“Brothers and fathers, listen now to my defense before y’all.”
When they heard that he spoke to them in Aramaic, they became even quieter.
Then he said, “I am indeed a Jewish man, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strict tradition of our ancestral law. I was zealous for God just as all y’all are today. I persecuted this Way to the death, putting both men and women in chains and taking them to prison, as the high priest and all the Council of the elders can testify. I even received letters from them to the siblings in Damascus, and I traveled there arrest these people and bring them to Jerusalem to be punished.
“But on the journey as I was approaching Damascus around noon, an intense light from the sky suddenly flashed around me. I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul! Saul! Why are you persecuting me?’
“I answered, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ He replied, ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting.’
“Those who were with me saw the light and were afraid, but they didn’t hear the voice of the one who spoke to me. I said, ‘What should I do, Lord?’
The Lord said to me, ‘Get up and go into Damascus. There you will be told about everything that you have been appointed to do.’ Since I couldn’t see because of the brilliance of that light, those who came with me led me by the hand into Damascus.
“Ananias, a devout man according to the law, and highly spoken of by all the Jews who lived there, came and stood beside saying, ‘Brother Saul, receive your sight!’ In that very moment, I was able to see him. Then he said, ‘The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know his will, to see the Righteous One, and to hear speech from his mouth. For you will be his witness to all humanity of what you have seen and heard. And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on his name.’
“When I returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, I fell into a trance and saw him saying to me, ‘Hurry and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about me.’
“I said, ‘Lord, they know that in every synagogue I imprisoned and beat those who believed in you. When the blood of your witness Stephen was shed, I stood by, approving of his death, and guarding the cloaks of those who killed him.’
“He said to me, ‘Go! For I will send you far from here to the ethnic groups.’”
The crowd listened to him until he said that. Then they raised their voices and said, “Rid the earth of this guy! He isn’t fit to live!”
As they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, the commander ordered him to be brought into the barracks. He told them to interrogate him with a whip to find out the reason the crowd was shouting at him like that. As they were stretching him out to lash him, Paul asked the centurion standing there, “Is it lawful for y’all to flog a man who is a Roman without a trial?”
When the centurion heard this, he went to the commander and reported it. “What you are about to do? This man is a Roman citizen!”
The commander came and asked him, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?”
“Yes,” he answered.
The commander replied, “I bought my citizenship with a lot of money.”
Paul said, “But I was born a Roman.”
Immediately those who were about to interrogate him left. The commander was also afraid when he realized that Paul was a Roman citizen and he had put him in chains. The next day, the commander still wanted to know the truth about why Paul was accused by the Jews, so he released him and ordered the chief priests and all the council to come together. Then he brought Paul down and had him stand before them.