Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Acts 16:21

Acts 16:21. These men, being Jews, Acts 16:21. Teach customs which are not lawful for us to observe, being Romans. It was no very easy matter for these angry men to formulate their complaint against Paul and Silas, so they had recourse to the favourite accusation against men of a strange race and nationality they charged them with attempting to stir up political disturbances. It was the old charge of the Jews against the Lord, and many times it was revived with success in the case of His chief followers. This false accusation procured for Paul his long Roman imprisonment, and in the end brought him to a bloody death. ‘The accusation,' Calvin, quoted by Gloag, strikingly remarks, ‘was craftily composed: on the one hand they boast of the name of Romans, than which no name was more honourable; on the other hand they excite hatred against the apostles and bring them into contempt by calling them Jews, which name was at that time infamous (they had lately been banished from Rome by the Emperor Claudius); for as regards religion the Romans had less affinity to the Jews than to any other nation.'

Judaism was a ‘religio licita' sanctioned for the Jews, but the Roman policy by no means allowed this strange eastern faith to be propagated among the Roman peoples.

A severe law, if not in force at this time, certainly enacted shortly after, sternly forbade any one not a Jew undergoing the rite of circumcision. Any ‘citizen of Rome' who was circumcised was liable to perpetual exile and the confiscation of his goods. A master who allowed his slaves to submit themselves to this rite exposed himself to a like penalty. The surgeon who circumcised was to be put to death. Even a Jew who caused his slaves who were not Jews to be circumcised was guilty of a capital offence. Gentle and tolerant though the policy of the Empire on tie whole was to foreign religions, still if the votaries of a foreign religion showed themselves in earnest and wishful to convert others to their faith, at once the state regarded such men as public enemies.

It was this jealous feeling which the enemies of the Christians, fully conscious of, so often and so easily aroused against Christ and His great followers.

It should be observed how, in the words of the accusation here, the Jew, the member of an obnoxious sect, is placed in strong opposition to the Roman, the citizen of the mighty, victorious world empire.

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Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Acts 16:21

Old Testament

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