And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest,
Conversion of Saul (9:1-9)
And Saul, yet breathing out, х empneoon (G1709), literally, 'inwardly breathing,' that is, 'heaving with'] threatenings and slaughter-`menace and murder.' The emphatic "yet" х eti (G2089)] is intended to note the remarkable fact, that up to this moment his blind persecuting rage against the disciples of the Lord burned as fiercely as ever. In the teeth of this, Neander and Olshausen picture him 'deeply impressed with Stephen's joyful faith, remembering passages of the Old Testament confirmatory of the Messiahship of Jesus, and experiencing such a violent struggle as would inwardly prepare the way for the designs of God toward him.' And Stanley, in his 'Sermons in the East,' and in 'Paul on his Way to Damascus,' (No. VIII) says, 'He had doubtless had better feelings stirring within him from what he had seen of the death of Stephen and of the good deeds of the early Christians. In this way his conversion, sudden as it seemed at last, had been long prepared. His conscience had been ill at ease with itself; and in this perplexity and doubt it needed only that one blessed interposition of his merciful Lord to recall him to a sense of his better self.' That such a man could have heard such an address as Stephen's without deep thoughts and feelings being stirred within him, was, indeed, hardly possible. But that it staggered or softened him, that it inclined him to think favourably of the Christian faith, that it produced anything but a more resolute determination to root it out as a pestilent heresy, his whole conduct, from that time up to the moment when the manifestation of Jesus Himself to him took place, conclusively disproves.
Bengel's note on the word "yet" bristly expresses the true state of the case-`Thus, in the utmost fervour of sinning, was he laid hold of and converted.' Nor are such sudden conversions from bitter enmity to burning love at all inconsistent with known laws, or without example in the history the bureau mind. The "slaughter," which the historian says that Saul yet breathed, points to cruelties the particulars of which are supplied by himself nearly thirty years afterward: "And I persecuted this way unto the death" (Acts 22:4); "and when they were put to death, I gave my voice ('or vote') against them. And I punished them oft in every synagogue, and compelled them to (or 'did my utmost to make them') blaspheme; and being exceedingly mad against them, I persecuted them even unto strange (that is, 'foreign') cities" (Acts 26:10-11). All this, be it observed, was before his present journey.