Luke graphically takes us from the panoramic view of a whole city aroused (kineo; literally, "moved, shaken"), to the people (laos) becoming a mob (syndrome tou laou; compare v. 36), to the man at the vortex: Paul seized (18:17) and dragged (16:19) out of the temple's sacred courts to the court of the Gentiles. And immediately the gates were shut.

In these few brief details of the Jerusalem Jews' final rejection of the Christian gospel, we see the last major spiritual and geographical turning point in Acts. Never again will Paul return to Jerusalem for worship or witness. By shutting out the messenger and the message of salvation, Paul's opponents have sealed the city's doom (Lk 13:34-35; 21:6, 20). Israel's ethnic pride, which constantly fueled its determination to survive, prevented it from fulfilling its divinely intended mission as "a light for the Gentiles" (Is 49:6). It robbed the temple of the universal glory God planned for it as "a house of prayer for all nations" (Is 56:7; compare Lk 19:46). May every "people of God" (church) in every nation and culture heed Jerusalem's negative example, lest it too find itself under God's judgment for failing to reach out with the gospel to those beyond its own kind.

When we understand the Jewish view of Paul's alleged crime, we will know the mortal danger he was in as the temple police proceeded to beat him. As implied by the wording of the last phrase of the inscription—"whoever is caught will have himself to blame for his subsequent death"—the penalty for defiling the temple sanctuary was summary execution, "death at the hands of heaven." This applied as much to a Jew who brought a defiling person into the sanctuary as to the unclean person himself (b. Erubin 104b). No trial was required. The charge alone was sufficient to warrant being delivered into the hands of the temple police, dragged into the outer court, the court of the Gentiles, and beaten to death (for example, having one's brain split open with clubs—m. Sanhedrin 9:6; Philo Legatio ad Gaium 212). The Romans normally did not interfere with such executions (Josephus Jewish Wars 6.124-26). Such summary justice was demanded not only by the nature of the crime but by its consequences. The Jews believed the temple remained profaned until the trespasser had been executed by the priestly authorities on behalf of God. This background not only explains the bloodthirsty reaction of the crowd now and as they interrupt Paul's speech but also supplies an understandable motive for the curse vow of those who subsequently conspire to murder him (21:36; 22:22-23; 23:12). If the commander of the Roman garrison had not arrived, Paul would have been beaten to death.