Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 17:7

"whom Jason hath received: and these all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, [one] Jesus." — Acts 17:7 (ASV)

Just as at Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra, the Jews who did not believe the Gospel were incensed at the Gentiles’ response to Paul’s preaching and with his direct approach to them. So they stirred up a riot. Their plan was to bring Paul and Silas before “the crowd” and “the city officials” on a charge of disturbing the Pax Romana by preaching a religio illicita and by advocating another king in opposition to Caesar. But when they could not find the missionaries at Jason’s house—evidently because Jason and some others who believed their message had hidden them—they dragged Jason and some other Christian brothers before the politarchs. As a free city, Thessalonica had its governing assembly of citizens, which is probably what Luke had in mind by the use of the term “crowd” (demos; GK 1322) in v.5. The magistrates of Thessalonica were called “politarchs,” a title applied almost exclusively to Macedonian cities. From five inscriptions referring to Thessalonica, it appears that a body of five politarchs ruled the city during the first century A. D. Certainly the assembly of citizens and the politarchs at Thessalonica would have known of the troubles within the Jewish community at Rome in connection with Christianity and of Claudius’s edict of A. D. 49–50 for all Jews to leave that city . Probably the Jewish opponents of the missionaries played upon the fear that such a situation might be duplicated at Thessalonica, unless Paul and Silas were expelled. In addition, from their charge that the missionaries proclaimed “another king” (v.7), it may be inferred that they tried to use Paul’s mention of “the kingdom of God” (cf. 14:22; 19:8; 20:25; 28:23, 31) to arouse suspicion that he was involved in anti-imperial sedition. Indeed, it may be for this reason that Paul avoided the use of “kingdom” and “king” in his letters to his converts, lest Gentile imperial authorities misconstrue them to connote opposition to empire and emperor.