GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
ACTS 19:32-35
32 Some cried out one thing and some another, for the assembly was in confusion. Most of them did not know why they had come together. 33 Then the Jews brought Alexander forward, and some in the crowd gave him advice. He motioned for silence with his hands to make a defense before the people. 34 But when they realized that he was a Jew, they started shouting. This went on for about two hours. They cried out with one voice, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”
Luke’s report is so detailed, it is obviously based on information from the men who were present there in the theater, not only from Paul but also from Gaius and Aristarchus who were in the middle of things (19:29). As with so much of mob behavior, most of the people didn’t really know why they were there. The Jews wanted to distance themselves from the Christians to remain on the good side of the crowd, but when they put forward this man Alexander, it backfired. He got no further than motioning for silence and the opportunity to speak than he was recognized as a Jew, either by his clothes, or his beard, or simply that there were a lot of Greeks there who knew him. He was shouted down by the “Great is Artemis” chant. This time the shouting went on for “about two hours.” Lenski’s quip is worth repeating: “This Ephesian clamor seems to hold the world record for crown marathon shouting” (Acts p. 812).
We don’t know whether or not this Alexander is the same man that Paul calls “the coppersmith” in 2 Timothy 4:14 (or 1 Timothy 1:19). The Alexander in 2 Timothy was obviously a Christian who had fallen away: “Alexander the coppersmith did me a great deal of harm. The Lord will repay him for what he has done.” But to make him the same man we have here would involved speculation that he had somehow become a Christian after this incident in the theater, speculation that he had become so useful to Paul that he later joined him in ministry, speculation that he had then fallen away, and speculation that his fall caused Paul a setback so bad that Paul would call it “a great deal of harm,” and perhaps even speculation that this Alexander was even responsible for Paul’s final arrest in some way. That’s too much speculation. Better to say that we don’t know whether this is even the same man.
35 Then the chancellor quieted the people down. He said, “O men of Ephesus, who in all the world doesn’t know that the city of Ephesus is the custodian of the temple of the great Artemis and of the image that fell from heaven?”
English translations like to call this man the “city clerk.” The Greek word is grammateus, the same word used in the Gospels and elsewhere for the Jewish scribes or teachers of the law (Matthew 8:19; Mark 1:22; Luke 5:17; John 8:3). But the word was a good Greek word apart from Jewish usage, and it can simply mean “secretary” (Ezra 4:8, 2 Samuel 8:17). In a city like Ephesus, this was the man who drafted decrees, was in charge of city funds (hence “clerk”), but also transacted city affairs and was in communication with the Roman governor of the province. This corresponds to the title “chancellor,” which was also Luther’s translation in this passage.
The reader who wonders why the chancellor didn’t quiet the crowd down before this (two hours of shouting!) will arrive at the conclusion that he wasn’t there when the shouting started. Disturbed at his desk across town by the racket, he thought the noise might stop, but when it didn’t, he got over to the theater and by virtue of his mere presence the crowd hushed itself to listen. The acoustics of this theater are reported to be excellent even to this day. In Paul’s time things might have been even better. The ruins today are entirely stone (excellent for echoing the spoken or sung word), but in those days there were also bronze fixtures that also helped transmit the human voice, unless they were struck like a gong (1 Corinthians 13:1).
When the chancellor says that Ephesus is custodian of the temple, etc., he is referring to an object that was well-known at the time. I think this might have been either a meteorite that was assumed to be hurled to earth from the gods (no such stone still exists today, but it might have been known locally at the time), or else a work of art, such as a statue, that was so perfect and beautiful that it was thought to be divine by the people of the city, the kind of thing that was so excellent that even the sculptor denied it was his doing. The chancellor brought this up to sooth the temper of the crowd, and perhaps to counter the attack of the Christians on the idea of man-made gods, since they thought that their most famous idol wasn’t man-made at all. We easily dismiss this as an object from space. We’re used to the idea of meteorites and comets. The Ephesians were not, but this doesn’t excuse idolatry. The devil works among the ungodly to bind them more and more firmly to their unbelief. He gives them delusions and false signs (“the word of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs, and wonders” 2 Thessalonians 2:9) so that when they come into contact with the gospel, it sounds like impossible nonsense. Fortunately, the gospel isn’t our only tool. In fact, in the case of a sinner who is convinced that the sins he commits are not sins at all, the only correct tool to use is the law. The law exposes his sins and stabs at his heart. When he becomes aware of just how sinful he is, at how far from God he has fallen, then and only then is the sinner ready to hear the gospel. Then the medicine will do its work, and true healing from Christ can take place.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Acts 19:32-35 the image that fell from heaven