'Then the high priest rose up, and all they that were with him, (which
is the sect of the Sadducees,) and were filled with indignation, 18.
And laid their hands on the apostles, and put them in the common
prison. 19. But the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors,
and brought them forth, and said, 20. Go, stand and speak in the temple
to the people all the words of this life. 21. And when they heard that,
they entered into the temple early in the morning, and taught. But the
high priest came, and they that were with him, and called the council
together, and all the senate of the children of Israel, and sent to the
prison to have them brought. 22. But when the officers came, and found
them not in the prison, they returned, and told, 23. Saying, The prison
truly found we shut with all safety, and the keepers standing without
before the doors: but when we had opened, we found no man within. 24.
Now when the high priest and the captain of the temple and the chief
priests heard these things, they doubted of them whereunto this would
grow. 25. Then came one and told them, saying. Behold, the men whom ye
put in prison are standing in the temple, and teaching the people. 26.
Then went the captain with the officers, and brought them without
violence: for they feared the people, lest they should have been
stoned. 27. And when they had brought them, they set them before the
council: and the high priest asked them, 28. Saying, Did not we
straitly command you that ye should not teach in this name? and,
behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to
bring this man's blood upon us. 29. Then Peter and the other apostles
answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men. 30. The God of
our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. 31. Him
hath God exalted with His right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for
to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins. 32. And we are
His witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God
hath given to them that obey Him.'--ACTS v. 17-32.
The Jewish ecclesiastics had been beaten in the first round of the
fight, and their attempt to put out the fire had only stirred the
blaze. Popular sympathy is fickle, and if the crowd does not shout with
the persecutors, it will make heroes and idols of the persecuted. So
the Apostles had gained favour by the attempt to silence them, and that
led to the second round, part of which is described in this passage.
The first point to note is the mean motives which influenced the
high-priest and his adherents. As before, the Sadducees were at the
bottom of the assault; for talk about a resurrection was gall and
wormwood to them. But Luke alleges a much more contemptible emotion
than zeal for supposed truth as the motive for action. The word
rendered in the Authorised Version 'indignation,' is indeed literally
'zeal,' but it here means, as the Revised Version has it, nothing
nobler than 'jealousy.' 'Who are those ignorant Galileans that they
should encroach on the office of us dignified teachers? and what fools
the populace must be to listen to them! Our prestige is threatened. If
we don't bestir ourselves, our authority will be gone.' A lofty spirit
in which to deal with grave movements of opinion, and likely to lead
its possessors to discern truth!
The Sanhedrin, no doubt, talked solemnly about the progress of error,
and the duty of firmly putting it down, and, like Jehu, said, 'Come,
and see our zeal for the Lord'; but it was zeal for greetings in the
marketplace, and the chief seats in the synagogues, and the other
advantages of their position. So it has often been since. The
instruments which zeal for truth uses are argument, Scripture, and
persuasion. That zeal which betakes itself to threats and force is, at
the best, much mingled with the wrath and jealousy of man.
The arrest of the Apostles and their committal to prison was simply for
detention, not punishment. The rulers cast their net wider this time,
and secured all the Apostles, and, having them safe under lock and key,
they went home triumphant, and expecting to deal a decisive blow
to-morrow. Then comes one of the great 'buts' of Scripture. Annas and
Caiaphas thought that they had scored a success, but an angel upset
their calculations. To try to explain the miracle away is hopeless. It
is wiser to try to understand it.
The very fact that it did not lead to the Apostles' deliverance, but
that the trial and scourging followed next day, just as if it had not
happened, which has been alleged as a proof of its uselessness, and
inferentially of its falsehood, puts us on the right track. It was not
meant for their deliverance, but for their heartening, and for the
bracing of all generations of Christians, by showing, at the first
conflict with the civil power, that the Lord was with His Church. His
strengthening power is operative when no miracle is wrought. If His
servants are not delivered, it is not that He lacks angels, but that it
is better for them and the Church that they should lie in prison or die
at the stake.
The miracle was a transient revelation of a perpetual truth, and has
shed light on many a dark dungeon where God's servants have lain
rotting. It breathed heroic constancy into the Twelve. How striking and
noble was their prompt obedience to the command to resume the perilous
work of preaching! As soon as the dawn began to glimmer over Olivet,
and the priests were preparing for the morning sacrifice, there were
these irrepressible disturbers, whom the officials thought they had
shut up safely last night, lifting up their voices again as if nothing
had happened. What a picture of dauntless persistence, and what a
lesson for us! The moment the pressure is off, we should spring back to
our work of witnessing for Christ.
The bewilderment of the Council comes in strong contrast with the
unhesitating action of the Apostles. There is a half ludicrous side to
it, which Luke does not try to hide. There was the pompous assembling
of all the great men at early morning, and their dignified waiting till
their underlings brought in the culprits. No doubt, Annas put on his
severest air of majesty, and all were prepared to look their sternest
for the confusion of the prisoners. The prison, the Temple, and the
judgment hall, were all near each other. So there was not long to wait.
But, behold! the officers come back alone, and their report shakes the
assembly out of its dignity. One sees the astonished underlings coming
up to the prison, and finding all in order, the sentries patrolling,
the doors fast (so the angel had shut them as well as opened them), and
then entering ready to drag out the prisoners, and--finding all silent.
Such elaborate guard kept over an empty cage!
It was not the officers' business to offer explanations, and it does
not seem that any were asked. One would have thought that the sentries
would have been questioned. Herod went the natural way to work, when he
had Peter's guards examined and put to death. But Annas and his fellows
do not seem to have cared to inquire how the escape had been made.
Possibly they suspected a miracle, or perhaps feared that inquiry might
reveal sympathisers with the prisoners among their own officials. At
any rate, they were bewildered, and lost their heads, wondering what
was to come next, and how this thing was to end.
The further news that these obstinate fanatics were at their old work
in the Temple again, must have greatly added to the rulers' perplexity,
and they must have waited the return of the officers sent off for the
second time to fetch the prisoners, with somewhat less dignity than
before. The officers felt the pulse of the crowd, and did not venture
on force, from wholesome fear for their own skins. An excited mob in
the Temple court was not to be trifled with, so persuasion was adopted.
The brave Twelve went willingly, for the Sanhedrin had no terrors for
them, and by going they secured another opportunity of ringing out
their Lord's salvation. Wherever a Christian can witness for Christ, he
should be ready to go.
The high-priest discreetly said nothing about the escape. Possibly he
had no suspicion of a miracle, but, even if he had, chapter iv. 16
shows that that would not have led to any modification of his
hostility. Persecutors, clothed with a little brief authority, are
strangely blind to the plainest indications of the truth spoken by
their victims. Annas did not know what a question about the escape
might bring out, so he took the safer course of charging the Twelve
with disobedience to the Sanhedrin's prohibition. How characteristic of
all his kind that is! Never mind whether what the martyr says is true
or not. He has broken our law, and defied our authority; that is
enough. Are we to be chopping logic, and arguing with every ignorant
upstart who chooses to vent his heresies? Gag him,--that is easier and
more dignified.
A world of self-consequence peeps out in that '_we_ straitly charged
you,' and a world of contempt peeps out in the avoidance of naming
Jesus. 'This name' and 'this man' is the nearest that the proud priest
will come to soiling his lips by mentioning Him. He bears unconscious
testimony to the Apostles' diligence, and to the popular inclination to
them, by charging them with having filled the city with what he
contemptuously calls '_your_ teaching,' as if it had no other source
than their own ignorant notions.
Then the deepest reason for the Sanhedrin's bitterness leaks out in the
charge of inciting the mob to take vengeance on them for the death of
Jesus. It was true that the Apostles had charged that guilt home on
them, but not on them only, but on the whole nation, so that no
incitement to revenge lay in the charge. It was true that they had
brought 'this man's blood' on the rulers, but only to draw them to
repentance, not to hound at them their sharers in the guilt. Had Annas
forgot 'His blood be on us, and on our children'? But, when an evil
deed is complete, the doers try to shuffle off the responsibility which
they were ready to take in the excitement of hurrying to do it. Annas
did not trouble himself about divine vengeance; it was the populace
whom he feared.
So, in its attempt to browbeat the accused, in its empty airs of
authority, in its utter indifference to the truth involved, in its
contempt for the preachers and their message, in its brazen denial of
responsibility, its dread of the mob, and its disregard of the far-off
divine judgment, his bullying speech is a type of how persecutors, from
Roman governors down, have hectored their victims.
And Peter's brave answer is, thank God! the type of what thousands of
trembling women and meek men have answered. His tone is severer now
than on his former appearance. Now he has no courteous recognition of
the court's authority. Now he brushes aside all Annas's attempts to
impose on him the sanctity of its decrees, and flatly denies that the
Council has any more right to command than any other 'men.' They
claimed to be depositaries of God's judgments. This revolutionary
fisherman sees nothing in them but 'men,' whose commands point one way,
while God's point the other. The angel bade them 'speak'; the Council
had bid them be dumb. To state the opposition was to determine their
duty. Formerly Peter had said 'judge ye' which command it is right to
obey. Now, he wraps his refusal in no folds of courtesy, but thrusts
the naked 'We must obey God' in the Council's face. That was a great
moment in the history of the world and the Church. How much lay in it,
as in a seed,--Luther's 'Here I stand, I can do none other. God help
me! Amen'; Plymouth Rock, and many a glorious and blood-stained page in
the records of martyrdom.
Peter goes on to vindicate his assumption that in disobeying Annas they
are obeying God, by reiterating the facts which since Pentecost he had
pressed on the national conscience. Israel had slain, and God had
exalted, Jesus to His right hand. That was God's verdict on Israel's
action. But it was also the ground of hope for Israel; for the
exaltatior of Jesus was that He might be 'Prince [or Leader] and
Saviour,' and from His exalted hand were shed the gifts of 'repentance
and remission of sins,' even of the great sin of slaying Him. These
things being so, how could the Apostles be silent? Had not God bid them
speak, by their very knowledge of these? They were Christ's witnesses,
constituted as such by their personal acquaintance with Him and their
having seen Him raised and ascending, and appointed to be such by His
own lips, and inspired for their witnessing by the Holy Spirit shed on
them at Pentecost. Peter all but reproduces the never-to-be-forgotten
words heard by them all in the upper room, 'He shall bear witness of
Me: and ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with Me from
the beginning.' Silence would be treason. So it is still. What were
Annas and his bluster to men whom Christ had bidden to speak, and to
whom He had given the Spirit of the Father to speak in them?