Acts 5:35

Acts 5:35. Ye men of Israel, take heed to yourselves what ye intend to do as touching these men. Gamaliel here, as a wise and far-seeing man, persuades the angry and unreasoning zealots in the council, who would have taken the lives of the teachers of the new sect, to consider well what they were doing; and in confirmation of what he was advancing, appeals, as we shall see in Acts 5:36-37, to the experience which past history teaches. He names two well-known political agitators whose enterprises utterly failed, and that without any interference on the part of the Sanhedrim; but while he mentions Theudas and Judas of Galilee, another name, well loved by the accused and persecuted teachers, is in his mind, though not on his lips. He argued, if these things, which then so powerfully exercised their thoughts, were merely derived from a human source, like the matter of Theudas and Judas of Galilee, they would soon simply fade away into contempt and be forgotten. Let them pause then awhile before they proceeded to any extreme measures.