When one had waited,.... To observe whether they would make any reply to what he had said, or any objection to his engaging in the controversy:
for they spake not; were as mute as fishes:
but stood still; like statues, had no power to move, neither to sit down nor to depart, but were as if all life, sense, and motion, were gone from them:
[and] answered no more; or not at all; for it does not appear that they had given him any answer before, as well as not now.