Acts 7:58

Acts 7:58. And cast him out of the city. By the law of Moses (Leviticus 24:14-16), these executions were to take place outside the camp. When the people had settled in the land of Canaan, each walled town was considered as representing the camp. For an example of this custom, see the account of the stoning of Naboth (1 Kings 21:13).

And stoned him. The Talmudists mention four different modes of death awarded by the court of justice stoning, burning, slaying with the sword, strangulation. Of these, the first was deemed the most severe, and was the punishment of blasphemy. The way in which it was carried out was as follows: The culprit, pinioned and stripped of his clothes, ascended a scaffold erected (outside the city) twice the height of a man, whence one of the witnesses pushed him down, so that he fell with his face to the ground. If death ensued, there was no occasion for stoning; but if in the accused there still remained life, then the other witness flung a very large stone at his chest, and if after this the culprit was still not dead, the people pelted him with stones till life was extinct, thus conforming to the command in Deuteronomy 17:7.

At a young man's feet, whose name was Saul. This is the first time the famous Paul of Tarsus appears mixed up with the affairs of the Church of Christ. It was as the bitterest enemy of the new sect we first hear of him. As a prominent member, no doubt, of the Cilician synagogue (Acts 6:9) in its disputations with Stephen, he had become acquainted with much of the teaching of the leading followers of Jesus, and, in common with other leaders of the Jewish schools of thought, was persuaded these new doctrines were most hostile to the ceremonial traditions and superstitious ritual taught and practised among the people. Hence his conduct in the martyrdom of Stephen. For a detailed account of the training and early associations of this great man, see chapter 2 of Conybeare and Howson's St. Paul.

He is, in this passage, styled ‘a young man.' This, however, must be understood with some reservation. Chrysostom states that at this period Paul was thirty-five years old, and this age is quite in accordance with the common way of speaking of ‘a young man' (juvenis). Gloag quotes Varro as calling a man ‘young ' till the age of forty-five, and Dio Cassius speaking of Cæsar as ‘a young man' when about forty. Shortly after this time we find the Sanhedrim employing Saul as their chief agent in an important mission to Damascus. Such a work would scarcely have been entrusted to one still a young man in the ordinary acceptation of the word. Whether he was one of the Sanhedrim judges at this time is doubtful, but that he was elected a member soon after is sometimes inferred from Acts 26:10.