He hoped also that money should have been given him of Paul, that he might loose him: wherefore he sent for him the oftener, and communed with him.
He hoped also that money should have been given him - `at the same time also hoping that money would be given him'
Of Paul [that he might loose him]. (This bracketed clause is evidently an explanatory gloss without authority.) Bribery in a judge was punishable by the Roman law, but the spirit of a slave (to use the words of Tacitus) was in all his acts, and his "communing with Paul" - as if he cared for either him or his message-simply added hypocrisy to meanness. The position in life of Paul's Christian visitors might beget the hope of extracting something from them for the release of their champion; but the apostle would rather lie in prison than stoop to this!
Wherefore he sent for him the oftener, and communed with him - under pretext of 'anxious inquiry' after salvation, perhaps, and very possibly curious to know more of this new religion and the prisoner's connection with it; but secretly hoping to weary him out, or his friends, and thus extract from them a bribe to set him at liberty: thus rendering any real benefit by all these interviews hopeless.