Saying, did not we straitly command you,.... Or give you strict orders, with severe threatenings,that you should not teach in this name? the Ethiopic version reads, "in the name of Jesus"; which is what is meant, but was not expressed by the sanhedrim; see Ac 4:17and behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine; they disregarded the council, and its orders, its commands and threatenings, and preached the doctrines of the Gospel; and particularly that concerning the resurrection of Christ, and through him the resurrection of all the dead; and with such success, that great part of the inhabitants of Jerusalem received it; at least there were great numbers in all parts of the city which attended to it, and embraced it: and this they represent as a novel doctrine, devised by the apostles, and peculiarly theirs; and which Moses, and the prophets, were strangers to:and intend to bring this man's blood upon us; by charging us with the murder of him, and representing us as guilty of shedding innocent blood, and so stirring up the people, and the Romans against us, to take vengeance on us for it: this, as if they should say, seems to be the intention and design of your ministry, particularly in asserting, that Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, is now risen from the dead, and was a holy, innocent, and righteous person, as his resurrection shows; and therefore, as we have been guilty in shedding his blood, the punishment of it will, one day or other, be inflicted on us; as it accordingly was, and as they themselves imprecated in Mt 27:25.
It is to be observed, that they do not mention the name of Jesus, only by way of contempt, call him "this man", as it is usual with the Jews to do, when they speak of him. So a commentator on Ge 27:39 says of some,"they believed in a man whom they set up for God; and Rome believed, in the days of Constantine, who renewed all that religion, and put upon his banner the form awhh vyah, "of that man":''and so another of their writers uses the phrase several times in a few words.
Judah ben Tabai fled to Alexandria,"that they might not make him president, and in the way, with one disciple; as it happened to Joshua ben Perachiah, with vyah wtwa, "that man"; and ye may receive it for a truth, that "that man" was his disciple--and the truth is, that "that man" was born in the fourth year of the kingdom of Jannai the Second.'
'So an heretic is said to be one that confesses "that man"; and heretics are the disciples of "that man", who turned to evil the words of the living God . Thus blasphemously and contemptuously do they speak of Christ.
Aben Ezra, Vid. ib. in Dan. xi. 14. Juchasin, fol. 16. 2. Migdal Oz & Hagehot Maimoniot. in Maimon. Teshuba, c. 3. sect.