Acts 16:22

συνεπέστη : only here in N.T., cf. Acts 18:12, not in LXX, but cf. Numbers 16:3, used in classical Greek, but not in same sense. No reason is given, but the ὄχλος would have been easily swayed by hatred of the Jews, and further incensed perhaps at finding an end put to their love of the revelations of fortune-telling. περιῤῥήξ. αὐτῶν τὰ ἱμάτια, i.e., they rent off the garments of Paul and Silas; just as there is no change of subject before ἐπιθ., so here probably what was done by the lictors is said to have been done by the magistrates. There is no need to suppose with Bengel that the prætors tore off the prisoners' clothes with their own hands. Grotius (but see on the other hand Calvin's note in loco) takes the words as meaning that the prætors rent off their own clothes (reading αὑτῶν); so Ramsay speaks of the prætors rending their garments in horror at the ἀσέβεια, the impiety. But not only would such an act be strange on the part of Roman magistrates, but also the verb seems to make against the interpretation; it means in classical and in later Greek to rend all round, tear off, cf. the numerous instances in Wetstein, and so it expresses the rough way in which the lictors tore off the garments of the prisoners. In 2Ma 4:38 the word is used of tearing off the garments of another, see Wendt's (1888) note in loco. ῥαβδίζειν : to beat with rods: thrice St. Paul suffered this punishment, 2 Corinthians 11:25, grievous and degrading, of a Roman scourging, cf. his own words in 1 Thessalonians 2:2, ὑβρισθέντες ὡς οἴδατε ἐν Φιλίπποις. Nothing can be alleged against the truthfulness of the narrative on the ground that Paul as a Roman citizen could not have been thus maltreated. The whole proceeding was evidently tumultuary and hasty, and the magistrates acted with the high-handedness characteristic of the fussy provincial authorities; in such a scene St. Paul's protest may well have been made, but would very easily be disregarded. The incident in Acts 22:25, which shows us how the Apostle barely escaped a similar punishment amidst the tumult and shouts of the mob in Jerusalem, and the instances quoted by Cicero, In Verr., v., 62, of a prisoner remorselessly scourged, while he cried “inter dolorem crepitumque plagarum” Civis Romanus sum, enables us to see how easily Paul and Silas (who probably enjoyed the Roman citizenship, cf. Acts 16:37) might have protested and yet have suffered.