Acts 14:4 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

The multitude of the city was divided. — The context shows that St. Luke writes of the bulk of the heathen population. No numbers are given, but we may fairly assume that the converts were in a minority, and that they belonged, as a rule, to the lower classes (1 Corinthians 1:26-27), and that the chief men and women of the city, as at the Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13:50), were against them. The “rulers” who are named would seem, from the form of punishment selected, to have been those of the Jewish synagogue, and the crime of which the preachers were accused, as in the case of Stephen, to have been blasphemy. (See Notes on Acts 7:58; John 10:31.)