Acts 2:10

Strangers of Rome... — Better, the Romans who were sojourning there — i.e., at Jerusalem. The verb is peculiar to St. Luke in the New Testament, and is used by him, as in Acts 17:18, of the strangers and visitors of a city.

Jews and proselytes. — The words may possibly be applicable to the whole preceding list; but they read more like a note specially emphasising the prominence of the Roman proselytes in that mixed multitude of worshippers. It lies in the nature of the case, that they were proselytes in the full sense of the term, circumcised and keeping the Law. Looking to St. Luke’s use of another word (“they that worship God,” as in Acts 16:14; Acts 17:4; Acts 17:17) for those whom the Rabbis classed as “proselytes of the gate,” it is probable that he used the term in its strictest sense for those who had been received into the covenant of Israel, and who were known in the Rabbinic classification as the “proselytes of righteousness.”