Acts 8:3 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

As for Saul, he made havock of the church. — The tense in the Greek implies continuous action, and so indicates the severity of the persecution. Further details are given by St. Paul himself. He “persecuted this way unto the death” (Acts 22:4). It does not follow, however, that this points to more than the death of Stephen. Both men and women were imprisoned (ibid). The fact that the latter class were included among the sufferers, implies that they had been more or less prominent in the activity of the new society. Such may have been the devout women of Luke 8:2-3. The victims were punished in every synagogue, most probably with the forty stripes save one (2 Corinthians 11:24) which was the common penalty for minor offences against religious order. They were compelled to blaspheme the “worthy name” of the Master whom they owned as the Christ (Acts 26:11; Jas. Ii. 7). They were subject to wanton outrages in addition to judicial severity (1 Timothy 1:13). There was, as the persecutor himself afterwards confessed (Acts 26:11), a kind of insane ferocity in his violence. Even the very word “haling” implies a brutality which might well have been spared.