But the high priest Ananias ordered those standing by him to smite his mouth.
A military commander has hurried Paul before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council, with no charge yet laid against him. He gets one sentence out — a claim to a clear conscience — and the man presiding orders him hit in the mouth.
Paul's opening line was true. One commentator notes what it left out, and how it failed.
The apostle's testimony was that he had lived before God in all good conscience to that day. Not a word about Christ or the gospel. It was thoroughly true. He was thinking of the Jews. He said what seemed exactly calculated to meet their thoughts. But it utterly failed, and the high priest Ananias commanded those standing by to strike him on the mouth. This was an injurious insult, committed by the judge himself, in direct defiance of the law.
Another writer puts the same point as a matter of posture: Paul was defending himself rather than testifying.
No doubt this was true, but he was on the defensive rather than bearing witness to the Lord Jesus.
This was more than rudeness. The judge broke the law in the very act of enforcing it.
Angry at this opening statement, the high priest ordered Paul to be struck on the mouth. That broke the law. The law said an offender should only be beaten after a proper trial, and then only in a proper way (Deuteronomy 25:1-3).
Ananias came to the office by royal appointment, and he did not die in peace.
He was the high priest before whom Paul appeared, and he commanded that Paul be struck on the mouth. To him Paul said, "God shall strike you, you whitewashed wall." Acts 23:2-3; Acts 24:1. Herod king of Chalcis raised him to the office in A.D. 48. He was sent to Rome to answer a charge of oppression, but returned. He was deposed before Felix left the province. When Menahem besieged Jerusalem, Ananias took refuge in an aqueduct. The assassins dragged him out and killed him with their daggers.
Why hit a prisoner for claiming a clear conscience? One writer sees the blow as the only answer the high priest had.
It was the only answer he could give. Perhaps it showed the sting of his own conscience. The apostle embodied that conscience for him then, and he was used to treating it only as an enemy.
Paul later says he did not know the man was high priest — odd, since he had been staring straight at the council. The setting explains it.
We can hardly suppose that this was a regular gathering of the Sanhedrin. It came together in a hurry to meet a crisis. A military commander had no authority to assemble the religious leaders of the Jews like this. This may help explain what would otherwise seem barely intelligible. Paul appears not to have known that the high priest was present. If he had been in his official robes, this would be hard to understand. We are told, after all, that Paul looked steadily at the council. If it was an informal meeting, neither the high priest nor anyone else may have worn distinctive clothing. Ananias is quite different from Annas, the high priest of the earlier days the Gospels describe. He had not been appointed so long before that Paul must have remembered him. He may have been a comparative stranger to the apostle, especially in his official role.
Commentators differ on how to judge Paul's response. One writer traces it to self-justification rather than witness.
This was violence, without doubt. Yet what produced it was not testimony borne to Christ, but self-justification. Paul replies with an insult, calling the high priest a "whitewashed wall." The man had deserved it, true. But such an answer did not display the meekness of Christ.
Others urge restraint before criticising a man in that position.
The situation was unusual, and his circumstances were trying. He was there with no charge brought against him to which he was to plead. No wonder the apostle's sense of the injustice stirred him up. But before we pass criticism on him, let us be sure that we should have acted better ourselves.
- Conscience. Paul opens with his own clear record, not with Christ — a true word, but a defence rather than a testimony.
- Blow. Having no answer, the high priest supplies a fist; the violence exposes the sting in his own conscience.
- Lawlessness. The man seated to judge by the law breaks it in the same breath, striking a prisoner before any trial.
- Ignorance. The sitting was hurried and irregular. With no robes to mark the high priest out, Paul did not know who had spoken.
- Measure. Commentators differ. Some find Paul's reply short of Christ's meekness. Others ask whether we would have done better under the same blow.
Then Paul said to him, God will smite thee, whited wall. And *thou*, dost thou sit judging me according to the law, and breaking the law commandest me to be smitten?
Paul stands before the Jewish council. The high priest orders him struck on the mouth. The reply Paul fires back has divided readers ever since. Was it a prophet's verdict, a righteous man's flash of anger, or both?
The scene is not a trial that went wrong; it is a trial that never began. No one had named a charge before the high priest ordered the blow. Paul's question exposes the contradiction in the court.
Neither the high priest nor the council had anything to say about a concrete accusation against him. But the high priest commanded others to strike Paul on the mouth. This was so plainly unjust that Paul did not hold himself back. He spoke rashly, calling the high priest a whitewashed wall and telling him that God would strike him. Otherwise his words were most telling: "Are you sitting to judge me according to the law, and yet contrary to the law you order me to be struck?"
The insult is not random abuse. It points back to a word of the Lord, and it names Ananias a hypocrite.
But the apostle resented the insult and gave it a sharp rebuke. "God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall!" In every respect this was true. Ananias was no more than a hypocritical evildoer. Our Lord had made an allusion in Matthew 23:27 which will help us to understand this; and it appears that God did strike the hypocrite not long after.
One writer reads the words as a formal announcement, not a curse. Paul steps out of the accused's place and into the judge's.
This is not a curse, as is plain. It is God's announcement of judgment. It came true when the troubles broke out that began the last Jewish war. Here Paul is moved out of the place of the accused altogether, into the place of judge. He was not one to take so solemn a place without realizing what he was doing.
Ananias did not stay in office, and his end matched the sentence Paul spoke.
He lost his office soon after this, and he ended his life in a shameful way. The assassins called the Sicarii killed him. They dragged him out of an aqueduct in the grounds of Herod's palace in Jerusalem, where he had fled for safety. It is said that no more worthless person ever filled the office of high priest. How low had Judaism sunk! Paul's words came true in the terrible end of that arrogant man.
Commentators differ over how much of this to defend. One writer holds that the words were true but the spirit was not. He traces the trouble back to the self-defence that provoked the blow.
This was violence, without doubt. But what provoked it was not testimony to Christ; it was self-justification. Paul replies with an insult, calling the high priest a "whitewashed wall." Ananias had deserved it, it is true. But such an answer did not show the meekness of Christ.
F. W. Grant weighs the same words differently. He holds that the judgment Paul spoke came from the Spirit, and that anger at evil is not always sin.
The Spirit was surely in the judgment pronounced. Paul's indignation had so much reason behind it that one hesitates to say whether he went too far. Paul himself wrote at another time, "Be angry and do not sin," and there is a necessary anger at evil which is sinless.
What happens next matters as much as the outburst. Challenged for insulting the high priest, Paul does not defend himself. He quotes Scripture against his own words.
Even the blessed apostle failed there. His impulsiveness got the better of him... Grace, however, showed itself in the apostle at once. When they said, "Would you revile God's high priest?" he said, "I did not know, brothers, that he was the high priest, for it is written, 'You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people.'" He bowed to the word at once.
A record in Scripture is not always God's approval of what it records.
So again, take the words of the Apostle Paul to Ananias, calling him a "whitewashed wall." They could not have been pleasing to God. Yet they form part of the inspired history of the Acts of the Apostles.
- Provocation. The judge sat under the law and broke it. The injustice came from the bench itself.
- Word. "Whitewashed wall" picks up a word of the Lord and names Ananias a hypocrite. The charge was true.
- Sentence. Read as an announcement rather than a curse, it landed: the man died at the hands of assassins.
- Spirit. Commentators differ. One finds true words without the meekness of Christ; another finds the Spirit in the judgment Paul pronounced.
- Recovery. Paul turns Scripture on himself and yields at once. The record of a servant's failure is still part of the inspired history.