Acts 26:6

26:1-11 Christianity teaches us to give a reason of the hope that is in us, and also to give honour to whom honour is due, without flattery or fear of man. Agrippa was well versed in the Scriptures of the Old Testament, therefore could the better judge as to the controversy about Jesus being the Messiah. Surely ministers may expect, when they preach the faith of Christ, to be heard patiently. Paul professes that he still kept to all the good in which he was first educated and trained up. See here what his religion was. He was a moralist, a man of virtue, and had not learned the arts of the crafty, covetous Pharisees; he was not chargeable with any open vice and profaneness. He was sound in the faith. He always had a holy regard for the ancient promise made of God unto the fathers, and built his hope upon it. The apostle knew very well that all this would not justify him before God, yet he knew it was for his reputation among the Jews, and an argument that he was not such a man as they represented him to be. Though he counted this but loss, that he might win Christ, yet he mentioned it when it might serve to honour Christ. See here what Paul's religion is; he has not such zeal for the ceremonial law as he had in his youth; the sacrifices and offerings appointed by that, are done away by the great Sacrifice which they typified.

I stand; the posture of such as are held for guilty. The hope of the promise; St. Paul brings in the discourse of the resurrection, which, as hath been observed, is the foundation of all religion, 1 Corinthians 15:14 Acts 23:6 24:15 ; and now it is called the hope of the promise, because God’s promise did raise them up to this hope: for God having promised to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, gave them rather less than others in this world; neither had they any propriety in all the Promised Land, but only to a burying place; whence they might certainly infer, that there was another life to be expected, in which God would make this his word good. Paul was also judged for the hope of the promise, taking this hope for the salvation which Christ did purchase, and Paul preach, which was also promised unto the fathers, though mostly under types and obscure representations. The sum is, Paul was judged for one of those two articles of our faith, viz. the resurrection of the body, or a life everlasting.

Acts 26:6 . Καὶ , and ) These things which are contained in Acts 26:6-8 , are spoken as it were in a parenthesis: that Paul may show that he has not thrown aside that very tenet, which the Pharisees rightly maintain, viz. concerning the resurrection of the dead, but that he really asserts and vindicates it. As to the connection of Acts 26:5 ; Acts 26:9 , to which the words μὲν οὖν are subservient, comp. ch. Acts 22:3-4 , “Zealous toward God, as ye all are this day: And I persecuted this way unto the death.” In fact it was Pharisaism that had prompted Paul to persecution.— νῦν ) even still [though no longer a Pharisee in other respects].— ἐλπίδι , for the hope ) There is force contained in the repetition: hope ( ἐλοίζει ); for which hope’s sake ( περὶ ἧς ἐλπίδος ), Acts 26:7 .— ἐπαγγελίας , of the promise ) The hope therefore is firmly established.— ἔστηκα , I stand ) on this day.— κρινόμενος , being put on my trial ) at this time.

Verse 6. - Here to be judged for and am judged , A.V. To be judged ( ἕστηκα κρινόμενος ); rather, I stand on my trial. The A.V. seems to give the sense well. The hope of the promise . The hope of the kingdom of Christ, which necessarily implies the resurrection of the dead. This hope, which rested upon God's promise to the fathers, Paul clung to; this hope his Sadducean persecutors denied. He, then, was the true Jew; he was faithful to Moses and the prophets; he claimed the sympathy and support of all true Israelites, and specially of King Agrippa. Acts 26:6

Acts 26:6-7 . As I was known from of old by every one as a disciple of the strictest orthodoxy, so it is also now far from being anything heterodox, on account of which I stand accused ( ἕστηκα κρινόμενος ),—it is the universal, ardently-cherished, national hope, directed to the promise issued by God to our fathers. ἐπʼ ἐλπίδι ] on account of hope toward the promise, etc. That Paul means the hope of the Messianic kingdom to be erected , the hope of the whole eternal κληρονομία ( Hebrews 9:15 ), not merely the special hope of the resurrection of the dead (Grotius), the following more precise description proves, in which the universal and unanimous solicitude of the nation is depicted. He had preached of this hope, that the risen Jesus would realize it (comp. Acts 13:32 f.), and this was the reason of his persecution. See also Acts 28:20 . εἰς τοὺς κατέρας ἡμῶν ] issued to our fathers . On the order of the words , the participle after the substantive, see Kühner, ad Xen. Anab . v. 3. 4. εἰς ἥν refers to the ἐπαγγελία . τὸ δωδεκάφυλον ἡμῶν ] our twelve-tribe-stock (a theocratically honourable designation of the nation as a whole, comp. Jam 1:1 ). The word is also found in the Protevang. Jacobi , 1 (see Thilo in loc ., p. 166 f.); Clem. 1 Cor . 55, comp. chap. 31, p. 76: τὸ δωδεκάσκηπτρον τοῦ Ἰσραήλ . Quite analogous is δεκάφυλος , Herod. v. 66 (comp. τετράφυλος in the same place).

To understand the expression historically , it need only be remarked, that even after the exile the collective body of the people actually consisted of the twelve tribes; in which view the circumstance, that ten tribes did not return from the exile, did not alter anything in the objective relation, and could not destroy the consciousness, deeply interwoven and vividly bound up by history and prophecy with the whole national character, that every Jew (wherever he was) belonged to the great unity of the δωδεκάφυλον ,—to say nothing of the fact that all the members of the ten tribes did not go into exile, and of the exiled all did not jointly and severally remain in exile. The question, therefore, as to the later fate of the ten tribes (see especially, Baumgarten) does not belong to this place. ἐν ἐκτενείᾳ κ . τ . λ .] with constancy attending to the worship of God , as well by the תָּמִיד (sacrificium juge; see Ewald, Alterth. p. 171) as by prayer and every kind of adoration. Comp. on Luke 2:37 , where also, in order at once to give prominence to the earnestness of the constant worship, νύκτα precedes.—ͅ καταντῆσαι ] to arrive, as if at a goal, which is the contents of the promise. Comp. on Php 3:7 . The conception λαμβάνειν τὴν ἐπαγγελ ., Acts 2:23 , Galatians 3:14 , Hebrews 9:15 ; Hebrews 11:13 , is analogous. The realization of the Messianic promise is also here represented as attaching itself to the pious preparation of the nation. Comp. Acts 3:20 f. ὑπὸ Ἰουδαίων ] by Jews

6 . And now I stand and am judged] Rev. Ver . “And now I stand here to be judged.” The idea is “I am on my trial.” for the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers ] i.e. because I entertain the hope that the promise which God made to the patriarchs and to David shall be fulfilled to us. The “promise” must be of the Messiah and of His coming into the world as King. For this is what the ten tribes were looking for. But this in St Paul’s view embraced the doctrine of the resurrection, because that was God’s assurance to the world ( Acts 17:31 ) that He who was so raised up was to be the judge of quick and dead.

(6) For the hope of the promise made of God. The words include the whole expectation of a divine kingdom of which the Christ was to be the head, as well as the specific belief in a resurrection of the dead. Unto our fathers.—Some of the better MSS. have simply, “to the fathers.” The Received text is, perhaps, more in harmony with St. Paul’s usual manner of identifying himself with those to whom he speaks. He will claim even Agrippa as of the stock of Abraham. (Comp. in this connection the anecdote as to Agrippa I. given in Note on Acts 12:21.)