But there was a certain man, called Simon. — The man who is thus brought before us in a brief episode, occupies a prominent place in the history and the legends of the Apostolic Church. For the present it will be convenient to deal only with the materials which St. Luke gives us, reserving a fuller account for the close of the narrative. Nothing is told us here as to his earlier history, prior to his arrival in Samaria. The name indicates Jewish or Samaritan origin. He appears as the type of a class but too common at the time, that of Jews trading on the mysterious prestige of their race and the credulity of the heathen, claiming supernatural power exercised through charms and incantations. Such afterwards was Elymas at Cyprus (Acts 13:6); such were the vagabond Jews exorcists at Ephesus (Acts 19:13); such was a namesake, Simon of Cyprus (unless, indeed, we have a re-appearance of the same man), who also claimed to be a magician, and who pandered to the vices of Felix, the Procurator of Judæa, by persuading Drusilla (Jos. Ant. xx. 7, § 2, see Note on Acts 24:24) to leave her first husband and to marry him. The life of such a man, like that of the Cagliostro fraternity in all ages, was a series of strange adventures, and startling as the statements as to his previous life may seem (see Note on Acts 8:24), they are not in themselves incredible. Apollonius of Tyana is, perhaps, the supreme representative of the charlatanism of the period.
Used sorcery. — Literally, was practising magic. On the history of the Greek word magos and our “magic,” as derived from it, see Note on Matthew 2:1. Our “sorcerer” comes, through the French sorcier, from the Latin sortitor, a caster of lots (sortes) for the purposes of divination. Later legends enter fully into the various forms of sorcery of which Simon made use. (See below.)
Bewitched the people of Samaria. — Literally, threw them into the state of trance or ecstasy; set them beside themselves, or out of their wits. The structure of the sentence shows that the “city” is not identical with Samaria, and that the latter name is used, as elsewhere, for the region.
Giving out that himself was some great one. — The next verse defines the nature of the claim more clearly. The cry of the people that he was “the great power of God,” was, we may well believe, the echo of his own boast. He claimed to be, in some undefined way, an Incarnation of Divine Power. The very name had appeared in our Lord’s teaching when He spoke of Himself as sitting on the right hand of “the Power of God,” as an equivalent for the Father (Luke 22:69).