Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 16:20

"and when they had brought them unto the magistrates, they said, These men, being Jews, do exceedingly trouble our city," — Acts 16:20 (ASV)

The magistrates.—The Greek word used (Stratêgi, literally, generals; the name survived into 1750 in the Italian Stradigo, used for the prefect of Messina) is employed with St. Luke’s usual accuracy for the praetors, or duumviri, who constituted the executive of the Roman colonia.

These men, being Jews.—We must remember that the decree of Claudius (see Note on Acts 18:2), banishing the Jews from Rome because of their disturbing that city, would be known, and probably acted on, at Philippi (see Notes on Acts 16:12-13), and would give a special force to the accusation. Here, also, there is something especially characteristic of the nature of many of the early persecutions. Christians were exposed, on the one hand, to the relentless enmity of the Jews; and, on the other, they were identified by pagan rulers and mobs with the Jews, and so were subjected, where the latter were the objects of popular antipathy, to a twofold measure of suffering.