Acts 23:5

5. I wist not Paul virtually concedes that had he known his assailant he would not have uttered the remark. But he does not concede that the warning did not fit the man; nor is he able to say that the arrow is not divinely directed to hit its mark.

Some commentators upon Paul’s words have made him confess his wrong spirit by saying, “I did not in my haste consider that he was high priest;” others make him say, I do not recognise such a tyrant as a true high priest; others suppose that he was looking in another direction, and was not aware that it was Ananias who ordered the smiting. Alford absurdly supposes that St. Paul’s thorn in the flesh was a weakness of the eyes, so that he recognised not the high priest; and Lewin maintains that Ananias was in fact not a lawful high priest. Our interpretation, if correct, takes the words in their most natural sense, furnishes obvious reasons for Paul’s personal mistake, yet subjects him to no moral charge, and preserves the prophetic import of his utterance.

Written (See Exodus 22:28.)

Paul Divides the Assembly, and is Rescued by the Chiliarch.

Acts 23:9 indicates that Paul’s yesterday’s speech on the stairs, with its strong avowal of his original Phariseeism, had made its impression on some of the Pharisees who heard it, and that they were seeking for some construction of Paul’s vision of Christ as would make it allowable that “a spirit or an angel hath spoken unto him.”