“Audientes autem hæc, dissecabantur cordibus suis, et stridebant dentibus in eum.”
“When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart , and they gnashed on him with their teeth.”
“On hearing this, the members of the Sanhedrin were enraged, and they gnashed their teeth at him.”
“Now when they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed at him with their teeth.”
“Now when they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their teeth.”
They were cut to the heart: exasperated even to rage and madness. See chap. v, ver. 33. gnashing their teeth with indignation. (Witham)
1. When they heard these things they were cut to the heart (v. 54), dieprionto, the same word that is used Heb 11 37, and translated they were sawn asunder. They were put to as much torture in their minds as ever the martyrs were put to in their bodies. They were filled with indignation at the unanswerable arguments that Stephen urged for their conviction, and that they could find nothing to say against them. They were not pricked to the heart with sorrow, as those were ch. 2 37, but cut to the heart with rage and fury, as they themselves were, ch. 5 33. Stephen rebuked them sharply, as Paul expresses it (Tit 1 13), apotomos—cuttingly, for they were cut to the heart by the reproof. Note, Rejecters of the gospel and opposers of it are really tormentors to themselves. Enmity to God is a heart-cutting thing; faith and love are heart-healing. When they heard how he that looked like an angel before he began his discourse talked like an angel, like a messenger from heaven, before he concluded it, they were like a wild bull in a net, full of the fury of the Lord, (Isa 51 20), despairing to run down a cause so bravely pleaded, and yet resolved not to yield to it.
Verses 54-60 Nothing is so comfortable to dying saints, or so encouraging to suffering saints, as to see Jesus at the right hand of God: blessed be God, by faith we may see him there. Stephen offered up two short prayers in his dying moments. Our Lord Jesus is God, to whom we are to seek, and in whom we are to trust and comfort ourselves, living and dying. And if this has been our care while we live, it will be our comfort when we die. Here is a prayer for his persecutors. Though the sin was very great, yet if they would lay it to their hearts, God would not lay it to their charge. Stephen died as much in a hurry as ever any man did, yet, when he died, the words used are, he fell asleep; he applied himself to his dying work with as much composure as if he had been going to sleep. He shall awake again in the morning of the resurrection, to be received into the presence of the Lord, where is fulness of joy, and to share the pleasures that are at his right hand, for evermore.