Acts 25:7

Acts 25:7. And when he was come, the Jews which came down from Jerusalem stood round about, and laid many and grievous complaints against Paul, which they could not prove. As Festus had signified (see Acts 25:4), he speedily went clown again to Cæsarea; and without any loss of time, on the day following his return, he summoned Paul before him. His enemies in the meantime had also arrived, and they seem to have gathered round the prisoner in the judgment-hall in a menacing manner, probably hoping to intimidate him. Without doubt the many grievous com-plaints alleged included the ‘profanation of the temple,' but other points seem to have been urged which they were unable to prove. Treason against the state, of course, was the basis of these new charges. The Thessalonian outbreak and the old charge that the apostle had been teaching that allegiance was due to another king than Cæsar (Acts 17:6-8), were raked up, perhaps this time with witnesses; but all these things were untrue and unreal, and the Roman saw through the attempt, and listened and evidently believed Paul's denial of any treasonable designs against the emperor. But in spite of his conviction of the prisoner's innocence of what he naturally deemed the graver charge, he seems to have felt that in some way or another the accused had transgressed some of the regulations and laws of his own strange people, and that it would be well if he would agree (he never forgot the prisoner was a citizen of Rome) to be handed over to the national Jewish courts.