Philippians 3:5

Circumcised the eighth day — i.e., a Jew born, not a proselyte.

Of the stock of Israel — i.e., emphatically, a true scion of the covenanted stock, the royal race of the “Prince of God.”

Of the tribe of Benjamin — i.e., the tribe of the first king, whose name the Apostle bore; the tribe to whom belonged the holy city; the one tribe faithful to the house of Judah in the apostasy of the rest.

An Hebrew of the Hebrews. — Properly, a Hebrew descended from Hebrews. The Hebrew Jew, who retained, wherever born, the old tongue, education, and customs of his fathers, held himself superior to the Grecian or Hellenist, who had to assimilate himself, as to the language, so to the thoughts and habits, of the heathen around him. St. Paul united the advantages both of the true Hebrew, brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, and of the Hellenist of Tarsus, familiar with Greek language, literature, and thought. Compare his own words to his countrymen from the steps of the Temple as illustrating the whole passage: “I verily am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, and was zealous before God... and I persecuted this way unto the death” (Acts 22:3).

As touching the law, a Pharisee. — Comp. Acts 23:6, “I am a Pharisee, and the son of Pharisees;” and Acts 26:5, “according to the straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee.” In these words St. Paul passes from his inherited Judaic privileges, to the intense Judaism of his own personal life.