Acts 21:29

Acts 21:29. (For they had seen before with him in the city Trophimus an Ephesian, whom they supposed Paul had brought into the temple.) Trophimus was one of the little band which accompanied Paul from Philippi in Macedonia to Jerusalem. Being an Ephesian, he would be well known by sight to many of the Jews from Asia. There was no excuse either for Paul or Trophimus, they considered; the prohibition to pass the balustrade leading to the steps by which Israelites ascended to the Court of the Women and the chambers of the Nazarites was well known, and was, besides, engraved on pillars before the eyes of all who walked in the outer Gentile porch. One of these inscriptions, which must once have formed part of the balustrade and low wall in question, the recent excavations of the Palestine Exploration Society have brought to light. Professor Plumptre thus translates it: ‘NO MAN OF ALIEN RACE IS TO ENTER WITHIN THE BALUSTRADE AND FENCE THAT GOES ROUND THE TEMPLE; IF ANY ONE IS TAKEN IN THE ACT, LET HIM KNOW THAT HE HAS HIMSELF TO BLAME FOR THE PENALTY OF DEATH THAT FOLLOWS.' Thus the temple was really looked upon as including all the courts and buildings which were surrounded by the Court of the Gentiles. It was this doom which Trophimus the Ephesian was supposed to have brought on himself. But Paul in the eyes of the rigid Jews was the most guilty person, as having induced the Gentile, as they fancied, to pass the forbidden barrier.

The feverish anxiety of the Jews to maintain all their ancient privileges and customs, and their hatred of all foreign interference, was growing, it must be remembered, every year. The doomed Holy City was filled with wild societies of ‘zealots' and other unions of bigoted and fanatic Jews. When the events related in this chapter were taking place, little more than ten years remained for Jerusalem. We are now speaking of what took place A.D. 58-59. In A.D. 70 not one stone of all this superb pile of buildings then glittering with its wealth of gold and marble remained on another. No Jew was allowed to linger even near the scene of so many ancient Hebrew glories of such awful disaster and shame.