Acts 23:2

Ἀναν.: not the Ananias of Acts 4:7; Luke 3:2; John 18:13, but the son of Nebedæus, appointed to his office by Herod of Chalcis, high priest from c. 47 59. He was sent to Rome on account of the complaints of the Samaritans against the Jews, but the Jewish cause prevailed, and there is no reason to suppose that Ananias lost his office. The probabilities are that he retained it until he was deposed shortly before the departure of Felix. Josephus gives us a terrible picture of his violent and unscrupulous conduct, Ant., xx., 9, 2. But his Roman sympathisers made him an object of hatred to the nationalists, and in A.D. 66, in the days of the last great revolt against the Romans, he was dragged from a sewer in which he had hidden, and was murdered by the weapons of the assassins whom in his own period of power he had not scrupled to employ, Jos., B.J., ii., 17, 9, “Ananias,” B.D. 2, and Hastings' B.D., O. Holtzmann, Neutest. Zeitgeschichte, pp. 130, 146. τύπτειν : because Paul had forgotten that he was before his judges, and ought not to have spoken before being asked, cf. Luke 6:29; John 18:22 2 Corinthians 11:20, 1 Timothy 3:3; Titus 1:7. The act was illegal and peculiarly offensive to a Jew at the hands of a Jew, Farrar, St. Paul, ii., p. 323.