Commentaries:
Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown
they looked—"continued looking."
when he should have swollen or fallen down dead—familiar with the effects of such bites.
and saw no harm come to him, they changed their minds, and said . . . he was a god—from "a murderer" to "a god," as the Lycaonian greeting of Paul and Silas from "sacrificing to them" to "stoning them" (Acts 14:13, Acts 14:19). What has not the Gospel done for the uncultivated portion of the human family, while its effects on the educated and refined, though very different, are not less marvellous! Verily it is God's chosen restorative for the human spirit, in all the multitudinous forms and gradations of its lapsed state.
No doubt this man is a murderer—His chains, which they would see, might strengthen the impression.
whom . . . vengeance suffereth not to live—They believed in a Supreme, Resistless, Avenging Eye and Hand, however vague their notions of where it resided.
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