Some therefore cried one thing, and some another. — Better, kept on crying. The graphic character of the whole narrative makes it almost certain that it must have come from an eye-witness, or possibly from more than one. Aristarchus or Gaius, who travelled to Jerusalem with St. Luke (Luke 20:4), and were with him also at Rome, may have told him the whole tale of the scene in which they had borne so prominent a part. Possibly, also, following up the hint thrown out in the Note on Acts 19:12, we may think of Tyrannus as having written a report of the tumult to St. Luke. The two conjunctions translated “therefore” (better, then) seem to carry the narrative back to what was passing in the theatre, after the parenthetical account of what had been going on between the Apostle, the disciples, and the Asiarchs outside it.
For the assembly was confused. — It is not without interest to note that the Greek word for assembly is the ecclesia, with which we are so familiar as applied to the Church of Christ. Strictly speaking, as the town-clerk is careful to point out (Acts 19:39), this mob gathering was not an ecclesia, but the word had come to be used vaguely.