Act 22:21-23 | PNT | STEP | Depart: for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles . Thus by the command of his Lord his life-work was placed beyond the pale of Israel.

Acts 22:21-23

Depart: for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles. Thus by the command of his Lord his life-work was placed beyond the pale of Israel. They gave audience unto this word. To the statement that the Lord sent him to the Gentiles. This at once filled them with fury. Amid their long-sufferings from foreign oppressors, the Jew took comfort in the thought that when his Messiah came the Gentile would be abased and the Jew would put his feet upon the neck. Hence, nothing so stirred their passions as an intimation that Christ would be a Savior to the Gentiles. In his own synagogue of Nazareth, when the Lord declared the salvation of the Gentiles, his own townsmen sought to put him to death (Lu 4:28-30). We have seen the struggle in the infant church before it would receive Gentiles without circumcision (Ac 11:1,2). At this time, the smothered fires of the great Jewish war, that broke out a few years later, were burning in Jewish hearts. Hence, the statement that Paul's Christ was a Savior of the Gentiles, and had commanded him to pass by the Jews and offer salvation to the Gentiles, at once produced an explosion of frantic rage. Cast off [their] clothes, and threw dust into the air. Manifestations of an uncontrolled fury that hardly knew what it did.