Acts 22:19

Acts 22:19. And I said, Lord, they know that I imprisoned and beat in every synagogue them that believed on thee. Paul, in recalling the very words of the prayer he uttered during his ecstasy, wishes to show his enemies charging him with disloyalty to the people, the law, and the temple, that his apostleship among the Gentiles was totally unsought by him, nay, that it was positively forced on him by the will of the Most High. He tells them even how he pleaded with God to let him work in Jerusalem among his own people; how he urged that it was naturally to be expected that the members of his own party, the rigid Pharisee Jerusalem Jews, would be likely to listen to him and his arguments, because they could not possibly be more bitter against the followers of the Crucified than he had been. ‘Did they not know how he had persecuted and beaten in every synagogue them that called on the hated name of Jesus?' These Pharisees would surely feel that no light or trivial circumstances could have made him the bitter foe, join a sect of which he was the notorious persecutor. It has been also suggested, as a reason for his earnest prayer to God in the temple, that he hoped by a lengthened work in Jerusalem in some way to make amends for his former cruel injuries done in that city.