authority and Roman military power — and neither one quite knows what to do with him. This institutional confusion will characterize Paul’s legal situation for the next several chapters, as he is shuffled between Jewish and Roman authorities, each trying to pass responsibility to the other.