Acts 23:15

Now, therefore, ye with the Council signify to the chief captain that he bring him down unto you tomorrow as though ye would enquire something more perfectly concerning him; and we, or ever he come near, are ready to kill him.

It is not difficult to imagine what happened in the assembly of the Jews after Paul had been torn from them by the Roman soldiers, how they blamed and cursed one another for their foolishness in letting their intended victim escape, how they vowed to find some way of removing the hated preacher of Christ at the first opportunity. And this chance apparently offered soon. For on the following day the Jews, a certain number of them that were exceptionally violent in the expression of their hatred against Paul, formed a conspiracy, by solemnly binding one another with an oath of execration, placing themselves under an anathema, making themselves liable to the most terrible punishments of God in case they either ate or drank before they had killed Paul. These forty odd Jews that thus became guilty of an almost unbelievably blasphemous use of the name of God very likely belonged to that class of fierce zealots known as assassins, who shrank back from no crime in the interest of what they believed to be true orthodoxy. Evidently they felt pretty sure of their ground, for they did not hesitate to come to the chief priests and the elders and lay their plan before them, not officially, perhaps, but with the full expectation of unofficial recognition and approval. They frankly told them that they had bound themselves under a great curse to partake of no food until they had killed Paul. But they needed the cooperation of the chief priests in carrying out their murderous plan, their suggestion being, briefly, that the Jewish rulers should intimate to the Roman tribune that they had the intention, with the entire Synedrion, of making a more exact examination of Paul's case, as though they would want to judge of his matter more accurately. For this reason the tribune should lead the prisoner down to them. And the assassins were ready, they were fully prepared, to murder Paul on the way, before ever he would come near to the place of the assembly, in order that no suspicion would attach to the members of the Sanhedrin as to complicity in the crime. It was truly a devilish scheme, apparently destined to be successful. Thus the hatred of the world against the confessors of Christ to this day will not hesitate to make use of extreme measures, of blasphemous oaths and plots and murders, to hinder the course of the Gospel.