The tribune has to determine why the people were shouting against Paul (21:34). He decides to interrogate the apostle, using torture to bring out the truth. The NIV rendering flogged and questioned leaves the impression that the flogging is a separate punishment, not an instrument of interrogation (the literal phrase is "interrogate with lashes"). Though Paul had been beaten five times by the Jews and felt the Roman lictors' rods three times, this flogging would eclipse all these in its severity and potential for permanent physical damage, even immediate death (Acts 16:22-23; 2 Cor 11:24-25). In flogging, a whip of thongs studded with pieces of bone or metal, attached to a wooden handle, was applied repeatedly to the back of a person positioned on the floor, at a pillar or suspended from the ceiling. He was stretched out with bound arms secured so he could not deflect the blows.

As the soldiers are stretching their prisoner out with thongs about his wrists to secure him for the scourging, he asks a question that transforms him from victim to master of the situation. Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn't even been found guilty? Though from the Augustan age the Lex Julia contained an absolute prohibition on binding or beating a Roman citizen, Paul's qualified statement accords with later practice (Sherwin-White 1963:72-73; compare Acts 16:37). The centurion is dismayed and immediately reports Paul's Roman citizenship to the tribune. The tribune verifies it by a simple question to Paul, which the apostle answers in the affirmative. To wrongly claim Roman citizenship was a serious, even capital offense (Suetonius Claudius 25.3; Epictetus Discourses 3.24.41). Because most citizens did not travel far from their hometown, they did not normally carry with them proof of citizenship. But a traveler such as Paul may have carried with him a copy of his birth registration (Sherwin-White 1963:148-49). Paul's bearing and his previous cultivated interaction with the commander, in which he had revealed his Tarsian citizenship (21:39), may be enough to assure the commander that he is telling the truth.

The tribune responds, possibly sarcastically, I had to pay a big price for my citizenship. He is referring to the bribes he paid to intermediaries in the imperial secretariat or provincial administration to ensure that his name would appear on the list of candidates for enfranchisement. Given his name, Claudius Lycias, he had probably received his citizenship recently, during the reign of Emperor Claudius, his benefactor, whose name he took as his nomen. He may have worked his way up through the ranks and moved from centurion to tribune rank.

Paul responds simply, But I was born a citizen. Paul is at least the tribune's social equal, if not his slight superior by longevity of Roman citizenship in his family.

The declaration of citizenship has its desired effect: the military interrogators withdrew immediately. Paul, though still a prisoner, will be viewed differently from now on. In fact, alarm or fear grips the tribune as he realizes that he violated one of the basic rights of a Roman citizen when he put Paul . . . in chains (21:33). As the Roman orator Cicero exclaimed, "To bind a Roman is a crime, to flog him is an abomination, to slay him is almost an act of murder" (Against Verres 2.5.66).

Paul's use of his Roman citizenship teaches us that as an expression of God's moral order, and when the laws governing its exercise of power are just, the state may be appealed to for protection of the physical well-being of law-abiding citizens. The Christian's appeal must always be in the interest of the advance of the gospel.

Though at this point the tribune is no closer to knowing why Paul caused the city to be in a tumult, his integrity in subordinating his methods of interrogation to the laws of Rome is an admirable quality which at least will allow the investigation to continue. He also becomes a silent witness to Paul's innocence.