Acts 7:58 - Exposition

They cast for cast, A.V. ; garments for clothes, A.V.; the feet of a young man for a young man's feet, A.V. ; named Saul for whose name was Saul, A.V. They cast . We have here the identical phrase of Luke 4:29 . The witness. According to Deuteronomy 17:7 , "the hands of the witnesses were to be first upon" the idolater "to put him to death." They took off their clothes, their outer garments, so as to be free to hurl the stones at their victim with greater force. The feet of a young man . The word νεανίας is found only here and in Acts 20:9 ; Acts 23:17 , Acts 23:18 , Acts 23:22 ; and frequently in the LXX . for the Hebrew רעִןַ . A man might be called a νεανίας probably to the age of thirty. This appearance of Saul upon the stage of St. Luke's narrative is an element which will soon change the whole current of the narrative, and divert it from Jerusalem to the whole earth. Nothing can be more striking than this introduction of the young man Saul to our view as an accomplice (albeit "ignorantly in unbelief") in the martyrdom of Stephen. Who that stood there and saw him keeping the clothes of the witnesses would have imagined that he would become the foremost apostle of the faith which he sought to destroy from off the face of the earth?