Commentaries:
Robertson's Word Pictures (NT)
Have a matter against any one (exousin prov tina logon). For this use of exw logon with prov see Matthew 5:32; Colossians 3:13. The town-clerk names Demetrius and the craftsmen (texnitai) as the parties responsible for the riot.
The courts are open (agoraioi agontai). Supply hmerai (days), court days are kept, or sunodoi, court-meetings are now going on, Vulgate conventus forenses aguntur. Old adjective from agora (forum) marketplace where trials were held. Cf. Acts 17:4. There were regular court days whether they were in session then or not.
And there are proconsuls (kai anqupatoi eisin). Asia was a senatorial province and so had proconsuls (general phrase) though only one at a time, "a rhetorical plural" (Lightfoot). Page quotes from an inscription of the age of Trajan on an aqueduct at Ephesus in which some of Luke's very words occur (newkoros, anqupatos, grammateus, dhmov).
Let them accuse one another (egkaleitwsan allhloiv). Present active imperative of egkalew (en, kalew), old verb to call in one's case, to bring a charge against, with the dative. Luke uses the verb six times in Acts for judicial proceedings (Acts 19:38, Acts 19:40; Acts 23:28-29; Acts 26:2, Acts 26:7). The town-clerk makes a definite appeal to the mob for orderly legal procedure as opposed to mob violence in a matter where money and religious prejudice unite, a striking rebuke to so-called lynch-law proceedings in lands today where Christianity is supposed to prevail.
Other Robertson's Word Pictures (NT) entries containing Acts 19:38:
Acts 15:6
Acts 17:5
Acts 19:32
Acts 19:38
Hebrews 11:10
Revelation 2:1
Revelation 18:22
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