Acts 23:12

Certain of the Jews banded together... — The casuistry of the more fanatic Jews led them to the conclusion that a blasphemer or apostate was an outlaw, and that, in the absence of any judicial condemnation, private persons might take on themselves the execution of the divine sentence. So, they may have argued, Mattathias, the founder of the Maccabean dynasty, had slain the apostate Jew who offered sacrifice at the altar at Modin (1Ma. 2:24); so ten Zealots of Jerusalem had conspired to assassinate Herod the Great because he had built an amphi-theatre and held gladiatorial games in the Holy City (Jos. Ant. xii. 6, § 2; xv. 8, § 3). It is melancholy but instructive to remember how often the casuistry of Christian theologians has run in the same groove. In this respect the Jesuit teaching, absolving subjects from their allegiance to heretic rulers, and the practical issue of that teaching in the history of the Gunpowder Plot, and of the murders perpetrated by Clement and Ravaillac, present only too painful a parallel. Those who now thus acted were probably of the number of the Zealots, or Sicarii.

Under a curse. — Literally, they placed themselves under an anathema. This was the Jewish kherem, and the person or thing on which it fell was regarded as devoted to the wrath of God. (Comp. Notes on 1 Corinthians 16:22; Galatians 1:8.) So also in the Old Testament we find that Jericho and all that it contained was a kherem, or accursed thing, devoted to destruction (Joshua 7:1).