When they heard this they were enraged and were crying out, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”
I. Paul is here brought into some trouble at Ephesus, just when he is forecasting to go thence, and to cut out work for himself elsewhere. See here, 1. How he laid his purpose of going to other places, Act 19:21, Act 19:22. He was a man of vast designs for God, and was for making his influences as widely diffusive as might be.
Commenting on Acts 19:21-41
Some therefore cried one thing, and some another,.... Not in the church at Ephesus among the disciples, and friends of the apostle, as if they were divided in their sentiments about his going into the theatre, some being for it, and others against it; but the people that were gathered together in the theatre, these were not agreed about the reason of this tumult, some...
Verse 28. Were full of wrath. Were greatly enraged--probably at the prospect of losing their gains. Great is Diana, etc. The term great was often applied by the Greeks to Diana. Thus in Xenophon (Ephes. i.) he says, "I adjure you by your own goddess, the great (τηνμεγαλην) Diana of the Ephesians." The design of this clamour was doubtless to produce a persecution against Paul...