that city. His father and mother were both native Jews, therefore he calls himself a Hebrew of the Hebrews; he was of the tribe of Benjamin, which adhered to Judah. His education was in the schools of Tarsus first, which was a little Athens for learning; there he acquainted himself with the philosophy and poetry Of the Greeks. Thence he was sent to the university at Jerusalem, to study divinity and the Jewish law; his tutor was Gamaliel an eminent Pharisee; he had extraordinary natural parts, and improved mightily in learning; he had likewise a handicraft trade, was bred to tent-making; which was common with those among the Jews that were bred scholars, (as Dr. Lightfoot saith,) for the earning of their maintenance, and the avoiding of idleness.
This is the young man on whom the grace of God wrought this mighty change here recorded, about a year after the ascension of Christ, or little more. We are here told,
I. How bad he was, how very bad, before his conversion; just before he was an inveterate enemy to Christianity, did his utmost to root it out, by persecuting all that embraced it. In other respects he was well enough, as touching the righteousness which is of the law, blameless, a man of no ill morals, but a blasphemer of Christ, a persecutor of christians, and injurious to both, 1 Tim. 1. 13. And so ill informed was his conscience, that he thought he ought to do what he did against the name of Christ, (ch. 26. 9.) and that he did God service in it, as was foretold, John 16. 2. Here we have,
1. His general enmity and rage against the christian religion; (v. 1.) He yet breathed out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord. The persons persecuted were the disciples of the Lord; because they were so, under that character he hated and persecuted them; the matter of the persecution, was, threatenings and slaughter. There is persecution in threatenings; (ch. 4. 17, 21.) they terrify and break the spirit: and though we say, Threatened folks live long; yet those whom Saul threatened, if he prevailed not thereby to frighten them from Christ, he slew them, he persecuted them to death, ch. 22. 4. His breathing out threatenings and slaughter intimates that it was natural to him, and his constant business; he even breathed in this as in his element; he breathed it out with heat and vehemence; his very breath, like that of some venomous creature, was pestilential, he breathed death to the christians, wherever he came; he puffed at them in his pride, (Ps. 12. 4, 5.) spit his venom at them in his rage. Saul yet breathing thus; it intimates, (1.) That he still persisted in it; not satisfied with the blood of those he had slain, he still cries, Give, give. (2.) That he shall shortly be of another mind; as yet he breathes out threatenings and slaughter, but he has not long to live such a life as this, that breath will be stopped shortly.
2. His particular design upon the christians at Damascus; thither was the gospel now lately carried by those that fled from the persecution of Stephen's death, and thought to be safe and quiet there, and were connived at by those in power there: but Saul cannot be easy if he knows a christian is quiet; and therefore hearing that the christians in Damascus were so, he resolves to give them disturbance. In order to this, he applies himself to the High-Priest for a commission (v. 1.) to go to Damascus, v. 2. The High-Priest needed not to be stirred up to persecute the christians, he was forward enough of himself to do it; but it seems the young persecutor drove more furiously than the old one. Leaders in sin are the worst of sinners: and the proselytes which the Scribes and Pharisees make, often prove seven times more the children of hell than themselves. He saith (ch. 22. 5.) that this commission was had from the whole estate of the elders: and proud enough this furious bigot was, to have a commission to him directed, with the seal of the great Sanhedrim affixed to it.
Now the commission was to empower him to inquire among the synagogues, or congregations, of the Jews that were at Damascus, whether there were any that belonged to them, that inclined to favour this new sect or heresy, that believed in Christ; and if he found any such, whether men or women, to bring them up prisoners to Jerusalem, to be proceeded against according to law by the great council there. Observe, (1.) The christians are here said to be those of this way; those of the way: so it is in the original. Perhaps the christians some times called themselves so, from Christ the Way; or, because they looked on themselves as but in the way, and not yet at home; or, the enemies thus represented it as a way by itself, a by-way, a party, a faction. (2.) The High-Priest and Sanhedrim claimed a power over the Jews in all countries, and had a deference paid to their authority in matters of religion, by all their synagogues, even those that were not of the jurisdiction of the civil government of the Jewish nation.—And such a sovereignty the Roman pontiff now claims, as the Jewish pontiff then did, though he has not so much to shew for it. (2.) By this commission, all that worshipped God in the way that they called heresy, though agreeing exactly with the original institutes, even of the Jewish church, whether they were men or women, were to be persecuted. Even the weaker sex, who in a case of this nature might deserve excuse, or at least compassion, shall find neither with Saul, any more than they do with the Popish persecutors. (4.) He was ordered to bring them all bound to Jerusalem, as criminals of the first magnitude; which, as it would be the more likely to terrify them, so it would be to magnify Saul, as having the command of the forces that were to carry them up, and opportunity of breathing out threatenings and slaughter. Thus was Saul employed when the grace of God wrought that great change in him. Let not us then despair of renewing grace for the conversion of the greatest sinners, nor let such despair of the pardoning mercy of God for the greatest sin; for Paul himself obtained mercy, that he might be a monument, 1 Tim. 1. 13.
II. How suddenly and strangely a blessed change was wrought in him, not in the use of any ordinary means, but by miracles. The conversion of Paul is one of the wonders of the church.
Here is, 1. The place and time of it; as he journeyed, he came near to Damascus; and there Christ met with him.
(1.) He was in the way, travelling upon his journey; not in the temple, or in the synagogue, or in the meeting of christians, but by the way. The work of conversion is not tied to the church, though ordinarily public administrations are made use of. Some are reclaimed in slumberings on the bed, (Job 33. 15, 17.) and some in travelling upon the road alone; thoughts are as free, and there is as good an opportunity of communing with our own hearts there, as upon the bed; and there the Spirit may set in with us; for that wind blows where it listeth. Some observe, that Saul was spoken to abroad in the open air, that there might be no suspicion of imposture, or a trick put upon him in it.
(2.) He was near Damascus, almost at his journey's end, ready to enter the city, the chief city of Syria. Some observe, that he who was to be the apostle of the Gentiles, was converted to the faith of Christ in a Gentile country. Damascus had been infamous for persecuting God's people formerly, they threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron, (Amos 1.3.) and now it was likely to be so again.
