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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - Acts 9:1 - 9:1
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Yet (eti). As if some time elapsed between the death of Stephen as is naturally implied by the progressive persecution described in Act 8:3. The zeal of Saul the persecutor increased with success.
Breathing threatening and slaughter (enpneōn apeilēs kai phonou). Present active participle of old and common verb. Not “breathing out,” but “breathing in” (inhaling) as in Aeschylus and Plato or “breathing on” (from Homer on). The partitive genitive of apeilēs and phonou means that threatening and slaughter had come to be the very breath that Saul breathed, like a warhorse who sniffed the smell of battle. He breathed on the remaining disciples the murder that he had already breathed in from the death of the others. He exhaled what he inhaled. Jacob had said that “Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf” (Gen 49:27). This greatest son of Benjamin was fulfilling this prophecy (Furneaux). The taste of blood in the death of Stephen was pleasing to young Saul (Act 8:1) and now he revelled in the slaughter of the saints both men and women. In Act 26:11 Luke quotes Paul as saying that he was “exceedingly mad against them.”