We will finish our look at chapter 22 this evening.
I wasn’t struck with any outstanding theology in these verses, so we won’t have six or eight messages.
And even though there is some interesting biographical material, we’ve looked at some of it already.
For the sake of our Bible study, I’ve divided these nine verses into five sections:
The inquisition, the question, the caution, the consternation and the inquiry.
“And some cried one thing, some another, among the multitude: and when he could not know the certainty for the tumult, he commanded him to be carried into the castle.”
But as he was being carried up the stairs towards the fortress of Antonia, Paul asked for permission to speak to him.
Claudius was surprised that Paul could speak Greek, having jumped to the conclusion that he was the Egyptian who had been causing problems in the area in recent months.
“But Paul said, I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city: and, I beseech thee, suffer me to speak unto the people.”
After being granted permission to speak, Paul began to talk to his fellow countrymen in Hebrew.
It appears that the chief captain could not understand what Paul was saying.
And when the Jews exploded into a rage once again, he was no closer to understanding the problem than he had been when he first raced down the stone staircase.
So “the chief captain commanded him to be brought into the castle, and bade that he should be examined by scourging; that he might know wherefore they cried so against him.”
Several hundred years after the death of the Apostle Paul, and after the rise of Roman Catholicism, the Pope used severe tactics to suppress his opponents.
When Catholicism realized that it had no intellectual or scriptural grounds to justify its existence,
Some of these people were Jews, some of them Muslims, but many, and most likely the majority were the Baptistic people of Europe and North Africa.
They used pain as their primary tool of evangelism.
They were skewered with wooden and metal spikes, through every part of their bodies.
They had their eyes plucked out, their tongues cut off, their fingers, toes, ears and privates cut off.
They were boiled in oil, roasted over open flames, fed to animals and insects.
Because of this practice the word “inquisition” has come to be a much despised word.
An inquisition should be a synonym, but its history has turned it into an unlawful, unjust and inhumane investigation.
Since he hadn’t been able to learn what the charges were against Paul from the Jewish mob,
and since Paul didn’t help his cause by explaining or at least by speaking in a language that Claudius could understand,
The chief captain lost patience and ordered that Paul be beaten until he was ready to explain or confess.
Paul already had been bound with two chains.
There was probably one chain around his wrists and another around his feet.
Under the circumstances, I don’t fault the chief captain for taking these measures.
He was obviously a Jew, whom the Jews hated for some reason.
Not only to keep Paul from escaping, but also to help calm the mob, he ordered him to be bound.
The chief captain apparently wearied of all the noise and committed the prisoner to one of his Centurions.
It was his job to oversee the torture of the prisoner and to record his confession.
This time leather thongs were tied around his wrists and stretched forward.
In my reading, I found a couple of scholars who said that Paul was either suspended off the ground or else he was stretched over a rail or some other devise, exposing his back to the scourge.
He may have still been wearing the chains, but perhaps one or both had been removed.
All of this must have taken a few minutes.
And then with Paul’s typical cool and calm manner, he casually asked if this kind of treatment was legal.
Don’t you find it interesting that Paul could ask this question under the barbaric Roman Empire,
but if he asked the same question a thousand years later, under the “Christian” government of Rome,
it would only have accelerated the torture?
Immediately the inquisition was brought to a halt, and the centurion raced back to the office of his captain.
Paul didn’t actually say that he was a Roman, but his question was asked in such a way that it appeared that he was.
The centurion quickly saw that if there was trouble here, it would be Claudius who would bear the brunt of it.
And the chief captain answered, With a great sum obtained I this freedom. And Paul said, But I was free born.
Then straightway they departed from him which should have examined him: and the chief captain also was afraid, after he knew that he was a Roman, and because he had bound him.”
As we have said when Paul was cast into the Roman prison in Philippi,
it was a capital crime to claim Roman citizenship without actually being a citizen.
But I have no idea how someone went about proving it.
Was there a notation in their passport, or was there a tattoo on the right forearm?
Claudius Lysias had not been born a Roman.
Some scholars say that he was a Syrian, but it seems to me that he would have likely known some Hebrew if that were the case.
Most think that he was probably a Greek.
During the reign Claudius Caesar, Roman citizenships were sold in order to raise money for the government.
These citizenships were very expensive, but they carried quite a bit of power as well.
For a man like this military captain, such a distinction was important, and perhaps he reached his high rank partially because he had become a citizen.
It’s also interesting to learn that in just a few short decades the value of Roman citizenship plummeted.
So many people had become citizens that it was no longer special.
But Paul had been free born, and he didn’t have to purchase his citizenship.
Mark Antony, of Cleopatra fame, had received some sort of kindness from the citizens of Tarsus, Cilicia,
Of this there is little doubt.
Tarsus was not a colonia like Philippi; it didn’t have the same status.
And earlier Paul had told Claudius that he was “from Tarsus, a city of Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city.”
But this didn’t automatically equate to citizenship in Claudius’ mind.
Either he wasn’t really listening, he didn’t know his geography, or citizenship in Tarsus didn’t automatically mean Roman citizenship.
But now he was in fear that Paul really was a Roman citizen.
Immediately the soldiers who were prepared to whip Paul untied him and backed away.
To be a Roman citizen gave Paul privileges that non-Romans didn’t have.
In putting the chains on him, Claudius had broken Roman law.
If he had actually permitted the lash to fall on him and if Paul had pressed charges, he could have lost his stripes and perhaps even his life,.
This Chief Captain could have been in serious trouble.
But as we pointed out in chapter 16, Paul was not interested in using this privilege to hurt anyone.
But if he could use it to further his ministry, he was not ashamed to bring it up.
Of this inquiry, we will inquire next week.