Acts 4:7

Acts 4:7. In the midst. Tradition relates how the Sanhedrim sat in a circle or semicircle.

By what power. The Sanhedrists ask first, By what physical power or influence was this miracle wrought?

By what name. They go on to inquire, In virtue of what uttered name have ye done this? The judges well knew the name, but they wanted to convict Peter and John of sorcery, by having worked a miracle not in the name of God, but of a crucified malefactor. They hoped to bring the apostles under the awful death-sentence pronounced in the law (Deuteronomy 13), which especially provides for the case when the sign or the wonder comes to pass. Maimonides, commenting on the words of Deuteronomy 13, speaks of one endeavouring to turn away the people from the Lord their God, and tells them that the sign such an one had performed was done by enchantment and witchcraft, and that, therefore, he must be strangled (Yad-Hachasakah, chap. 9).