Acts 5:27Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

“Did we not strictly command you,” they say, “not to teach?” Yes. If they had promised to obey you, you would accuse them justly. But if they had already refused beforehand, then the accusations are needless, and the prohibitions needless as well.

See the inconsistency and utter folly of the charges. Notice also here the apostles’ meekness, how they do not contradict them, and the high priest’s hypocrisy. He speaks to them with an appearance of modesty, as though he feared something.

He is more ready to forbid than to kill, since he could not do that. Yet he stirs everyone up and presents the matter as though it were the greatest danger: “You intend,” he says, “to bring this Man’s blood upon us.”

Does He still seem to you to be a mere man? He said this because he thought it necessary to give them an impulse.

Having received a new sign confirming God’s favor, for the place where they prayed was shaken, they preached the gospel with still greater boldness.

This became the cause of the apostles’ second imprisonment, this time in the public prison, as disturbers of public peace. The chief actors were again the Sadducees.

In mockery of their vain designs, an angel, though they denied the very existence of angels, opened the prison doors for the apostles. They are again in the temple and teaching.

From there they are taken and presented to the Sanhedrin. They are questioned as violators of the authorities’ command.

They are not asked how they left the prison. They are asked why they preach about Him whose name is hateful to them.

Yet those who crucified the Lord remain cruelly consistent even now. When the session opened, it became clear that the apostles had been freed from prison by the right hand of God. The prison doors had been carefully locked, and the guard was awake.

Nevertheless, the Sanhedrin ordered them brought to trial as criminals. The captain of the guard, carrying out this command, did not use violence against the innocent. He brought them out of the temple without force, because the people defended the apostles, their benefactors.

The high priest begins the interrogation, which the sacred historian gives only in its main outlines. “Did we not strictly command you not to teach in this name?”

In extreme confusion the members of the Sanhedrin once more sent the temple captain to arrest them, but this time without any violence that might have led to dangerous consequences. The apostles offered no resistance. Immediately they were set where their Savior had once stood, in the middle of the dread semicircle of angry judges.

"The high priest asked": in this question there is a formal accusation against the apostles for disobeying the Sanhedrin's rulings. Not a word is said about their release from prison, as though it had not happened. This is a sure sign that they suspected the miraculous character of the event, and were probably even convinced of it, though they did not know exactly how it had occurred. Yet in their blindness concerning the whole Christian matter, they ignored it.

The bringing of the apostles before the Sanhedrin is marked by remarkable features. It was done with fitting respect toward them, since it was evident that, if they were taken by force, the people might kill those who came to seize them.

So great was the people’s affection for them. Conversely, such was their hatred for the unworthy leaders and ministers of the people.

Apparently even in the Sanhedrin they did not at first dare to treat the apostles harshly. For example, they did not ask how they had left the prison. They likely feared the spreading of news about a new miracle, which they suspected or had heard of secretly.