Acts 4:19

Acts 4:19. In the sight of God. The Eternal is appealed to as the ever-present Judge, as sitting invisible in that august council before whom they were then pleading.

Whether it be right to hearken unto you rather than unto God, judge ye. Acts 4:20. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. The point of the apostle's reply was, that they were not teaching the people as self-appointed Rabbis, but were only acting as witnesses of Jesus. Their words may be thus paraphrased: ‘The love of Christ constrains us; we cannot drown the voice we know to be God's voice, which forbids us to suppress our message, as ye would have us do, which tells us to bear our public witness to those mighty works we saw and heard during our Master's life on earth.' The noble words of Socrates, perhaps the greatest of the Greek philosophers, when he was pleading before his judges, who condemned him to death, bear a striking resemblance to the bold, faithful utterance of these unlearned Galileans: ‘Athenians, I will obey God rather than you; and if you would let me go, and give me my life on condition that I should no more teach my fellow-citizens, sooner than agree to your proposal I would prefer to die a thousand times' (Plato, Apol. p. 23 B).