<p>9:2- see on Acts 22:19.</p><p><i>And asked from him letters to Damascus, t<em>o the synagogues</em></i>- The implication is that the Christians were to be found in the synagogues. This is yet further evidence that the Lord never required His followers to 'break fellowship' with the synagogue system, apostate as it was in doctrine and practice. He clearly had no concept of 'guilt by association'.</p><p><em>T</em><i>hat if he found any that were of the Way</i> - How the Christian community is described in 19:9; 22:4; 24:22. Yet &quot;the way&quot; is a title of the Lord Jesus personally. The community were so identified with Him personally that one of His personal titles became the name given to the community which manifested Him and was based around Him.</p><p><em>Whether men or women</em>- This is emphasized three times (8:3; 9:2; 22:4).</p><p><em>He might bring them bound to Jerusalem</em>- See on 9:14 <em>To bind</em>. It was specifically in Jerusalem that Saul had done so much evil to Christians (:13). Presumably the level of torture and death which Saul wanted to inflict couldn't so easily be done in Damascus, but he could get away with it in Jerusalem; hence he wanted to bring the Christians to Jerusalem. Paul later admitted he had murdered Christians during the period before the Damascus road incident: &quot;And I persecuted this Way to the death meaning, he murdered them, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women&quot; (Acts 22:4). The way of getting the Christians into Roman prisons could only have been through false accusation. For the Jews didn't have their own prison system. Or perhaps we are to understand the Greek for &quot;prisons&quot; in 22:4 in its more literal sense of 'cages', in which Christians were sometimes burnt. The question, of course, is how Saul got away with doing this when the Lord's own trial and death had highlighted how the Jews themselves did not have the power to put people to death, and needed Roman agreement to do so. It could be that this changed after the death of the Lord Jesus; or it could be that a blind eye was turned, as the Christian converts were seen as anti-Roman in their beliefs and practices.</p><p>The binding and bringing of Christians from one city to another, along with other references to Saul's abuse of Christians (26:10,11), was predicted clearly in Mt. 23:33-36: &quot;You serpents, you offspring of vipers, how shall you escape the judgment of Gehenna? Therefore, look, I send to you prophets and wise men and scribes. Some of them you shall kill and crucify, and some of them you shall scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city. That upon you may fall the guilt for all the righteous blood shed on the land... all these things shall come upon this generation&quot;. This reads as a prediction of Saul's personal behaviour. And yet the apparently inevitable judgment for doing these things did not come upon Saul. Here again we see how judgment can be stated, without any conditions or mitigating factors being explained at the time just as Nineveh was to be destroyed after 40 days- and yet the judgment can still be altered. And in Saul's case, the Lord worked hard to avoid having to bring it upon him. We wonder how many others He likewise worked with, but they didn't respond... The scope of His activity amongst men is wonderful.</p>