Acts 25:3

Acts 25:3. And desired favour against him, that he would send for him unto Jerusalem. In Acts 25:15-16, Festus relates the particulars of this request of the Jews to King Agrippa. From the detailed account, it seems that two formal requests were made to him by the priests and influential men at Jerusalem - the first was that he should pronounce a condemnatory judgment against the prisoner Paul, who some two years before had been accused of sedition and other charges before Felix; and then, when this request was refused, on the ground that such a condemnation would be contrary to Roman procedure, they asked that the prisoner Paul might be formally tried before their national tribunal, as the crimes alleged against him had mainly to do with their sacred customs and laws.

Laying wait in the way to kill him. This was the real point of their request. Failing to persuade the Roman governor to condemn Paul, they determined, if they could induce him to send the prisoner up from Cæsarea to Jerusalem, to lay an ambuscade and to assassinate the hated Nazarene teacher. Such a shocking design could only have been deliberately planned by men of position and political weight in such a lawless age as that which immediately preceded the fatal Jewish rebellion against Rome, which terminated with the fall of the city, and the break-up of the nation. No doubt, when the request was urged, the band of Sicarii (assassins) was already hired, and the very place where the murder was to be carried out fixed upon. Josephus, their own historian, tells us how at this time the chief priests and the leading men in the nation were men who, for the most part, were infamous for their wickedness.