Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 16:13

"And on the sabbath day we went forth without the gate by a river side, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down, and spake unto the women that were come together." — Acts 16:13 (ASV)

By a river side, where prayer was customarily made.—Better, where an oratory (i.e., a place of prayer) was established. The word, which was the Greek equivalent for the Hebrew house of prayer (Matthew 21:13), is used in this sense by Josephus (Vit. p. 54) (see Note on Luke 6:12) and was current among the Jews at Rome.

Where they had no synagogue—and in a military station like Philippi, there was not likely to be one—the Jews frequented the river-banks, which made ablutions easy. They often succeeded in getting a piece of ground assigned for that purpose outside the walls of the city. Juvenal (Sat. iii. 11-13) notes this as one of the instances of the decay of the old faith of Rome:

“The groves and streams which once were sacred ground
Are now let out to Jews.”

The local meaning is seen in another line from the same writer (Sat. iii. 296):

“Ede, ubi consistas, in quâ te quæro, proseuchâ?”
[“Say where you dwell, and in what place of prayer
I am to seek you?”]

The oratories, or proseuchæ, thus formed, were commonly circular and without a roof. The practice continued in the time of Tertullian, who speaks of the “orationes litorales” of the Jews (ad Nat. i. 13). The river, in this instance, was the Gangites. Finding no synagogue in the city and hearing of the oratory, the company of preachers went out to it to take their part in the Sabbath services and to preach Christ to any Jews they might find there.

We sat down, and spoke to the women.—The fact that there were only women shows the almost entire absence of a Jewish population. Possibly, too, the decree of Claudius, expelling the Jews from Rome (Acts 18:2), was enforced, as stated above, in the colonia, which was like a part of Rome. Since Jewish women would not likely have settled there without their husbands or brothers, it is probable that the women whom St. Paul found assembled were, like Lydia, proselytes who desired to remain faithful to their new faith, even in the absence of any settled provision for their instruction.

Women in such a situation would naturally welcome the presence of strangers who, probably, wore the garb of a Rabbi, and who showed by sitting down (see Note on Acts 13:14) that they were about to preach. We note that here also the narrator speaks of himself as teaching (See Note on Acts 16:10).