Acts 19: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul finds about twelve disciples in Ephesus who knew only John's baptism; they are baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus and receive the Holy Spirit. Paul teaches in the synagogue and then daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus for two years, and God does unusual miracles through him. After seven sons of Sceva are attacked while trying to use Jesus' name, many believers confess what they have done and burn their magic books. A silversmith named Demetrius, whose trade is making silver shrines of Diana, then sets off a riot in the theater, which the city clerk quiets before dismissing the crowd.

Claim by Claim

1. 19:1
   • While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul traveled through the inland regions.
   • Paul came to Ephesus.
   • At Ephesus Paul found certain disciples.
2. 19:2
   • Paul asked the disciples whether they had received the Holy Spirit when they believed.
   • They answered that they had not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit.
3. 19:3
   • Paul asked them into what they had then been baptized.
   • They said they were baptized into John's baptism.
4. 19:4
   • Paul said that John baptized with a baptism of repentance.
   • Paul said that John told the people to believe on the one coming after him.
   • Paul identified that coming one as Christ Jesus.
5. 19:5
   • When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.
6. 19:6
   • Paul laid his hands on them.
   • The Holy Spirit came upon them.
   • They spoke with tongues.
   • They prophesied.
7. 19:7
   • The men were about twelve in all.
8. 19:8
   • Paul went into the synagogue.
   • He spoke boldly there for three months.
   • He argued and persuaded concerning the kingdom of God.
9. 19:9
   • Some of them were hardened and would not believe.
   • They spoke evil of the Way in front of the crowd.
   • Paul departed from them.
   • Paul separated the disciples from them.
   • Paul argued daily in the lecture hall of a man named Tyrannus.
10. 19:10
    • This continued for two years.
    • As a result all who lived in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus.
    • Those who heard included both Jews and Greeks.
11. 19:11
    • God performed extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul.
12. 19:12
    • Handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched Paul's body were carried to the sick.
    • The diseases left the sick.
    • The evil spirits went out of them.
13. 19:13
    • Certain wandering Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits.
    • They said, We adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preaches.
14. 19:14
    • There were seven sons of a man named Sceva, a Jew and a chief priest.
    • These seven sons were doing this.
15. 19:15
    • The evil spirit answered them.
    • The evil spirit said it knew Jesus.
    • The evil spirit said it knew Paul.
    • The evil spirit asked them who they were.
16. 19:16
    • The man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them.
    • He overcame them.
    • He prevailed against them.
    • They fled out of that house naked and wounded.
17. 19:17
    • This became known to all the Jews and Greeks living at Ephesus.
    • Fear fell on all of them.
    • The name of the Lord Jesus was magnified.
18. 19:18
    • Many who had believed came forward.
    • They confessed.
    • They disclosed their deeds.
19. 19:19
    • Many who had practiced magic arts brought their books together.
    • They burned the books in front of everyone.
    • They calculated the price of the books.
    • The total came to fifty thousand pieces of silver.
20. 19:20
    • The word of God grew mightily and prevailed.
21. 19:21
    • After these things were finished, Paul resolved in the spirit to go to Jerusalem after passing through Macedonia and Achaia.
    • Paul said that after he had been in Jerusalem he must also see Rome.
22. 19:22
    • Paul sent two of his helpers into Macedonia.
    • The two were Timothy and Erastus.
    • Paul himself stayed in Asia for a time.
23. 19:23
    • At that same time a great disturbance arose about the Way.
24. 19:24
    • A man named Demetrius was a silversmith.
    • Demetrius made silver shrines of Artemis (Diana).
    • This brought great profit to the craftsmen.
25. 19:25
    • Demetrius called the craftsmen together along with the workmen of similar trades.
    • He said to them that they knew their wealth came from this craft.
26. 19:26
    • Demetrius said they could see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in nearly all of Asia Paul had persuaded and turned away a great many people.
    • Demetrius said Paul claimed that gods made with hands are not gods.
27. 19:27
    • Demetrius said their craft was in danger of falling into disrepute.
    • Demetrius said the temple of the great goddess Artemis (Diana) was in danger of being despised.
    • Demetrius said her magnificence was in danger of being destroyed.
    • Demetrius said all Asia and the world worship her.
28. 19:28
    • When they heard these words they were filled with wrath.
    • They cried out, Great is Artemis (Diana) of the Ephesians.
29. 19:29
    • The whole city was filled with confusion.
    • They seized Gaius and Aristarchus.
    • Gaius and Aristarchus were Macedonians.
    • Gaius and Aristarchus were Paul's traveling companions.
    • The crowd rushed with one accord into the theatre.
30. 19:30
    • Paul wanted to go in before the people.
    • The disciples would not let him.
31. 19:31
    • Certain officials of Asia who were Paul's friends sent word to him.
    • They urged him not to venture into the theatre.
32. 19:32
    • Some cried out one thing and some another.
    • The assembly was in confusion.
    • Most of them did not know why they had come together.
33. 19:33
    • They drew Alexander out of the crowd.
    • The Jews pushed Alexander forward.
    • Alexander motioned with his hand.
    • Alexander intended to make his defense to the people.
34. 19:34
    • They recognized that Alexander was a Jew.
    • All of them cried out with one voice for about two hours.
    • They cried, Great is Artemis (Diana) of the Ephesians.
35. 19:35
    • The city clerk quieted the crowd.
    • He addressed them as men of Ephesus.
    • He asked what man does not know that the city of the Ephesians is temple-keeper of the great goddess Artemis (Diana).
    • He said the city is also keeper of her image, which fell down from the sky from Zeus.
36. 19:36
    • The clerk said these things cannot be contradicted.
    • He said they ought therefore to be quiet.
    • He said they ought to do nothing rashly.
37. 19:37
    • The clerk said they had brought these men here.
    • He said these men are not robbers of temples.
    • He said these men are not blasphemers of their goddess.
38. 19:38
    • The clerk said that if Demetrius and the craftsmen with him have a charge against anyone, the courts are open.
    • He said there are proconsuls.
    • He said let them bring charges against one another there.
39. 19:39
    • The clerk said that if they seek anything about other matters, it must be settled in a lawful assembly.
40. 19:40
    • The clerk said they were in danger of being charged with rioting over that day's events.
    • He said there was no cause by which they could give an account of this gathering.
41. 19:41
    • When he had said this, he dismissed the assembly.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

19:1

"Coasts" in 1611 did not mean a shoreline. It meant borders or districts, and "the upper coasts" is the higher inland country: Paul crossed the interior of what is now Turkey rather than sailing around it. Apollos is the Alexandrian Jewish teacher introduced at the end of Acts 18, and Corinth is across the Aegean Sea from Ephesus. Ephesus was the largest city of the Roman province of Asia and its main port.

19:2

"Ghost" in 1611 simply meant spirit, with none of today's sense of a haunting; "Holy Ghost" and "Holy Spirit" translate the same words. The men's answer is ambiguous in the Greek and can be read either as "we never heard there is a Holy Spirit" or as "we never heard that the Holy Spirit has been given."

19:3

John is John the Baptist, who dipped people in the Jordan River as a sign that they were turning back to God before the one he announced arrived. These men had attached themselves to that movement and had not heard what followed it. "Unto what then were ye baptized?" asks whose name or message their washing committed them to.

19:4

"Repentance" translates a word meaning a change of mind that turns a person's whole direction around, not sorrow by itself.

19:6

Placing hands on someone was a standard gesture for passing on a blessing, a commission or an office; it is not a medical act. "Spake with tongues" means speaking in languages the speaker had not learned. "Prophesied" means speaking a message understood to come from God, which may concern the present as much as the future.

19:8

A synagogue was the local Jewish meeting house for prayer, reading and discussion. A visiting teacher was normally invited to speak, which is why Paul regularly begins in one; three months is an unusually long welcome.

19:9

"Divers" is the old spelling of "diverse" and here means several or various; it has nothing to do with diving. "That way" is a title: the earliest followers of Jesus were known as people of "the Way," before the word Christian was in general use. "The school of one Tyrannus" is not a boys' school but a hired lecture hall belonging to a man named Tyrannus, the sort of room a traveling philosopher rented by the hour. Some early manuscripts add that Paul used it from the fifth to the tenth hour, roughly eleven in the morning until four in the afternoon, the midday break when the hall and its listeners were free.

19:10

"Asia" here is the Roman province of Asia, the western end of modern Turkey, with Ephesus as its chief city. It is not the continent.

19:11

"Special" in 1611 meant out of the ordinary or exceptional, not "reserved for a particular purpose."

19:12

The two items are a workman's gear: the first is the sweat cloth a laborer tied around his head or neck, the second the apron tied around his waist. Paul supported himself with his hands as a leatherworker, so these were the cloths he worked in.

19:13

"Vagabond" in 1611 meant simply wandering or itinerant, with none of today's suggestion of a tramp. Exorcists were recognized professionals who drove out spirits by naming a power greater than the spirit, and collecting effective names was the trade; "we adjure you" means "we put you under oath by," that is, we bind you by the power just named. Their formula quotes Paul because they treat "Jesus" as one more name to add to the list.

19:14

"Chief of the priests" renders a title used of the senior priestly families in Jerusalem. No Jewish high priest named Sceva is known from any other source, so the title may be a family connection, a local office, or simply advertising by men trading on priestly prestige.

19:15

The Greek uses two different verbs, and the distinction is the joke: the spirit recognizes Jesus and is acquainted with Paul, but the sons of Sceva are nobody to it.

19:16

"Naked" here means stripped: their clothes were torn off them in the struggle. The Greek word also covers being left in an undergarment rather than entirely bare.

19:17

"Magnified" means made great in people's estimation, that is, treated with much more respect than before.

19:18

"Shewed" is the old spelling of "showed." Disclosing what they had done was a costly act, because a spell or formula was believed to work only while it stayed secret; saying it aloud in public destroyed its value.

19:19

"Curious arts" means magic, from an older sense of "curious" as elaborate or meddling with hidden things. Ephesus was famous for written charms, known across the Greek world as "Ephesian letters," sold as scrolls and worn as amulets. "Fifty thousand pieces of silver" is fifty thousand drachmas, and one drachma was about a day's wage for a laborer, so the pile burned represented roughly a hundred and forty years of ordinary earnings.

19:21

"Purposed in the spirit" is genuinely ambiguous in the Greek: it may mean Paul resolved in his own mind, or that he was moved to the decision by the Holy Spirit. Macedonia and Achaia are the two Roman provinces covering northern and southern Greece, and Achaia contained Corinth and Athens.

19:22

"Timotheus" is the full Greek form of the name usually given as Timothy. Erastus appears again in Romans 16 as a city treasurer, and an inscription found at Corinth names a man of that name who paid for a pavement.

19:23

"No small stir" is deliberate understatement, a common device in this book: it means a very large disturbance indeed. The same trick is used of Demetrius's profits in the next verse.

19:24

Diana is the Roman name the King James translators used for the Greek goddess Artemis, who is what the Greek text says. The Artemis worshiped at Ephesus was not the huntress of classical myth but an ancient mother goddess of the region, shown in statues covered with rows of rounded objects. The "silver shrines" were small models of the goddess in her niche or temple, bought by pilgrims as souvenirs and left as offerings, and a whole trade depended on visitors coming to the temple.

19:25

"Sirs" translates simply "Men," the ordinary opening of a public speech in Greek.

19:26

Gods made by human hands means statues that people prayed to.

19:27

"Set at nought" means counted as worth nothing. The temple of Artemis at Ephesus was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, four times the size of the Parthenon; it also served as a bank and a place of asylum, and the pilgrim traffic it drew was the city's main industry. "All Asia and the world" is the speaker's own claim, the language of civic pride, though her worship was in fact spread widely around the Mediterranean.

19:29

The theater was the great open-air bowl cut into the hillside above the harbor road, seating something like twenty four thousand people. It was the normal place for the city's public meetings as well as for plays, so a crowd that wanted to be heard went there by instinct.

19:30

"Suffered him not" means would not allow him; "suffer" in 1611 often means permit.

19:31

"The chief of Asia" translates "Asiarchs," the wealthy leading men of the province who held honorary office, presided over festivals and games, and paid for them out of their own pockets. That men of this rank counted Paul as a friend says something about the social range of his contacts in the city.

19:32

The word translated "assembly" is ekklesia, ordinary Greek for the summoned meeting of a city's citizens. It is the same word translated "church" elsewhere in the New Testament, and here it is applied to a mob that does not know why it has met.

19:33

Who Alexander was and why he is pushed forward are both unclear in the Greek. The likeliest reading is that the Jewish community in the city, who also refused to worship images and so risked being blamed along with Paul, put forward a spokesman to separate themselves from him. "Beckoned with the hand" is the standard gesture of a speaker calling for silence before addressing a crowd. "Defence" is the word for a formal reply to a charge.

19:34

Shouting a deity's title in unison was a recognized act of public worship in Greek cities, not merely an angry chant. Keeping it up for two hours was an act of collective devotion and a show of force at the same time.

19:35

The "townclerk" was no minor filing officer but the city's senior executive, who drafted the decrees, kept the public records and presided over the citizen assembly, and who answered to the Roman authorities for public order. "A worshipper of the great goddess" translates neokoros, literally temple keeper or temple warden, an official civic title that Ephesus held and boasted of on its coins. The King James adds "Jupiter," the Roman equivalent of Zeus; the Greek says only that the image fell "from the sky," a claim made about several sacred objects in the ancient world and often understood to mean a meteorite.

19:37

"Robbers of churches" means temple robbers. No Christian buildings existed yet; "church" here is simply the translators' word for a place of worship, and stealing from a temple treasury was a serious crime with heavy penalties. "Blasphemers" means men who had spoken abusively of the goddess, a charge the clerk is publicly dismissing.

19:38

"The law is open" means the courts are in session and open for business. "Deputies" translates "proconsuls," the Roman governors of the province, who heard cases on circuit. "Implead" means to bring a formal legal charge against someone. The clerk is telling the craftsmen to sue rather than riot.

19:39

"A lawful assembly" is the regular meeting of the citizen body, held on fixed days a set number of times each month. The point is that the present gathering, however large, has no legal standing and can decide nothing.

19:40

A Greek city under Rome kept its self government only so long as it kept order. A riot reported to the governor could cost Ephesus its privileges, and the clerk, who would personally answer for it, knows this. "Concourse" simply means the crowd that has run together.