But, recognising that he was a Jew, there was one cry from all, shouting for about two hours, Great [is] Artemis of the Ephesians.
Paul's preaching in Ephesus had hurt the trade in silver shrines. A silversmith's complaint swept the city into the theatre, and for two hours the crowd did not argue — it chanted.
The ESV calls her Artemis. Older English translations call her Diana, and some quotes below use that older name. One reference work describes her, and the city that shouted for her:
Diana is the Latin name of one of the main goddesses of the Greeks and Romans; the Greek name is Artemis. People said an image of her had fallen from heaven. All Asia worshipped it. Her temple was at Ephesus, built of choice marble... Ephesus was an enlightened city in other ways, but it was dark when it came to religion. The excited people could shout for two hours, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians."
Kelly sees in this crowd a picture of how the world settles the questions that matter most:
There was one voice from all, for about two hours, as they cried out, "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians." What a true picture of a world ruled by prejudice and feeling in the thing that matters most — not only for this life, but also for the life to come! God, the true God, is not in their thoughts, and so their thoughts lie open to any and every delusion.
Most of the crowd could not have said what the quarrel was about:
A popular cry is easily started and taken up, as it was here. Everyone could shout out "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" But why were they shouting this? What was it all about? Most of that huge crowd could not tell.
The crowd does not just praise the goddess. They praise their goddess, and Darby notes that their own standing rises with hers:
They do not say, "Great is Diana," but "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." Knowing the true God makes us feel our own nothingness, and it judges the state of the heart. A false religion, by contrast, joins hands with the passions of the heart. Worshippers are great in the measure of their religion, and of what they worship... To look down on Diana was to take away from the greatness of her followers.
Underneath the devotion lay a threatened income. The religious cry gave that interest a respectable voice:
The story of this outbreak shows us the power of the prince of this world, held up by worldly interests that love to hide under the cover of religion. Men must have a religion; yet how thin a coat of it is enough for the crowd, while the crowd in turn is enough for the religion.
The Jews of the city pushed Alexander forward to speak for them. It backfired the moment the crowd saw he was a Jew:
Here again we find the Jews putting Alexander forward. However clever the plan, it did them no good. It only inflamed the crowd all the more. The idol-worshippers instinctively resented a defender like this. Could anyone honestly think that the Jews had more respect for their great goddess than the Christians had?
Darby draws a further lesson from the failure. These men held a true belief — that God is one — yet could do nothing with it:
Without God no one can stand against the devil or hold up the truth. Neither the truth of the one God, nor the name of Jesus joined with the name of Paul who preached Him, had any power without faith and truth in the heart.
Outside the shouting, God was at work. Kelly sees His hand in the advice that kept Paul out of the theatre:
God worked through wiser men of high standing among them... Kind feeling, if not conscience, made them give Paul the wise advice not to risk himself in the theatre. God used them to shelter His servant, where zeal and courage would have done no good, and might have put him in danger.
Darby sets the struggle at Ephesus in a longer view, reaching to Christ's return:
Until the Lord comes, this conflict must go on. Miracles have ceased, but the care of His servants never grows weaker in the heart of Jesus. He works as truly as ever, and God's government orders everything for the good of His work. He may allow Satan's rage to break out, but He never forgets His own.
- Cause. The uproar started with threatened profits. Religion supplied the slogan that made greed sound noble.
- Cry. "Of the Ephesians" is the giveaway. A false god makes worshippers feel great; the true God shows them their nothingness.
- Crowd. Two hours of one voice, and most could not say what it was all about. Where God is left out of people's thoughts, feeling and prejudice take charge.
- Collapse. Alexander held a true belief about God and still could not be heard. Truth without faith in the heart carries no power.
- Care. God sheltered His servant through the men who kept Paul out of the theatre — and He works as truly today.
And the townclerk, having quieted the crowd, said, Ephesians, what man is there then who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is temple-keeper of Artemis the great, and of the [image] which fell down from heaven?
The riot at Ephesus has run for two hours, with the crowd chanting one slogan. Then a city official steps forward, and his first words are not a defence of Paul but a compliment to Ephesus.
The man is not a clerk in the modern sense. The office carried real weight in that city, and the speaker uses it well.
The town clerk, or recorder, now comes on the scene. In that age and country he was a far more important man than such an officer is in most places, as we learn from ancient inscriptions and other evidence. He worshipped idols like the rest. But their pointless frenzy shocked his common sense. His speech states in plain, sharp terms their own folly and wrong — not their wrong towards God, but towards other men, and above all in the eyes of their Roman governors.
Older writers call the goddess Diana; the verse uses her Greek name, Artemis. The clerk appeals to what no one in Ephesus would deny: the city keeps her temple, and it keeps an image people believed had dropped out of the sky. One writer points out what that image really was.
He appealed to what everyone knew: Ephesus worshipped Diana and the image they claimed had fallen down from Jupiter. The image was clearly a man-made thing. It stood for the powers of nature that give birth and feed, and that is why it had many breasts. But men given to idols will accept any superstitious lie.
Ephesus was no backwater. Its culture and its religion were in two different worlds.
Diana is the Latin name of one of the chief goddesses of the Greeks and Romans. The Greek name is Artemis. People said an image of her had fallen from heaven, or that someone had made it from wood or ebony that fell from the clouds. All Asia worshipped it. Her temple stood at Ephesus, built of choice marble… Ephesus was in other ways an enlightened city, yet it was dark in religion: the excited people could shout for two hours, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians."
The clerk argues that no one had touched the city's honour, so the crowd had no reason to riot. One writer, giving his own translation of the clerk's next words, notes the hint buried in the little word "for" and corrects an old mistranslation of what these men were not.
"Since no one can deny these things, you ought to be quiet and do nothing rash. For you have brought these men here, and they are neither temple-robbers nor blasphemers of our goddess…" The little word "for", which our version and perhaps every other leaves out, hints without saying it outright: Why all this fuss?… All the old Protestant English versions give the completely false rendering "robbers of churches".
The men the crowd had seized had done nothing to the goddess or her temple, and Demetrius had a lawful way to bring any complaint.
How foolish they looked! Neither Gaius nor Aristarchus had attacked their goddess. Neither they, nor any Christians, had committed the sacrilege of robbing the temple. So the right thing for them all was to be quiet and do nothing rash. If Demetrius had a grievance, the law courts and the Roman governors were there; he should take it to them, not to the excited crowd filling the theatre. So they should all break up quietly, or the city's leaders would have to answer for the uproar.
A crowd that chants for two hours shows how it thinks. One writer sees the whole world in it.
What a true picture of the world! It is ruled by prejudice and feeling in the very things that matter most — not only for this life, but for the life to come. God, the true God, is not in their thoughts, so their thoughts lie open to every delusion.
The speech holds no gospel and no truth about God. Yet it is what keeps Paul and the believers in Ephesus safe.
It was good for everyone that the town clerk was a man of great tact and skill. He flattered the crowd, calmed them, soothed them, and sent the assembly home. But faith sees more: God was using the persuasive speech of an idol-worshipping official to protect His servant and His many children there.
The clerk's proud phrase turns up again in a later letter to these same people. The apostle writes to them as Gentiles — non-Jews — about what they once were.
The apostle was writing to Gentiles. They had once been "worshippers of the great goddess, Diana," and of the image which they imagined had fallen "down from Jupiter." Poor idol-worshippers they were then. These Gentiles are the "you" of that solemn statement, and he himself with other Hebrews are the "we."
- Boast. The city's proudest title was "temple keeper" of Artemis and of a stone said to have dropped out of the sky — an object that human hands had made.
- Blindness. An otherwise cultured city shouted one slogan for two hours; where the true God is not in men's thoughts, any delusion can move in.
- Brake. A city official stops the riot with plain civic sense: these men insulted no goddess and robbed no temple, so no one had cause to act rashly.
- Behind it. The speech preaches no gospel, yet faith reads God's hand in it: He shelters His servant through a man who did not know Him.
- Beyond it. The very words "worshippers of the great goddess Diana" later describe what grace lifted these same people out of.