Taught at (the feet of). (Acts 22:3). To learn at the feet is to learn the scriptural foot, being that part of Scripture’s pertaining to moral instruction (the law), but that scriptural source of moral instruction which Paul refers in this passage is insistent on teaching, which is against the common notion that the gist of the law is prescriptive, not prophetic.
The foot symbolizes the morality in one’s thoughts and actions through life, particularly in carrying the body of Truth through the world to teach others. It is then not “teaching” or “morality” or “thought” that is central to the signification of the foot, but with what are we moral, about what do we think, and what we teach which the foot is an instrumentality to carry it along to all inner and outer realms. This is obviously the Prophetic Word of Messiah, who was prophesied and fulfilled those promises.
Paul’s summation of his epiphany ends with a reminder of the prophecy of Isaiah 42:6, 49:6, 60:3, Jer 16:19, Hosea 1:10, Zechariah 2:11, and many others. In this scene, the Jews of the law then howl for Paul’s death, the very idea that the prophecy would be fulfilled, The new morality is a morality of a love of truth and honest handling of the prophetic Word of God.
The most profound illustration of this teaching at the feet of the Messiah occurs in Luke 10:25–37 when Jesus attends a supper at the home of Lazarus. Mary sits at Jesus’ feet and listens and Martha complains that she is not helping her prepare. This is a figure and a prophecy of the coming Church. The true Church sits at Jesus’ feet and learns, Jesus, being the singular enfleshement of the Prophetic Word. Learning from Him is the same as learning from that Word and that Word alone. Martha, however, is, as Jesus says, “worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her. Rites, dinners, candles, baptisms, the Law, creeds, doctrines, ideas, feelings, reason, generalized religious concepts, the infinite choices that the Church has chosen to focus upon are not the point of Jesus’ presence. The point is the Oracles of the Messiah. If the church has found their faith locus there and there alone, they would have been praised instead of dismissed/ Praised for a spiritual life of exclusive focus on listening to what the Word of God predicted and came to pass about Jesus.
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