Acts 25:22 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Then Agrippa said, I would also hear the man myself That I may learn from his own mouth what it is that he maintains, and on what principles he proceeds. This demand the king made because he was well acquainted with the religious tenets, disputes, and expectations of the Jews, and because many wonderful things had been reported to him concerning Jesus and his disciples, and he had heard of Paul, and knew of what vast concern this question was which Festus made so light of; namely, whether Jesus was alive or not. Many great men think it below them to take cognizance of the matters of religion, except they can hear of them while they sit in judgment with authority, and act in character, like themselves. Agrippa would not, on any account, have gone to a synagogue, or religious meeting, to hear Paul preach, no more than Herod to hear Jesus; and yet they were both glad to have these persons brought before them, but only to satisfy their curiosity. To-morrow, said he, thou shalt hear him There was a gracious providence in this for the encouragement of Paul, who seemed buried alive in his imprisonment, and deprived of almost all opportunities of doing good. We know not that any of his epistles were written during his confinement at Cesarea. What opportunity he had of doing good to his friends that visited him, or perhaps to a little congregation of them, that might assemble to hear him every Lord's day, was but a low and narrow sphere of usefulness: so that he seemed to be thrown by as a broken vessel, in which there was no pleasure; but he has now an opportunity of preaching Christ to a great congregation, and that of great ones. Felix heard him in private concerning the faith in Christ; but Agrippa and Festus agree that he shall be heard in public. And we have reason to think that his sermon, contained in the next chapter, though it might not be so instrumental as some other of his sermons for the conversion of individual persons, yet redounded as much to the honour of Christ and Christianity as any sermon he ever preached.