* certain.
21,30 25:3 Ps 2:1-3 64:2-6 Isa 8:9,10 Jer 11:19 Mt 26:4
* bound.
1Ki 19:2 2Ki 6:31 Mt 27:25 Mr 6:23-26
* under a curse. or, with an oath of execration.
Le 27:29 Jos 6:26 7:1,15 Ne 10:29 Mt 26:74 *Gr:
1Co 16:22 Ga 3:13
* that.
Such execrable vows as these were not unusual among the Jews,
who, from their perverted traditions, challenged to themselves
a right of punishing without any legal process, those whom
they considered transgressors of the law; and in some cases,
as in the case of one who had forsaken the law of Moses, they
thought they were justified in killing them. They therefore
made no scruple of acquainting the chief priests and elders
with their conspiracy against the life of Paul, and applying
for their connivance and support; who, being chiefly of the
sect of the Sadducees, and the apostle's bitterest enemies,
were so far from blaming them for it, that they gladly aided
and abetted them in this mode of dispatching him, and on its
failure they soon afterwards determined upon making a similar
attempt. (ch. 25:2, 3.) If these were, in their bad way,
conscientious men, they were under no necessity of perishing
for hunger, when the providence of God had hindered them from
accomplishing their vow; for their vows of abstinence from
eating and drinking were as easy to loose as to bind, any of
their wise men or Rabbis having power to absolve them, as Dr.
Lightfoot has shown from the Talmud.
1Sa 14:24,27,28,40-44 Ps 31:13
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