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Selected Verse: Acts 19:19 - King James

Verse         Translation Text
Ac 19:19 King James Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.

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A Commentary, Critical, Practical, and Explanatory on the Old and New Testaments, by Robert Jamieson, A.R. Fausset and David Brown [1882]
Many of them . . . which used curious arts--The word signifies things "overdone"; significantly applied to arts in which laborious but senseless incantations are practiced.

brought their books--containing the mystic formularies.

and burned them before all--The tense, here used graphically, expresses progress and continuance of the conflagration.

counted the price . . . and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver--about £2000 (presuming it to be the drachma, the current coin of the Levant, of about 10d. value). From their nature they would be costly, and books then bore a value above any standard we are familiar with. The scene must have been long remembered at Ephesus, as a strong proof of honest conviction on the part of the sorcerers and a striking triumph of Jesus Christ over the powers of darkness. The workers of evil were put to scorn, like Baal's priests on Carmel, and the word of God mightily grew and prevailed [HOWSON].
 
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28 For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?
13 And withal they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house; and not only idle, but tattlers also and busybodies, speaking things which they ought not.
16 And from that time he sought opportunity to betray him.