Then all the Greeks took Sosthenes, the chief ruler of the synagogue, and beat him before the judgment seat. And Gallio cared for none of those things.
Then all [the Greeks]. The bracketed words, though they are in a majority of manuscript, are lacking in the three oldest manuscripts ['Aleph (') A B], and in the Vulgate version; and the probability is, that this being the obvious sense of the statement, the words were inserted as a marginal gloss, and afterward found entrance into the text. (Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Tregelles exclude them.) The parties who made the assault could be no other than Greeks, whose admission, uncircumcised, into the fellowship of believing Jews had enraged the unbelieving party of them and occasioned the prosecution.
Took Sosthenes, the chief ruler of the synagogue - who probably succeeded Crispus on his conversion to the Christian Faith, though he my have been his associate in the same office: for, from Acts 13:15, it would appear that some synagogues had more than one ruler. He certainly had allowed his blind zeal to carry him so far as to head the Jewish mob that dragged Paul before the proconsul, and so might be said to deserve the rough handling which he now got.
And beat him before the judgment seat - that is, under the very eye of the judge. It is an interesting question whether this was the same Sosthenes as Paul associates with himself in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, calling him "Sosthenes our brother" (1 Corinthians 1:1), or quite another person. Meyer, Baumgarten, Alford, and Lechler think it in the last degree improbable that they were the same person; while DeWette and Howson, though concurring, write more cautiously. With them we once agreed; but considering that the only place in which "Sosthenes our brother" is mentioned at all is in an Epistle to these very Corinthians, and that there he speaks of him as one who would be quite well-known to them, we now think that Theodoret, among the Greek fathers, and after him Calvin, Bengel, Humphry, and Webster and Wilkinson, have reason on their side in pronouncing it every way probable that they were the same person. It is sometimes the most violent opposers of the truth who, when their eyes are once opened, are the readiest to yield themselves to it; perhaps the example of Crispus before him had weight; and to the once persecuting Saul such a convert, not to speak of the influence he would thence have, would be peculiarly dear.
And Gallio cared for none of those things - willing enough, perhaps, to see these turbulent Jews, for whom probably he felt contempt, themselves getting what they hoped to inflict on another, and indifferent to whatever was beyond the range of his office and disturbed his ease. His brother eulogises his loving and loveable manners, saying, among other things, that no man could be more beloved by anyone than he was by everyone. Religious indifference, under the influence of an easy and amiable temper, reappears from age to age.
Leaving Corinth, Paul Retraces his Steps, by Ephesus, Caesarea, and Jerusalem-Arriving at Antioch, He Completes his Second Missionary Journey (18:18-22)