Acts 9:24,25 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

And they watched the gates, &c.— This shews that there were great numbers engaged in this bloody design; forDamascus was a large city, and had many gates. Damascus now belonged to Aretas, king of Arabia, (see on Acts 9:2.) who governed it by an ethnarch, or deputy governor; compare 2 Corinthians 11:32-33. After Aretas had broken with his son-in-law Herod, very probably the Jews in general would have less interest in his dominions, and rather be watched and suspected by him. This might be the reason, perhaps, why they could not apprehend St. Paul in the synagogue, as he himself thought to have apprehended the Christians three years before; see Acts 9:2. However, though the Jews could not by their own power compass their design, nor would Aretas himself, perhaps, have granted them such a favour, yet theymade interest with his governor, that the garrison might have orders to apprehend St. Paul, and deliver him into their hands. Possibly the Jews might incense the governor against him, by pretending that though they were loyal subjects, Saul was a spy for Herod, or for the Romans, and an enemy to the Arabians, and so might draw him into their quarrel: for what will not persecuting and malicious men say or do, in the current of their blind zeal, and when hotly engaged to oppose truth and goodness? However, their zeal and rage were ineffectual; for St. Paul, having knowledge of their designs, was let down by the Christians as soon as they could do it with safety, by night, in a large basket suspended to a rope through the window of a house which joined to the walls of the city.