Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 20

Paul called to him the disciples, and embraced them...—The latter verb implies a farewell salutation.

Departed for to go into Macedonia.—We are able from the Epistles to the Corinthians to fill up the gap left in the narrative of the Acts. Having sent Timotheus and Erastus to see after the discipline of the Church of Corinth (Acts 19:17), the Apostle was cheered by the coming of Stephanas and his two companions (1 Corinthians 16:17), and apparently wrote by them what is now the First Epistle to the Corinthians.

A previous Epistle had been sent, probably by Timothy, to which he refers in 1 Corinthians 4:17. When he wrote that Epistle he intended to press on quickly and complete in person the work which it was to begin (1 Corinthians 4:18–19).

He was led, however, to change his purpose, and to take the land journey through Macedonia instead of going by sea to Corinth (2 Corinthians 1:16–17), and so from Corinth to Macedonia, as he had at first intended. He was anxious to know the effect of his letter before he took any further action, and Titus, who probably accompanied the bearers of that letter, was charged to hasten back to Troas with his report.

On coming to Troas, however, he did not find him, and after waiting for some time in vain (2 Corinthians 2:12), the anxiety affected his health. He despaired of life and felt as if the sentence of death was passed on him (2 Corinthians 1:8; 2 Corinthians 4:10–11). The mysterious thorn in the flesh buffeted him with more severity than ever (2 Corinthians 12:7).

He pressed on, however, to Macedonia (2 Corinthians 2:13), probably to Philippi, as the first of the churches he had planted, where he would find loving friends and the beloved physician, whose services he now needed more than ever. There, or elsewhere in Macedonia, Titus joined him, and brought news that partly cheered him and partly roused his indignation. On the one hand, there had been repentance and reformation where he most wished to see them (2 Corinthians 6:6–12); on the other, his enemies said bitter things about him, sneered at his bodily infirmities (2 Corinthians 10:10), and, to his disparagement, compared the credentials Apollos had presented (2 Corinthians 3:1) with his lack of them.

The result was that Titus was sent back with the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, accompanied by some other disciple (probably St. Luke, but see Notes on 2 Corinthians 8:18–19). The Apostle resolved to wait until they had brought matters into better order and had collected what had been set aside for the Church of Jerusalem, so that it might be ready for him on his arrival (2 Corinthians 9:5).

At or about this time also, judging from the numerous parallelisms of thought and language between it and the Epistles to the Corinthians on the one hand, and that to the Romans on the other, we must place the date of the Epistle to the Galatians. (See Introduction to that Epistle.)

Probably after Titus and Luke had left, and before Timotheus had returned—when he was alone, with no one to share the labour of writing, or to give help and counsel—news came that the Judaizing teachers had been there also, and had been only too successful. How the news reached him we do not know, but if the purple-seller of Thyatira was still at Philippi, she might naturally have been in receipt of communications from that city, as it was near enough to Galatia to know what was happening there.

And when he had gone over those parts.—Here we can also fill in the outline of the narrative from the Epistles. We may take for granted that St. Paul would revisit the churches he himself had founded at Thessalonica and Berea, as well as at Philippi. The names in Acts 20:4 indicate that delegates were chosen, probably by his direction, for the great journey to Jerusalem, which he now began to contemplate. Romans 15:19 indicates an even wider range of activity. He had taken the great Roman road across Macedonia, and going westward to the shores of the Adriatic, had preached the gospel in Illyricum, where it had not yet been heard.

He came into Greece.—The word Hellas, or Greece, seems used as synonymous with Achaia, the southern province. This may have led to an unrecorded visit to Athens. It certainly brought him to Corinth and Cenchrea. There, we may hope, he found all his hopes fulfilled. Gaius was there to receive him as a guest, and Erastus was still a faithful friend.

There, if not before, he found Timothy, and he had with him Jason of Thessalonica and Sosipater of Berea (Romans 16:21–23). In one respect, however, he found a great change, and missed many friends.

The decree of Claudius had either been revoked or was no longer acted on. Aquila and Priscilla had gone straight from Ephesus to Rome on hearing that they could do so safely, and with them went the many friends, male and female, most of them of the libertini class, whom he had known in Corinth, and whose names fill such a large space in Romans 16.

The desire he had felt before (Acts 19:21) to see Rome was naturally strengthened by their absence. His work in Greece was done, and he felt an impulse, not merely human, drawing him further west.

A rapid journey to Jerusalem, a short visit there to show how generous were the gifts that the Gentile Churches sent to the Churches of the Circumcision, and then the desire of his life might be gratified. To preach the gospel in Rome, to pass on from Rome to the Jews at Cordova and other cities in Spain (Romans 15:24–28)—this was what he now proposed for himself. How different a path was actually marked out for him, the rest of the story shows.

When the Jews laid wait for him . . .—In sailing for Syria, Cenchreae would naturally be the port of embarkation, and St. Paul’s presence there may reasonably be connected with the mention of Phoebe, the deaconess of that church, in Romans 16:1. His intention was, however, frustrated. The malignant Jews of Corinth watched their opportunity.

At Cenchreae, amid the stir and bustle of a port, they might do what they had failed to do before. Here there was no Gallio to curb their fury, and throw the aegis of his tolerant equity over their victim. Their plans were laid, and their victim was to be seized and made away with as he was on the point of embarking.

On hearing of the plot, the Apostle had to change his plans. He started with his companions for Macedonia, either traveling by land or taking a ship bound for one of its ports, instead of the one bound for Caesarea, Tyre, or Joppa. It is clear that the latter course would have baffled his murderers quite as much as the former.

And there accompanied him into Asia . . .—The occurrence of the two names, Timotheus and Sosipater (another form of Sopater), in Romans 16:21 makes it probable that all of those here named were with St. Paul at Corinth. As they were to go with him to Jerusalem, it was indeed natural that they should have gone to the city from which he intended to embark.

It is not difficult to discover the reason for their accompanying him. He was carrying a large sum in trust for the churches of Judæa, and he sought to avoid even the suspicion of the corruption that the tongue of slanderers was so ready to impute to him (2 Corinthians 8:20–21).

Representatives were accordingly chosen from the leading churches, who, acting as it were as auditors of his accounts, would be witnesses that all was right. As regards the individual names, we note as follows:

1. The name of Sopater, or Sosipater, occurs in the inscription on the arch mentioned in the Note on Acts 17:8 as belonging to one of the politarchs of Thessalonica.

2. Aristarchus had been a fellow-worker with St. Paul at Ephesus and had been a sufferer in the tumult raised by Demetrius (Acts 19:29).

3. Of Secundus nothing is known, but the name may be compared with Tertius in Romans 16:22, and Quartus in Romans 16:23, suggesting the probability that all three were sons of a disciple who had adopted this plan of naming his children. The corresponding name of Primus occurs in an inscription from the Catacombs now in the Lateran Museum, as belonging to an exorcist, and might seem, at first, to supply the missing link; but the inscription is probably of a later date. In any case, it is a probable inference that the three belonged to the freed-man or slave class, who had no family names. The Latin form of their names suggests that they had originally been Roman Jews, an inference confirmed by the fact that both Tertius and Quartus send salutations to their brethren in the imperial city (Romans 16:22–23). The names Primitivus and Primitiva, which occur in both Christian and Jewish inscriptions in the same Museum, are more or less analogous.

4. Gaius of Derbe. The Greek sentence allows for the description to be attached to the name of Timotheus, which follows; and the fact that a Caius has already appeared in close connection with Aristarchus makes this construction preferable. On this assumption, he too came from Thessalonica. (See Note on Acts 19:29.)

5. Timotheus. (See Note on Acts 16:1.)

6. Tychicus. The name, which means “fortunate” (the Greek equivalent for Felix), was very common among slaves and freed-men. It is found in an inscription in the Lateran Museum from the Cemetery of Priscilla, and in a non-Christian inscription from the Vatican Museum, giving the names of the household of the Emperor Claudius, as belonging to an architect. The Tychicus of the Acts would seem to have been a disciple from Ephesus, where men of that calling would naturally find an opening. Such vocations tended naturally, as has been said in the Note on Acts 19:9, to become hereditary.

7. Trophimus (= “nursling,” or “foster-child”) was, again, a name of the same class, almost as common as Onesimus (= “profitable”). In a very cursory survey of inscriptions from the Columbaria and Catacombs of Rome, I have noted the recurrence of the former four, and of the latter five times. Trophimus appears again in Acts 21:29 and is described more definitely as an Ephesian. We find him again in contact with St. Paul towards the close of the Apostle’s life (2 Timothy 4:20). That they were seven in number suggests the idea of a reproduction either of the idea of the Seven, who are commonly called Deacons, in Acts 6:0, or of the Roman institution upon which that was probably based. It may be noted here, in addition to what has been said on the subject there, that the well-known pyramidal monument of Caius Cestius, of the time of Augustus, near the Porta Latina at Rome, records that he was one of the Septemviri Epulonum there referred to.

We must not forget what the sudden change to the first person plural in the next verse reminds us of: that the name of Luke has to be added to the list of St. Paul’s companions. We may, perhaps, assume that he went less as an official delegate from the Church of Philippi than as a friend and, probably, St. Paul’s health needing his services, as a physician.

These going before tarried for us at Troas.—Two motives may be assigned for this arrangement:

1. It enabled St. Paul to keep the Passover with the church at Philippi, starting “after the days of unleavened bread,” and that feast was already assuming a new character as the festival of the Resurrection, bringing with it also the commemoration that Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us (1 Corinthians 5:7–8);
2. The disciples who went on in advance would announce St. Paul’s coming to the church of Troas, and so there would be a full gathering to receive him and listen to him on his arrival.