Acts 21:30 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

And all the city was moved,— The accusation brought against St. Paul, though false, put all the city in a commotion, and brought a vast concourse of people together, who seized upon him in order to kill him; and therefore they drew him out of the court of the Israelites, lest it should have been defiled with his blood, and hurried him into the court of the Gentiles, which was not accounted so holy. The gates of the temple being shut, they immediately fell upon him, with what the Jews used to call the rebels' beating; which was the people's mode of punishing such as they apprehended had rebelled against their law, and that without any judicial process. Their manner of beating them was with staves, stones, whips, or any thing they could first lay their hands on; and they frequently inflicted this punishment so unmercifully, that several persons died under it. John Hyrcanus, high-priest and prince of the Jews, built the castle which is called Baris, that is, a palace or royal castle, on a steep rock, fifty cubits without the outer square on the north-west corner of the temple, but upon the same mountain, and adjoining to the said square. This was called The palace of the Asmonaeans in Jerusalem, as long as they reigned there. When Herod the Great came to be king of Judea, he rebuilt the castle, and made it a very strong fortress, lining or casing over the high rock on which it stood with polished white marble, so as to make it inaccessible from the subjacent valley, and building the castle itself so high, as to command the temple, and see what was done in the two outer courts of that sacred place, that he might send down his soldiers in case of any tumult; and when he had made these alterations, he called it Antonia, in honour of his great friend Mark Antony. When the Romans afterwards reduced Judea from a kingdom to a province, they also kept a strong garrison in the same place, particularly at the solemn festivals, when the Jews came in such prodigious multitudes to the temple. A great tumult being now made about the apostle, probably some of the centinels who kept watch on the south-east turret of the castle Antonia, spied it, and gave notice to the Roman tribune [Claudius Lysias, (ch. Acts 23:26.) who was captain of the fortress, and had one thousand soldiers under him] that all Jerusalem was in an uproar. Immediatelyupon this notice, the tribune took centurions, with the hundred soldiers whom they each of them commanded, and ran down the stairs which led from the south-east turret of the castle into the outer cloisters of the temple, and thence into the court of the Gentiles, where the tumult was. Upon seeing the tribune, attended with such a number of armed men, they left off beating the innocent apostle; when the tribune himself took him into his custody, and fulfilled the prophesy of Agabus, Acts 21:10-11 for he ordered him to be bound with two chains, concluding that he was some notorious malefactor.