Acts 19:9

τινός omitted with אAB. Vulg. has ‘cujusdam.’

9. ὡς δέ τινες ἐσκληρύνοντο καὶ ἠπείθουν, but when divers were hardened, and believed not, that is, refused the persuasion spoken of in the previous verse. The same two verbs are found together in Sir 30:11 of the training of a son, θλάσον τὰς πλευρὰς αὐτοῦ ὡς ἔστι νήπιος μήποτε σκληρυνθεὶς�.

κακολογοῦντες τὴν ὁδὸν ἐνώπιον τοῦ πλήθυς, speaking evil of the Way before the multitude. The evil speaking is the final manifestation of the hardening. The Apostle continued his exhortations to stonyhearted hearers for three months, but when their obstinacy changed into malignity he left them, ἡ ὁδός was soon given as a distinctive name to ‘the Christian religion.’ See note on Acts 9:2 and cf. below Acts 19:23.

It was not mere opposition to the arguments of the Apostle which these Jews employed, they took occasion to excite the crowds of the city against him. And it would seem from Acts 19:33, where the Jews attempt to put forward a spokesman in the tumult, that they wished the heathen populace to believe that Paul was not approved of by his own nationality.

ἀποστὰς�' αὐτῶν, departing from them, i.e. ceasing to take part any longer in the services at the synagogue, through which the evil speaking had been aroused.

ἀφώρισεν τοὺς μαθητάς, he separated the disciples. The Christian part of the congregation, with any of the Jews who were attracted more than the rest by his teaching.

διαλεγόμενος, reasoning (as in Acts 19:8). Among these more sympathizing hearers, he would only have to set forward the arguments for the faith which he preached unto them. His teaching now could go on constantly (καθ' ἡμέραν), and was not confined to the synagogue times of service.

ἐν τῇ σχολῇ Τυράννου, in the school of Tyrannus. This teacher, whether a heathen or a Jew, was a man well known. Otherwise we can conceive no reason for the mention of a proper name. As the name is Greek, some have thought that the place meant was the lecture-room of a philosophic teacher; others, thinking that St Paul would hardly have chosen such a place for his preaching, have preferred to consider it a Jewish school or Beth-Hammidrash, in which his Jewish hearers would be more willing to assemble. Since the listeners are described, in the next verse, as being partly Jews, and partly Greeks, it is impossible to arrive at a conclusion. No doubt the Jews in Ephesus were numerous enough to render such ‘schools’ necessary for their education, and in their intercourse with Gentiles they not unfrequently adopted a Gentile name in addition to their Jewish one. So Tyrannus may have been a Jew.