Acts 18:17

17. All the Greeks All the Greeks present at the court. The Greeks of this degenerate age had learned to watch their Roman arbiter’s eye with servile adulation, and to take the cue from his words. When, therefore, Gallio ordered the Jews out of his presence, these Greeks seem, without rebuke from Gallio, to have caught their ringleader and chastised him for having come into the judicial presence. But, in addition to the present unpopularity of the Jewish race, this set of Greeks here present had, probably, taken some interest in this case. They knew that the quarrel between the Jews and Paul was a Jew and Gentile strife. Without any deep sympathy with Paul’s religion, they were at any rate against the Jews in the contest.

Cared for none From the sound of the words, this seems a fine text from which to preach down indifference in religion. And, in fact, this amiable Roman philosopher, this brother of Seneca, did have before him the story of the crucified Jesus, and from indifference, nay, effeminate indifference, rejected it from examination! Still the those things of the present verse refers not so much to the religious topics as to the lawless castigation of Sosthenes by the Greeks. It was not a religious, but an official carelessness; and the text is rather a good whip for negligent magistrates who allow disorders and turbulence to go unchecked.