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3. And as he journeyed] There were two roads by which Saul could make his journey, one the caravan road which led from Egypt to Damascus, and kept near the coast line of the Holy Land till it struck eastward to cross the Jordan at the north of the Lake of Tiberias. To join this road Saul must have at first turned westward to the sea. The other way led through Neapolis and crossed the Jordan south of the Sea of Tiberias, and passing through Gadara went north-eastward to Damascus. We have no means whereby to decide by which road Saul and his companions took their way. The caravan road was a distance of one hundred and thirty-six miles, and occupied six days for the journey.

he came near Damascus] The original is more full. Read, “it came to pass that he drew nigh unto Damascus.” The party must have reached the near neighbourhood of the city, for his companions (Acts 9:8) “led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus” after the vision.

and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven] In Acts 22:6 we are told that the time of the day was “about noon” when the vision was seen, and in Acts 26:13, Paul says that “at mid-day” the light was “above the brightness of the sun.” The mid-day glare of an Eastern sun is of itself exceedingly bright, and the hour was chosen, we cannot doubt, in order that “the glory” of this heavensent light should not be confounded with any natural phenomenon. It was in the midst of this glory that Christ was seen by Saul (1 Corinthians 15:8), so that he can enumerate himself among those who had beheld the Lord after His resurrection.

There shined round about (περιήστραψεν)

Only here and Acts 22:6. Flashed. See on Luke 11:36; Luke 24:4.

A light

Compare Acts 22:6; Acts 26:13.

As he journeyed (εν τω πορευεσθα). Luke's common idiom for a temporal clause (in the journeying), εν with the locative articular middle infinitive. Drew nigh (εγγιζειν). Present active infinitive, was drawing nigh. Shone round about him (αυτον περιηστραψεν). First aorist (ingressive) active indicative of περιαστραπτω, late compound verb common in LXX and Byzantine writers, here and Acts 22:6 alone in the N.T. "A light from heaven suddenly flashed around him." It was like a flash of lightning. Paul uses the same verb in Acts 22:5, but in Acts 26:13 he employs περιλαμψαν (shining around). There are numerous variations in the historical narrative of Saul's conversion in Acts 9:3-18 and Luke's report of Paul's two addresses, one on the steps of the Tower of Antonia facing the murderous mob (Acts 22:6-16), the other before Festus and Agrippa (Acts 26:12-20). A great deal of capital has been made of these variations to the discredit of Luke as a writer as if he should have made Paul's two speeches conform at every point with his own narrative. This objection has no weight except for those who hold that Luke composed Paul's speeches freely as some Greek writers used to do. But, if Luke had notes of Paul's speeches or help from Paul himself, he naturally preserved the form of the two addresses without trying to make them agree with each other in all details or with his own narrative in chapter 9. Luke evidently attached great importance to the story of Saul's conversion as the turning point not simply in the career of the man, but an epoch in the history of apostolic Christianity. In broad outline and in all essentials the three accounts agree and testify to the truthfulness of the account of the conversion of Saul. It is impossible to overestimate the worth to the student of Christianity of this event from every angle because we have in Paul's Epistles his own emphasis on the actual appearance of Jesus to him as the fact that changed his whole life (1 Corinthians 15:8; Galatians 1:16). The variations that appear in the three accounts do not mar the story, when rightly understood, as we shall see. Here, for instance, Luke simply mentions "a light from heaven," while in Acts 22:6 Paul calls it "a great (ικανον) light" "about noon" and in Acts 26:13 "above the brightness of the sun," as it would have to be "at midday" with the sun shining.

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Acts 9:3. ἐν δὲ τῷ πορεύεσθαι, ἐγένετο: on the frequency of the infinitive as here, and of ἐγένετο in St. Luke, see Friedrich, Das Lucasevangelium, p. 13, but whilst St. Luke, even more than the other Evangelists, connects his narratives by more or less Hebraistic formulae, so he often tones down the Hebraism by changes of order or other modifications, cf. Luke 1:8-9; Luke 5:17; Luke 6:1, Acts 4:5; Acts 9:3, etc., see especially Simcox, Writers of the N. T., p. 19, cf. also Blass, Gram., pp. 232, 234.—ἐγγίζειν τῇ Δ.: for a recent description of the three roads which lead from Jerusalem to Damascus, see Luckock, Footprints of the Apostles as traced by St. Luke, i., pp. 223, 224. We may well believe that Saul in his haste and passion would choose the quickest and best frequented route which ran straight to Shechem, and after inclining to the east, by the shores of the lake of Galilee, leads straight to Damascus, with an entrance on the south; possibly he may have been stirred to “exceeding madness” by seeing in the Samaritan villages indications of the spread of the faith which it was his purpose to destroy (Plumptre, Expositor, p. 28 (1878)). Ramsay, Expositor, p. 199, note (1898), follows the old tradition as to the locality (following Sir C. Wilson). But, as he points out, this locality fixed at Kaukab (so Luckock, also u. s.), some ten or twelve miles from Damascus, was changed in modern times for a site nearer the city (so the Romanist commentator Felten, p. 185, laying stress on ἐγγίζειν); but the spot so chosen seems an impossible one from the fact that it is on the east side of the city, not on the south; see also “Damascus” Hastings’ B.D., i., 548. Moreover the tradition for this site (one out of four selected at different times) does not appear to have existed for more than some two hundred years, and although we can well understand the action of the Christians in Damascus. who. on St. Paul’s Day, walk in procession to this traditional site, and read the narrative of the Apostle’s wonderful conversion, it seems that there is no adequate evidence in support of the spot selected. “It was a true instinct that led the Church to take the Conversion as the day of St. Paul. For other saints and martyrs their day of celebration was their dies natalis, the day on which they entered their real life, their day of martyrdom. But the dies natalis of St. Paul, the day on which his true life began, was the day of his Conversion,” Ramsay, Expositor, p. 28 (1898).—ἐξαίφνης: the word is used by St. Luke twice in his Gospel and twice in the Acts—only once elsewhere, Mark 13:36. Hobart and Zahn claim it as a medical term, and it was no doubt frequent amongst medical writers, as in Hippocrates and Galen (Hobart, Medical Language of St. Luke, pp. 19, 20), but the word is also used in LXX several times in same sense as here.—περιήστραψεν: only twice in N.T.—not found at all in classical Greek, but see 4Ma 4:10. The simple verb occurs in Luke 17:24; Luke 24:4. The word is used in St. Paul’s own account of the event (Acts 22:6), (and περιλάμψαν in his second account Acts 26:13); noun in classical Greek of flashing like lightning. In Acts 22:6 the time is fixed “about noon,” and in Acts 26:13 it is said that the light was “above the brightness of the sun,” and shone round about those who journeyed with Paul. But St. Luke states the general fact, and St. Paul, as was natural, is more explicit in his own account. But St. Paul’s mention of the time of day, when an Eastern sun was at its brightest, and of the exceeding glory of the light, evidently indicates that no natural phenomenon was implied.

Acts 9:3-9. The conversion of Saul does not appear, on an accurate consideration of the three narratives (9, 22, 26) which agree in the main points, to have had the way psychologically prepared for it by scruples of conscience as to his persecuting proceedings. On the contrary, Luke represents it in the history at our passage, and Paul himself in his speeches (22 and 26; comp. also Galatians 1:14-15; Php 3:12), as in direct and immediate contrast to his vehement persecuting zeal, amidst which he was all of a sudden internally arrested by the miraculous fact from without. Comp. Beyschlag in the Stud. u. Krit. 1864, p. 251 f. Moreover, previous scruples and inward struggles are à priori, in the case of a character so pure (at this time only erring), firm, and ardently decided as he also afterwards continued to be, extremely improbable: he saw in the destruction of the Christian church only a fulfilment of duty and a meritorious service for the glory of Jehovah (Acts 22:3; comp. Galatians 1:14; Php 3:6). For the transformation of his firm conviction into the opposite, of his ardent interest against the gospel into an ardent zeal for it, there was needed—with the pure resoluteness of his will, which even in his unwearied persecutions was just striving after a righteousness of his own (Php 3:6)—a heavenly power directly seizing on his inmost conscience; and this he experienced, in the midst of his zealot enterprise, on the way to Damascus, when that perverted striving after righteousness and merit was annihilated. The light which from heaven suddenly shone around him brighter than the sun (Acts 26:13), was no flash of lightning. The similarity of the expression in all the three narratives militates against this assumption so frequently made (and occurring still in Schrader); and Paul himself certainly knew how to distinguish in his recollection a natural phenomenon, however alarming, from a φῶς ἀπὸ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ associated with a heavenly revelation.[235] This φῶς was rather the heavenly radiance, with which the exalted Christ appearing in His δόξα is surrounded. In order to a scripturally true conception of the occurrence, moreover, we may not think merely in general of an internal vision produced by God (Weiss, Schweizer, Schenkel, and others); nor is it enough specially to assume a self-manifestation of Christ made merely to the inner sense of Saul,—although externally accompanied by the miraculous appearance of light,—according to which by an operation of Christ, who is in heaven, He presented Himself to the inner man of Saul, and made Himself audible in definite words (see my first edition; comp. Bengel, üb d. Bekehr. Pauli, aus d. Lat. übers, v. Niethammer, Tüb. 1826). On the contrary, according to 1 Corinthians 15:8 (comp. Acts 9:1), Christ must really have appeared to him in His glorified body (comp. Acts 9:17; Acts 9:27). For only the objective (this also against Ewald) and real corporeal appearance corresponds to the category of appearances, in which this is placed at 1 Corinthians 15:8, as also to the requirement of apostleship, which is expressed in 1 Corinthians 9:1 most definitely, and that in view of Peter and the other original apostles, by τὸν κύριον ἡμῶν ἑώρακα. Comp. Paul in Hilgenfeld’s Zeitschr. 1863, p. 182 ff. The Risen One Himself was in the light which appeared, and converted Saul (and hence Galatians 1:1 : τοῦ ἐγείραντος αὐτὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν), with which also Galatians 1:16 (see in loc.) fully agrees; comp. Php 3:12. This view is rightly adopted, after the old interpreters, by Lyttleton (on the conversion, etc., translated by Hahn, Hannov. 1751), Hess, Michaelis, Haselaar (Lugd. Bat. 1806), and by most modern interpreters except the Tübingen School; as well as by Olshausen and Neander, both of whom, however, without any warrant in the texts, assume a psychological preparation by the principles of Gamaliel, by the speech of Stephen, and by the sight of his death. For the correct view comp. Baumgarten; Diestelmaier, Jugendleben des Saulus, 1866, p. 37 ff.; Oertel, Paulus in d. Apostelgesch. p. 112 ff., who also enlarges on the connection of the doctrine of the apostle with his conversion.[236] On the other hand, de Wette does not go beyond an admission of the enigmatical character of the matter; Lange (Apost. Zeitalt. II. p. 116 f.) connects the objective fact with a visionary perception of it; and Holsten (in Hilgenfeld’s Zeitschr. 1861, p. 223 ff.), after the example of Baur, attempts to make good the vision, which he assumes, as a real one, indeed, but yet as an immanent psychological act of Saul’s own mind,—a view which is refuted by the necessary resemblance of the fact to the other Christophanies in 1 Corinthians 15.[237] All the attempts of Baur and his school to treat the event as a visionary product from the laboratory of Saul’s own thoughts are exegetical impossibilities, in presence of which Baur himself at last stood still acknowledging a mystery. See his Christenth. d. drei ersten Jahrh. p. 45, ed. 2. It is no argument against the actual bodily appearance, that the text speaks only of the light, and not of a human form rendered visible. For, while in general the glorified body may have been of itself inaccessible to the human eye, so, in particular, was it here as enclosed in the heavenly radiance; and the texts relate only what was externally seen and apparent also to the others,—namely, the radiance of light, out of which the Christ surrounded by it made Himself visible only to Saul, as He also granted only to him to hear His words, which the rest did not hear.[238] Whoever, taking offence at the diversities of the accounts in particular points as at their miraculous tenor, sets down what is so reported as unhistorical, or refers it, with Zeller, to the psychological domain of nascent faith, is opposed, as regards the nature of the fact recorded, by the testimony of the apostle himself in 1 Corinthians 15:8; 1 Corinthians 9:1 with a power sustained by his whole working, which is not to be broken, and which leads ultimately to the desperate shift of supposing in Paul, at precisely the most decisive and momentous point of his life, a self-deception as the effect of the faith existing in him; in which case the narrative of the Book of Acts is traced to a design of legitimating the apostleship of Paul, which in the sequel is further confirmed by the authority of Peter.

Hardly deserving now of historical notice is the uncritical rationalism of the method that preceded the critical school of Baur, by which (after Vitringa, Obss. p. 370, and particularly Eichhorn, Ammon, Boehme, Heinrichs, Kuinoel, and others) the whole occurrence was converted into a fancy-picture, in which the persecutor’s struggles of conscience furnished the psychological ground and a sudden thunderstorm the accessories,—a view with which some (Emmerling and Bretschneider) associate the exegetical blunder of identifying the fact with 2 Corinthians 12:1 ff.; while Brennecke (after Bahrdt and Venturini) makes Jesus, who was only apparently dead, appear to Saul to check his persecuting zeal. These earlier attempts to assign the conversion of the apostle to the natural sphere are essentially distinguished, in respect of their basis, from those of the critical school of Baur and Holsten, by the circumstance that the latter proceed from the postulates of pantheistic, and the former from those of theistic, rationalism. But both agree in starting from the negation of a miracle, by which Saul could have come to be among the prophets, as they consign the resurrection of the Lord Himself from the dead to the same negative domain. In consequence of this, indeed, they cannot present the conversion of Paul otherwise than under the notion of an immanent process of his individual mental life.

ἀπὸ τ. οὐρανοῦ] belongs to ΠΕΡΙΉΣΤΡ. Comp. Acts 22:6, Acts 26:13; Xen. Cyr. iv. 2. 15 : φῶς ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ προφανές. On ΠΕΡΙΑΣΤΡΆΠΤΕΙΝ, comp. Juvenc. in Stob. cxvii. 9; 4Ma 4:10.

[235] This applies in the main, also, against Ewald, p. 375, who assumes a dazzling celestial phenomenon of an unexpected and terrible nature, possibly a thunderstorm, or rather a deadly sirocco in the middle of a sultry day, etc.

[236] See also Hofstede de Groot, Pauli conversio praecipuus theologiae Paul. fons, Groning. 1855, who, however, in setting forth this connection mixes up too much that is arbitrary.

[237] See, in opposition to Holsten, Beyschlag in the Stud. u. Krit. 1864, pp. 197 ff., 231 ff.; Oertel, l.c. In opposition to Beyschlag, again, see Holsten, zum Evang. des Paulus u. Petr. p. 2 ff.; as also Hilgenfeld in his Zeitschr. 1864, p. 155 ff., who likewise starts from à priori presuppositions, which do not agree with the exegetical results. These à priori presuppositions, marking the criticism of the Baur School, agree generally in the negation of miracle, as well as in the position that Christianity has arisen in the way of an immanent development of the human mind,—whereby the credibility of the Book of Acts is abandoned. With Holsten, Lang, relig. Charaktere, Paulus, p. 15 ff., essentially agrees; as does also, with poetical embellishment, Hirzel in the Zeitstimmen, 1864.—Hausrath, der Apostel Paulus, 1865, p. 23 f., contents himself with doubts, founded on Galatians 1:15, which leave the measure of the historical character in suspenso. Holtzmann, Judenth. u. Christenth. p. 540 ff., finds “the—in the details—contradictory and legendary narrative” of the Book of Acts confirmed in the main by the hints of the apostle himself in his letters; nevertheless, for the explanation of what actually occurred, he does not go beyond suggesting various possibilities, and finds it advisable “to ascribe to the same causes, from which it becomes impossible absolutely to discover the origin of the belief of the resurrection, such a range that they include also the event before Damascus.”

[238] See Acts 22:9. The statement, Acts 9:7 : ἀκούοντες μὲν τῆς φωνῆς, is evidently a trait of tradition already disfiguring the history, to which the apostle‘s own narrative, as it is preserved at Acts 22:9, must without hesitation be preferred. In the case of a miraculous event so entirely unique and extraordinary, such traditional variations in the certainly very often repeated narrative are so naturally conceivable, that it would, in fact, be surprising and suspicious if we should find in the various narratives no variation. To Luke himself such variations, amidst the unity of essentials, gave so little offence that he has adopted and included them unreconciled from his different sources. Baur transfers them to the laboratory of literary design, in which case they are urged for the purpose of resolving the historical fact into myth. See his Paulus, I. p. 71 ff., ed. 2.

Acts 9:3-5. And as he journeyed — Full of wrath against the Lord’s disciples; and came near to Damascus, suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven — This, doubtless, was occasioned by the rays of glory which darted from our Lord’s body. Some have thought that Saul, being a learned Jew, would easily know this to be the Shekinah, or visible token of the divine presence; and that he therefore cried out, Who art thou, Lord? — Though he saw no human form. But the question certainly rather implies, that he did not know who or what he was who spoke to him: and it is plain, from Acts 22:14, and other texts, that he did see, amidst this glory, a human form, which yet he might not at first imagine to be that of Jesus, though Stephen had, probably in his hearing, declared that he saw a vision of this kind. See Acts 7:55-56. And he fell to the earth — As did also all those that journeyed with him, according to the relation which he himself gives, Acts 26:14. They all fell prostrate from fear or reverence, supposing the supernatural light which they saw to be an indication of the appearance of some divine person or angel. Thus Saul, when his rage is come to the highest, is taught not to breathe slaughter. And what was wanting in time to confirm him in his discipleship, is compensated by the inexpressible terror he sustained. By this also the suddenly-constituted apostle was guarded against the grand snare in which novices are apt to fall, namely, that of pride and high-mindedness. And — To his great astonishment; he heard a voice — Severe, yet full of grace; saying unto him — In the Hebrew language, (Acts 26:14,) Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? — The persecutions of Christ’s disciples are here represented as the persecutions of Christ himself; because of their union with him by the Holy Spirit, which renders them members of his body; and because of that sympathy which he has with them under all their sufferings. See Hebrews 4:15; Isaiah 63:9. And he said, Who art thou, Lord? — And what is it that I have done against thee? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest — Who can describe the amazement and terror which must have seized Saul on hearing these words? The name of Jesus was not unknown to him; his heart had risen at it in anger and resentment many a time; and gladly would he have buried it in oblivion. He knew it was the name that he persecuted; but little did he expect to hear it from heaven, or from the midst of such glory as now shone round about him. It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks — Thou wilt find it hard for thee to accomplish thy malicious designs against me; nay, all thy fury can only wound thyself, without being able to do me or my cause any real injury. For, as Dr. Hammond rightly observes, this is a proverbial expression, signifying that impotent rage which hurts one’s self, and not the person or thing against which it is levelled.