Acts 9:1

Acts 9:1. Saul's mission to Damascus and his Conversion

1. And[But] Saul, yet breathing out threatenings[threatening] It is better to translate the conjunction adversatively here, as the new subject is not connected except with the first sentence of chap. 8. The verb in this clause should be rendered "breathing," not "breathing out." Threatening and slaughter was, as it were, the atmosphere in which Saul was living.

and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord We are not told of any other death, but Stephen's, in which Saul was a participator, but we can gather from his own words (Acts 26:10) "when they were put to death, I gave my voice [vote] against them," that the protomartyr was not the only one who was killed in the time of this persecution. It has been suggested that the zeal which Saul shewed at the time of Stephen's death led to his election into the Sanhedrin, and so he took a judicial part in the later stages of the persecution, and, it may be, from a desire to justify the choice of those who had placed him in authority, he sought to be appointed over the enquiry after the Christians in Damascus. We gather from Acts 26:10 that before this inquisitorial journey he had been armed with the authority of the chief priests in his search after the Christians in Jerusalem.

went unto the high priest who would most likely be the authority through whom the power, which the Great Sanhedrin claimed to exercise, in religious matters, over Jews in foreign cities, would be put in motion.