Acts 18:16Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Meanwhile, the zeal with which the Gentiles received the Gospel stirred up still stronger hatred among the Jews. They used the arrival of the new proconsul, Annaeus Gallio, brother of the famous philosopher Seneca, to accuse Paul before him.

They had been granted the right to perform all religious acts according to their statutes. From this they inferred that anyone who spread among them a teaching contrary to their statutes produced divisions among them.

Such a man, as a violator of their rights, was therefore guilty of transgressing the laws of the empire.

But the proconsul, a man of tender heart, dulcis Gallio, showed no desire to involve himself in the religious disputes of the Jews. To a Roman statesman, these could seem empty quarrels over words.

But at last the Jews rose up against him, seized him, and brought him before the tribunal. They accused him of teaching about God contrary to the Jewish Law. The proconsul, however, refused to give the accusers his attention. He said that he was ready to examine only matters of a political nature and had no desire at all to enter into the Jews' religious disputes.

Having thus extinguished the matter, Gallio ordered the lictors to clear the court. They did so with exemplary zeal, "driving them from the tribunal."

"He drove them away." The expression indicates their forcible dispersal from the tribunal. Probably the Jews, according to their custom, did not want to withdraw voluntarily from the court. They made noise and sought to have the case examined and decided in their favor. They pestered the proconsul and persisted in their demands. Therefore the proconsul ordered either the court attendants or perhaps the military guard to disperse the crowd by force and drive it from the place of judicial proceedings.

Gallio the proconsul's answer to Paul's accusers shows that he had heard them sufficiently. Besides the general accusation that Paul's teaching was irregular, they had said many other things to Gallio. Among them, they mentioned certain names.

One may think these names were Moses and Jesus. Gallio was partly like Pilate in his unwillingness to judge what did not fall under his court. Yet he was evidently more resolute. He therefore accused Paul of nothing at all.

Pilate, however, scourged Jesus Christ and delivered Him to be crucified. Gallio drove all the accusers away from the judgment seat as contentious men. They did not know that courts judge injuries and evil deeds, not teaching, and especially not good teaching.