And all—as many as obeyed him,— Dr. Lardner has justly observed, that the word rendered dispersed, by no means implies that these men, were destroyed. Gamaliel's reason will for ever hold good against all persecution and intolerance. See the note on Luke 13:1-2. We may just observe, for the classical reader, that there is in Homer's Iliad, E. 606 a line very similar to what Gamaliel says, Acts 5:39.
u917?ικετε μηδε θεοις μενεαινεμεν ιφι μαχεσθαι. The words lest haply are to be connected with let them alone, Acts 5:38 and all that comes between it to be read in a parenthesis. "This speech of Gamaliel seems to me (says Dr. Benson,) to have been made, partly in opposition to the Sadducees, partly out of policy, to fall in with the popular sentiments at that time concerning the apostles, that the people might still keep up their veneration for him and for the other leading men among the Pharisees. But he seems to have spoken after that manner chiefly from an expectation of a temporal deliverance, and a strong desire to see it accomplished bythe apostles of Jesus, rather than not at all."—With what principle or view soever Gamaliel made it, his speech had so good an effect upon the Sanhedrim, that, instead of putting the twelve apostles to death, they called them in, and only ordered them to be scourged. "This, (says the Doctor,) I suppose, was the inflicting upon them what St. Paul calleth the forty stripes save one, 2 Corinthians 11:24. For the Romans did then allow the Jews to make use of that punishment as they thought proper."