Acts 23:12-22

certain.
Acts 23:21; Acts 23:30; Acts 25:3; Psalms 2:1-3; Psalms 64:2-6; Isaiah 8:9; Isaiah 8:10; Jeremiah 11:19; Matthew 26:4
bound.
1 Kings 19:2; 2 Kings 6:31; Matthew 27:25; Mark 6:23-26
under a curse. or, with an oath of execration.
Leviticus 27:29; Joshua 6:26; Joshua 7:1; Joshua 7:15; Nehemiah 10:29; Matthew 26:74
1 Corinthians 16:22; Galatians 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.
1 Samuel 14:24; 1 Samuel 14:27; 1 Samuel 14:28; 1 Samuel 14:40-44; Psalms 31:13