Acts 22:24

The Roman commander at this point realizes that he is getting nowhere with the crowd, so he brings Paul inside the fortress. "Stating that he would be examined by scourging" Simply put, they were planning on torturing Paul until he told them what they considered to be the truth. "This ghastly ordeal was the standard way of extracting information from prisoners. The scourge was. fearful instrument of torture, consisting of leather thongs, weighted with rough pieces of metal or bone, and attached to. stout wooden handle. If. man did not actually die under the scourge (which frequently happened), he would certainly be crippled for life" (Stott p. 349). The Roman historian Tacitus wrote that typically seven our of ten men scourged died in the process (Tacitus, History, IV. 27). "Find out the reason why they were shouting against him that way" From this verse it would appear that the Roman commander did not speak Hebrew and thus did not understand what Paul had been saying to the crowd. All the commander knows is that at. certain point in the speech the crowd goes wild with rage and anger.