While Luke is very sparing of personal details, he gives us some few hints about Paul’s physical characteristics as bearing on his moral influence. As an orator, he evidently used a good deal of gesture with his hands; for example, he enforced a point to the Ephesian elders by showing them “these hands” (20:34). When he addressed the audience at Pisidian Antioch, or the excited throng of Jews in Jerusalem, he beckoned with the hand; when he addressed Agrippa and the distinguished audience in the Roman governor’s hall, he “stretched forth his hand.” This was evidently a characteristic and hardly conscious nature of his more impassioned oratory; but, when more quiet and simple address was suitable (as in the opening of his speech to the Ephesian elders, before the emotion was wrought up), or when a purely argumentative and restrained style was more likely to be effective (as in addressing the critical and cold Athenian audience, or the Roman procurator’s court), his gesture is mentioned. On the other hand, in the extreme excitement at Lystra he “rent his garments”; and in the jailer’s critical situation (Acts 16:28), Paul called out with a loud voice.
Wherever any little fact is mentioned by Luke, we can always observe some special force in it, and such details must have had real importance, when an author so brief and so impersonal as Luke mentions them; and they are very rare in him. Alexander tried to obtain a hearing from the Ephesian mob by such a gesture; and the din, as they howled like a lot of dervishes, is set before us strongly by the fact that speaking was impossible and gesture alone could be perceived. Peter, when he appeared to his astonished friends in Mary’s house after his escape, beckoned to them to make no noise that might attract attention and betray his presence. Otherwise such gestures are mentioned only where the hand is stretched out to aid or to heal or to receive help.
Two of the most remarkable instances of Paul’s power over others are prefaced by the statement that Paul “fixed his eyes on” the man (13:9; 14:9; cp. 23:1); and this suggests that his fixed, steady gaze was a marked feature in his personality, and one source of his influence over them that were brought into relations with him. Luke frequently notes this trait. Peter tells that he fixed his gaze on the heavenly vision, (11:6); and he fixed his eyes on the lame man (3:4). Stephen turned his fixed gaze towards heaven, and saw it open to disclose the vision of glory to him. In these cases the power of the eye is strongly brought out. The same trait is alluded to where intense astonishment or admiration is involved, as when the bystanders gazed at Peter and John after they had healed the lame man, or Stephen’s auditors stared on him as they saw his face suffused with glory, or the disciples gazed upwards as Jesus was taken away from them, or Cornelius stared at the angel. In the Third Gospel 4:20, the stare of the congregation in Nazareth at Jesus, when He first spoke in the synagogue after His baptism, suggests that a new glory and a new consciousness of power in Him were perceived by them.
The power which looks from the eyes of an inspired person attracts and compels a corresponding fixed gaze on the part of them that are brought under his influence. The Greek word is almost peculiar to Luke, and occurs chiefly in Acts. Elsewhere in the New Testament it is used only by Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:7, 13; and it has often seemed to me as if there were more of Lukan feeling and character in 2 Corinthians than in any other of Paul’s letters. A consideration of these passages must convince every one that the action implied by the word is inconsistent with weakness of vision. The theory which makes Paul a permanent sufferer in his eyes, unable to see distinctly persons quite near him, and repulsive to strangers on account of their hideous state (Gal. 4:13), is at variance with the evidence of Luke. In that word, as he uses it, the soul looks through the eyes.