Acts 14:19

ἀπὸ Ἀντιοχείας καὶ Ἰκονίου Ἰουδαῖοι, certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium. Their anger, like that of ‘the circumcision’ in Jerusalem, was roused against the Apostles, whom they knew to be born Jews, but whom they saw casting away the legal restraints to which they themselves clung. They therefore followed them to other places and represented them no doubt as renegade Jews, and probably taught the heathen people, that what they had seen done was done by evil powers and not by beneficent ones. Some such argument they must have used. The mighty work of the cured cripple bore witness to the reality of the Apostle’s power. It was only left, therefore, to ascribe it to evil agency, as the Jews aforetime said of Christ, ‘He casteth out devils through Beelzebub.’

πείσαντες τοὺς ὄχλους, having persuaded the multitudes. Dean Howson (Life and Epistles of St Paul, I. 208) quotes from the Scholiast on Homer (Il. IV. 89–92) the following, ἄπιστοι γὰρ Λυκάονες, ὡς καὶ Ἀριστοτέλης μαρτυρεῖ, a passage which is confirmed by the fickle conduct of the people on this occasion. For a similar sudden change of temper in the populace, cf. the conduct of the multitude at Jerusalem just before the Crucifixion, and the sudden alteration of opinion in the people of Melita (Acts 28:6).

καὶ λιθάσαντες τὸν Παῦλον, and having stoned Paul. Their jealous rage carried them to such a length that they became themselves the active agents in taking vengeance on the ‘chief speaker’ of the two missionaries. This must be the stoning to which Paul alludes (2 Corinthians 11:25), ‘Once was I stoned.’ And Paley (Horæ Paulinæ, p. 69) calls attention to the close agreement between the history of St Luke and the letter of St Paul. At Iconium St Paul had just escaped stoning; at Lystra he was stoned. The two circumstances are mentioned by the historian, only the actual suffering by the Apostle himself. Nothing but truth to guide them, says Paley, could have brought the two writers so close ‘to the very brink of contradiction without their falling into it.’

ἔσυρον ἔξω τῆς πόλεως, they drew him out of the city. The stoning had not been in a place set apart for such executions, for there were few Jews in Lystra, but had been done publicly in the midst of the city, perhaps in the place of common resort where St Paul had been wont to preach.

νομίζοντες αὐτὸν τεθνηκέναι, thinking that he was dead. As they had apparently every reason to do, when the body could be dragged along the road.