Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 14:5

"And when there was made an onset both of the Gentiles and of the Jews with their rulers, to treat them shamefully and to stone them," — Acts 14:5 (ASV)

To use them despitefully.—The verb expresses wanton insult and outrage. St. Paul uses the noun derived from it to express the character of his own conduct as a persecutor (1 Timothy 1:13), and must have felt, as afterwards in the actual stoning of Acts 14:19, that he was receiving the just reward of his own deeds.