Acts 22:17

ἐγέν. δέ μοι ὑποσ.: refers to the first visit of St. Paul to Jerusalem after his Conversion, Lightfoot, Galatians, pp. 84, 93, 125. Ramsay, St. Paul, p. 60, refers it to the second visit, (1) because the reason for Paul's departure from Jerusalem is given differently here and in Acts 9:29. But may not St. Luke be describing the occurrence in relation to the Jews and the Church, and St. Paul in relation to his own private personal history, St. Luke giving us the outward impulse, St. Paul the inner motive (Hackett), so that two causes, the one natural, the other supernatural, are mentioned side by side? cf. Acts 13:2-4 (so Lightfoot, Felten, Lumby). (2) Ramsay's second reason is that Paul does not go at once to the Gentiles, but spends many years of quiet work in Cilicia and Antioch, and so the command of the vision in Acts 22:20-21 is not suitable to the first visit. But the command to go to the Gentiles dates from the Apostle's Conversion, quite apart from the vision in the Temple, cf. Acts 9:15; Acts 26:17, and the same commission is plainly implied in Acts 22:15; the words of the command may well express the ultimate and not the immediate issue of the Apostle's labours. On ἐγέν. δέ, Luke seventeen times, Acts twenty-one, and ἐγέν. followed by infinitive, see Hawkins, Horæ Synopticæ, p. 30, and Plummer's St. Luke, p. 45. For the reading in Acts 12:25, ὑπέστ. εἰς Ἱ., and its bearing on the present passage see Ramsay, St. Paul, pp. 63, 64, and also above, Acts 11:29; Acts 12:25. προσευχ … τῷ ἱερῷ : there was a special reason for the mention of the fact before St. Paul's present audience; it showed that the Temple was still for him the place of prayer and worship, and it should have shown the Jews that he who thus prayed in the Temple could not so have profaned it, Lewin, St. Paul, ii., p. 146. ἐν ἐκστάσει, Acts 10:10. For the construction see Burton, p. 175, Simcox, Language of the N.T., p. 58, Blass, Gram., p. 247.