Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Acts · About this commentary
The silversmiths of Ephesus
Acts 19:21-31
21 Now after these things had ended, Paul determined in the Spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem, saying, “After I have been there, I must also see Rome.” · WEB
Paul turns his face toward Rome, and the city's response to the gospel is organized by a trade association that has done the arithmetic.
Paul determined in the Spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem, saying, "After I have been there, I must also see Rome." The sentence sets the plot of the remaining ten chapters. Everything from here is a journey to Jerusalem and then, by a route nobody would have chosen, to Rome . And the word must is the same one used throughout the book for what God has determined.
The disturbance is introduced with the writer's usual understatement — no small disturbance — and its cause is a business meeting. Demetrius, a silversmith making shrines of Artemis, gathers the workmen of like occupation, and his opening line is admirably honest: Sirs, you know that by this business we have our wealth.
The grievance is then presented in the correct order and the order is the confession. First the money. Second the reputation of the trade. Third, and last, the goddess. Demetrius knows what will move a room of craftsmen and what will move a city, and he supplies both in sequence.
His summary of Paul's preaching is unintentionally the best evidence in the chapter of how effective it had been. Not at Ephesus alone, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away many people, saying that they are no gods that are made with hands. An enemy testifies to the reach — a whole province — and states the doctrine accurately. The phrase about hands is the same one Stephen used before the council and Paul used at Athens.
The crowd's response is a chant rather than an argument: Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. The temple there was one of the wonders of the world, the city's chief employer and its principal source of pride, and a threat to it was a threat to everybody's living.
What follows is a riot described by someone who has seen one. The city fills with confusion, the crowd rushes into the theater — a structure holding perhaps twenty-four thousand — dragging two of Paul's Macedonian companions with them. And the driest observation in the book: Most of them didn't know why they had come together.
Paul wants to go in. Of course he does; there is a crowd and he is a preacher. Two groups stop him, and the second is the surprise. The disciples didn't allow him — the congregation physically restrains its apostle. And certain also of the Asiarchs, being his friends, send word begging him not to venture in. The Asiarchs were the leading men of the province, responsible for the imperial cult and the public games — the civic and religious establishment. Some of them are Paul's friends, and they are the ones who keep him alive.
He listens. A man who walked back into Lystra the day after being stoned accepts advice here, and the writer records the restraint with the same evenness he records the courage.
settled What this mark means