Acts 21:28Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Notice how they are always inclined to revolt. They shamelessly shout in the midst of the temple. The very things that especially troubled them, the temple and the law, are the things they point to.

Meanwhile Paul, though suffering all this, did not reproach the apostles for having caused what happened to him. Such was his magnanimity.

“Help,” they say, “men of Israel,” as if someone difficult to catch and hold were in their hands. They cry, “Help! This man teaches everyone everywhere.” They say, not only here, but “everywhere.”

They intensify the accusation from related circumstances. “Moreover,” they say, “he has brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place.” In the time of Christ, they too came there to worship (Jn 12:20).

But here it is said that they came not to worship.

Since they saw that the followers of the new grace observed the precepts of the law less and performed the temple rites less often, they feared, as it says in the Gospel, that the Romans would come and destroy their place and nation (see Jn 11:48).

Although Paul had thus pacified the Christians from among the Jews, the irreconcilable zealots for the law from among the Jews did not become more favorably disposed toward him. They became even more irritated against him.

They saw that the man who, as they said, taught others to revile the people of God, the law, and the temple, dared to take part in the worship of that temple.

They had seen with him in Jerusalem a Christian from among the Gentiles, Trophimus. In fanatical bitterness, they concluded from this that Paul had also taken a Gentile with him into the temple, and had thereby defiled the temple.

A violent disturbance broke out. Paul could be snatched from the hands of the enraged fanatics only with the help of a detachment of Roman troops. They came out from the fortress of Antonia, which adjoined the temple.

Paul fulfilled this brotherly counsel of his fellow Apostles and fellow presbyters. Yet this did not save him from the malice of the Jews. When the Asian Jews saw him in the temple, they stirred up the people, saying of the Apostle, "This is the man who teaches everyone everywhere against the people, and the law, and this place" (v. 28).

Among the vast crowd of worshipers in the temple courts there appeared several Jews from Ephesus and other cities of Asia. When they saw the apostle, whom they knew, they at once burned with the fire of furious fanaticism.

In him they saw a dreadful apostate from God, one who taught “apostasy from the law of Moses.” Now he dared, by his presence, to defile the precincts of the people’s sanctuary.

News of his presence immediately spread through the excited crowd of worshipers, and the mob was stirred. The wild Asians rushed upon the apostle and cried out frantically, “Men of Israel, help!

This is the man who teaches everyone everywhere against the people, and the law, and this place. Moreover, he has brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place.”

To excite the crowd of people in the temple courts, they cried for help and brought accusations against the apostle capable of inflaming the crowd’s fanaticism to the highest degree.

They cried, so that everyone might hear, that Paul, “this man,” a contemptuous expression, taught everyone everywhere not only against the law and the temple, “this place,” cf. Acts 6:13-14, but also against the Jewish people.

Thus they portrayed him as an enemy not only of the law and the temple, but of the Hebrew nationality itself. Such an accusation had not been brought even against the protomartyr Stephen.

The uprising of the Asian Jews against the Apostle Paul in the temple shows the degree to which they were filled with malice against his preaching. Summoning all the Hebrews into the public place, they accused him of hatred.

They claimed he hated his native people, the law of Moses, and even the temple itself. At the same time they offered living proof, as they supposed, that he had brought Gentiles with him into the temple.

In the latter charge there was obvious slander. In the other accusations there was no truth, but there was an appearance of it. This was enough for the disturbance to gain full force.

The claim that he had brought Greeks in was an addition. They were chiefly hostile to him because he taught that the force of the old law had ceased and that a new one had begun.