Biblion Bible Commentary
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The word that ended the hearing: to the Gentiles
Acts 22:17-21
17 “When I had returned to Jerusalem and while I prayed in the temple, I fell into a trance · WEB
Paul adds a vision in the temple that nobody else records, and it shows him arguing with the Lord about the very mission the crowd is about to reject.
The last section of the speech is found nowhere else, and it is placed here because it answers the charge. Paul is accused of defiling the temple. He tells the crowd that his commission to the Gentiles was given to him while I prayed in the temple.
The setting is his first return to Jerusalem after Damascus. He is in the sanctuary at prayer and falls into a trance, and the instruction is urgent: Hurry and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not receive testimony concerning me from you.
What follows is the most human exchange in the book, and it is an argument. Paul answers back. Lord, they themselves know that I imprisoned and beat in every synagogue those who believed in you. His reasoning is that his own past is his best credential here — a man this notorious for persecuting the church will be listened to precisely because his change is inexplicable on any other terms.
And he presses it with the hardest thing he could have said about himself: When the blood of Stephen, your witness, was shed, I also was standing by, consenting to his death, and guarding the cloaks of those who killed him. He names Stephen, calls him the Lord's witness, and admits his part without any softening — in public, to a crowd in the city where it happened.
The argument is a good one and it is overruled. The reply is nine words and gives no reason at all: Depart, for I will send you out far from here to the Gentiles. God did not want that testimony in that place, and the man best qualified to give it was sent somewhere else.
This is Paul's answer to the accusation that he despises his own people. The record he is producing is of a man who wanted to stay, argued to stay, and was ordered away. And it makes the mission to the nations something he received rather than something he chose — spoken to him in the temple he stands accused of profaning.
The crowd hears the whole speech in silence and stops at that word. They listened to him until he said that; then they lifted up their voice and said, "Rid the earth of this fellow, for he isn't fit to live!"
They had followed the Pharisaic training, the persecution of the church, the vision, the devout Ananias, and the temple. The word that breaks the silence is Gentiles — not the claim that Jesus is alive, which they had heard without interrupting.
The reaction is described physically: they cry out, threw off their cloaks, and threw dust into the air. The cloaks are what witnesses laid aside to stone a man, which is what was done to Stephen while Paul held them. He is standing in front of a crowd doing what he once watched other men do, having just told them so.
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