Acts 17:19

ἐπιλαβόμενοί τε αὐτοῦ, and they took hold of him and, &c. There is no need to suppose that any violence was used or intended. The same verb is used often of taking by the hand to aid or protect (so Mark 8:23; Acts 23:19), and is the word by which the action of Barnabas is described (Acts 9:27) when ‘he took Paul and brought him to the Apostles.’ Moreover the whole context shews that the action of the crowd was in no sense that of an arrest, for we read (Acts 17:33) when his speech was done ‘Paul departed from among them,’ evidently having been under no kind of restraint.

ἐπὶ τὸν Ἄρειον πάγον ἤγαγον, they brought him unto the Areopagus. This was an eminence to the west of the Acropolis at Athens. It was famous in classic literature as the meeting-place of the Athenian council of Areopagus, which took its name from the place where it met. To this hill of Mars (Ares) the philosophers led St Paul, probably at a time when it was unoccupied (though some suppose that the court was sitting), that they might the better hear him away from the bustle of the market-place, and that he might more conveniently address a larger audience.

δυνάμεθα γνῶναι …; may we know …? Literally ‘are we able to know …?’ But the literal sense of δύναμαι (especially when used in the first person) was often merged in that of θέλω or βούλομαι. Cf. Luke 11:7, οὐ δύναμαι�, ‘I cannot rise and give thee,’ where the sense clearly is ‘I don’t want to rise.’ For after importunity the man does rise and do all that is desired. The Stoics and Epicureans were not the people to doubt their own power of understanding anything which St Paul might say to them.

τίς ἡ καινὴ … λαλουμένη διδαχή, what this new doctrine is which is spoken by thee. The sense of λαλεῖν in N.T. is not unfrequently that of announcing and publishing. The word is also used of messages spoken by God or by His prophets (cf. Luke 1:45; Luke 1:55; Luke 1:70; Luke 24:25; Acts 3:21; Acts 3:24; James 5:10). The Apostle was not speaking to the Athenians about the doctrine (as A.V.), his words were the doctrine.