Acts 9:1

ὁ δὲ Σαῦλος, but Saul. The δέ takes up the previous δέ in Acts 8:1, where Saul was last alluded to. On this resumptive use of δέ cf. Winer-Moulton, p. 553.

ἐμπνέων�, breathing threatening. This was the atmosphere in which he was constantly living during his search for the Christians. The rendering ‘breathing out’ (A.V.) gives a wrong sense. Cf. LXX. Joshua 10:40 πᾶν ἐμπνέον ζωῆς ἐξωλόθρευσεν, ‘he utterly destroyed everything which drew the breath of life.’

εἰς τοὺς μαθητάς, against the disciples. We are not told of any other death, but Stephen’s, in which Saul was an active participator, but we can gather from his own words (Acts 26:10) ‘when they were put to death, I gave my voice [vote] against them’ that the protomartyr was not the only one who was killed in the time of this persecution. It has been suggested that the zeal which Saul shewed at the time of Stephen’s death led to his election into the Sanhedrin, and so he took a judicial part in the later stages of the persecution, and, it may be from a desire to justify the choice of those who had placed him in authority, he sought to be appointed over the enquiry after the Christians in Damascus. We gather from Acts 26:10 that before this inquisitorial journey he had been armed with the authority of the chief priests in his search after the Christians in Jerusalem.

τῷ�, to the high-priest. He would be the person through whom the power, which the great Sanhedrin claimed to exercise in religious matters, over Jews in foreign cities, would be put in motion.