To the councils. — The plural shows that our Lord referred, not to the Great Council or Sanhedrin at Jerusalem, but to the lesser councils connected with provincial synagogues that had power to judge and punish persons accused of offences against religion.
They will scourge you in their synagogues. — The words imply the actual infliction of the punishment within the walls of the building. To us this appears something like desecration, but there is no reason for thinking that it did so to the Jews, and St. Paul’s language in Acts 22:19; Acts 26:11, seems to place the fact beyond the shadow of a doubt. The stripes of which the Apostle speaks in 2 Corinthians 11:24, were probably thus and there inflicted.