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New Defender's Study Bible Notes

26:24 make thee mad. Festus evidently became impatient at Paul’s lengthy expositions of Scripture in justification of his Christian faith and witness. The summary of Paul’s address as given here is evidently only that—a mere summary of the Biblical evidence cited by Paul that “Christ should suffer, and that He should be the first that should rise from the dead, and should shew light unto the people, and to the Gentiles” (Acts 26:23). To the Roman Festus, who knew little or nothing of the Jewish Scriptures, and probably cared even less, all of this was incomprehensible, and he expostulated that Paul must have gone mad through so much study about these Jewish fables. But Paul was not speaking to Festus; he was speaking to Agrippa, and he knew Agrippa understood (Acts 26:27). Agrippa no doubt also could understand why the Jews were so incensed at the thought that Paul was teaching the Gentiles that all their own privileges, as God’s chosen people, were now going to the Gentiles, too.


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