Acts 23:12-15 ¹²When it was day, making a plot, the Jews bound themselves by an oath, saying neither to eat nor drink till they had killed Paul. ¹³There were more than forty who made this plot; ¹⁴after going to the chief priests and elders, they said, “We have taken a strict oath on ourselves no longer to eat until we have killed Paul. ¹⁵Now therefore you, along with the Sanhedrin, petition to the tribune to bring him down to you, as though you were going to determine the things about him more precisely; and we are ready to kill him before he comes near.”

The next story about Paul adds to the drama and intensity of what he experienced in Jerusalem. He was confined to the barracks. Luke provides no details about Paul’s experience there or the hardships he may have faced. The tribune must have been extra cautious by this point. He had a Roman citizen confined who had caused two mobs of Jews to confine, and one of those was the nation’s leaders.

While Lysias was trying to keep the peace, the Jewish leaders were plotting how to get rid of Paul. A group of forty Jews made a vow that they would not eat until they had killed Paul. Their vow was strong, using a word that can also be translated as “curse” (anathema, used both as a noun and a verb in verse 14 for emphasis). What a dangerous vow to make! They had totally rejected any truth in Paul’s testimony. In essence, they had also totally rejected God and hardened their hearts against the conviction of the Holy Spirit. They were fighting God. If they stayed true to their oath, they would starve to death.

To carry out their plan, these forty Jews conspired with the Sanhedrin to get Paul out of the protective hands of the Romans so they could kill him. They were very foolish in their assumption that they could somehow ambush Paul between the Romans’ safety and his appearance again before the Sanhedrin. Another surprise of these verses is how the chief priests and elders went along with the plan. Their hearts were just as hardened and rebellious as the forty Jewish plotters. They were all fighting against God by resisting God’s witness. History has shown that it is never a good idea to resist God.