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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - Acts 19:38 - 19:38
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Have a matter against any one (echousin pros tina logon). For this use of echō logon with pros See note on Mat 5:32; and note on Col 3:13. The town-clerk names Demetrius and the craftsmen (technitai) as the parties responsible for the riot.
The courts are open (agoraioi agontai). Supply hāmerai (days), court days are kept, or sunodoi, court-meetings are now going on, Vulgate conventus forenses aguntur. Old adjective from agora (forum) marketplace where trials were held. Cf. Act 17:4. There were regular court days whether they were in session then or not.
And there are proconsuls (kai anthupatoi eisin). Asia was a senatorial province and so had proconsuls (general phrase) though only one at a time, “a rhetorical plural” (Lightfoot). Page quotes from an inscription of the age of Trajan on an aqueduct at Ephesus in which some of Luke’s very words occur (neōkoros, anthupatos, grammateus, dāmos).
Let them accuse one another (egkaleitōsan allēlois). Present active imperative of egkaleō (en, kaleō), old verb to call in one’s case, to bring a charge against, with the dative. Luke uses the verb six times in Acts for judicial proceedings (Act 19:38, Act 19:40; Act 23:28, Act 23:29; Act 26:2, Act 26:7). The town-clerk makes a definite appeal to the mob for orderly legal procedure as opposed to mob violence in a matter where money and religious prejudice unite, a striking rebuke to so-called lynch-law proceedings in lands today where Christianity is supposed to prevail.