This Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place. — The accusation rested in part on the words of John 2:19, partly on the prediction of Matthew 24:2, which Stephen must have known, and may well have reproduced. It would seem to the accusers a natural inference that He who had uttered the prediction should be the chief agent in its fulfilment.
And shall change the customs. — The words seem to have been used in a half-technical sense as including the whole complex system of the Mosaic law, its ritual, its symbolism, its laws and rules of life, circumcision, the Sabbath, the distinction of clean and unclean meats (Acts 15:1; Acts 21:21; Acts 26:3; Acts 28:17).