There came thither certain Jews from Antioch. — The context shows that the Pisidian Antioch is meant. The strength of the hostility is shown by the facts, (1) that the Jews of the two cities were acting in concert, and (2) that those of the former had travelled not less than one hundred and thirty miles to hinder the Apostle’s work.
Who persuaded the people. — The sudden change of feeling is almost as startling as that which transformed the hosannas of the multitudes at Jerusalem into the cry of “Crucify Him!” (Matthew 21:9; Matthew 27:22.) It is not difficult, however, to understand these vicissitudes of feeling in a barbarous and superstitious people. We find a like sudden change in an opposite direction in the people of Melita (Acts 28:6). If the strangers who were endowed with such mysterious powers were not “gods in the likeness of men,” they might be sorcerers, or even demons, in the evil sense of that word. The Jews, ever ready to impute signs and wonders to Beelzebub, the chief of the demons (see Notes on Matthew 10:34; Matthew 12:24), would readily work on this feeling, and terrify the people into the cruel ferocity of panic.
Having stoned Paul. — The mode of punishment, as elsewhere, shows that it was planned and executed by Jews. They, apparently, were eager to satisfy themselves that they were inflicting punishment on a blasphemer: stoning him to death, and casting him out to be buried with the burial of an ass. And so, in one sense, as from man’s way of looking on such things, the martyr expiated the guilt of the persecutor. The blinding, stunning blows fell on him as they had fallen on Stephen. It was the one instance in St. Paul’s life of this form of suffering (2 Corinthians 11:25). The sufferings endured at Lystra stand out, at the close of his life, in the vista of past years with a marvellous distinctness (2 Timothy 3:11).