the quality of a judge; (for this is declared in the very censure itself—"sittest thou to judge me after the law, and commandest me to be smitten contrary to law!") so that whether Ananias was really high priest, or not, he was manifestly censured in his official capacity as a ruler, or magistrate, and not as a private individual, through any inadvertency or mistake of the apostle, as some commentators have conceived. And, even when the apostle was informed by those "that stood by," that the magistrate whom he had censured was the high priest, ("revilest thou God's high priest ?") Yet his reply, (" I knew not, brethren, that there is a high priest,") when fairly compared with the preceding censure of Ananias, as an unjust dispenser of God's law, ("sittest thou to judge me according to law?" &c.) proves, as I before remarked, that the apostle neither acknowledged the dignity of a high priest, nor that of a legal ruler in the person of Ananias, though he knew him at the same time to be a ruler, and had censured him as such, for having notoriously prostituted the power and authority of a ruler, and violated the law, by commanding him to be stricken contrary to law, notwithstanding, that he sat to judge (as the apostle remarked) "according to the law;" in which case no epithet whatever could be so apt and expressive to mark the true character of the dignified hypocrite in power, as whited wall! This proves, that the apostle knew well enough with whom he had to do. The censure was too just, and his prophecy in the accomplishment too true, ("God shall smite thee, thou whited wall,")[1] to be esteemed a mere unguarded sally of resentment! The latter supposition is, indeed, inconsistent with the remarkable sagacity, prudence, and readiness of mind, which always distinguished this apostle in bearing his testimony to the truth, on the most dangerous
- ↑ This denunciation of God's vengeance against Ananias was fully justified by the event; for, Josephus (as the learned Monsieur Martin remarks) reports that he was killed in Jerusalem with his brother Ezechias. "Josephe rapporte," liv. 2. de la guerre des Juifs, qu'il fut massacre dans Jerusalem avec son frere Ezechias."
