²³When many days had elapsed, the Jews plotted together to do away with him, ²⁴but their plot became known to Saul. They were also watching the gates day and night so that they might put him to death; ²⁵but his disciples took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a large basket.

His former allies turned against him, plotting to kill Saul. Saul was once one of them, spewing out hatred and murder, but he has now stepped into their line of fire. Theological debate and argumentation are over. Although Saul was himself a Jew, author Luke is referring specifically to the unbelieving Jews who were persecuting the followers of Jesus.

Saul (a.k.a. Paul) met with opposition from the earliest days of his new life as a disciple of Christ and a proponent of the message. Someone had leaked the plot to him, but there seemed to be no escape—spies were at every escape route from the city. But the Christians hatched a plan to lower him down the side of the city wall in a basket, and Saul escaped safely with his life.

This episode never left his mind, we suspect, because of its embarrassment. He referred to it later when he wrote to the Corinthians, conveying how foolish is the boasting of false teachers. He resorts to faux boasting about his hardships to show how ridiculous it is. Compared to the physical things he endured (e.g., whippings, shipwreck, hunger), the basket experience might seem insignificant. However, he puts this incident at the conclusion, even the apex, of the litany of suffering he has experienced.

In Damascus, the ethnarch under Aretas the king was guarding the city of the Damascenes in order to seize me, and I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall, and so escaped his hands. (2 Cor. 11:32–33)

Paul seems to be saying, “As embarrassing as it is, the most difficult thing I have had to deal with is the fact that I fled in fear by being let down in a basket like a baby.” That was his supreme embarrassment, that he fled in fear. On his first extended mission tour, it would be a different story:

But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having won over the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead. But while the disciples stood around him, he got up and entered the city. The next day he went away with Barnabas to Derbe. (Acts 14:19–20)

He would never run in fear again! He got up and went back into the city.

Lord, You have not given me a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind (2 Tim. 1:7). I want to be like Paul and never again run from persecution.