What Does Acts 19:38 Mean?

(38) **The law is open.**—Literally, *the court, *or *forum, days are going on.* The words may either indicate that the proconsul was then actually sitting to hold trials in the *agora* or *forum, *or may be taken as a colloquial idiom for “there are court days coming.” **There are deputies.**—The Greek word is (as in Acts 13:7; Acts 18:12) the equivalent for *proconsul.* Strictly speaking, there was only one proconsul in each province, and we must therefore assume either that here also the expression is colloquial, or that the assessors (*consiliarii*) of the proconsul were popularly so described, or that some peculiar combination of circumstances had led to there being two persons at this time at Ephesus clothed with proconsular authority. There are some grounds for adopting the last alternative. Junius Silanus, who was Proconsul of Asia when St. Paul arrived in Ephesus (A.D. 54), had been poisoned by Celer and Helius, the two procurators, at the instigation of Agrippina; and it seems probable that they for a time held a joint proconsular authority. **Let them implead one another.**—The English word exactly expresses the technical force of the Greek. Demetrius and his followers were to lodge a formal statement of the charge they brought against the accused. They in their turn were to put in a rejoinder, and so joining issue, each side would produce its witnesses.