Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 9:19

"and he took food and was strengthened. And he was certain days with the disciples that were at Damascus." — Acts 9:19 (ASV)

And when he had received meat.—Better, as elsewhere, food. The three days’ fast had obviously brought about a state of extreme prostration. In St. Paul’s account of his conversion in Galatians 1:17, he states that when it pleased God to reveal His Son in him, immediately he conferred not with flesh, and blood, but went into Arabia and returned to Damascus.

We have, it is obvious, no certain data for fixing the time or the extent of that journey. St. Luke does not mention it, and his straightway balances the immediately of St. Paul’s account.

On the whole, it seems most probable that this was the first step he took after he had regained his sight and been baptized. Physically, rest and seclusion would have been necessary during the period of convalescence after the great crisis of his conversion. Spiritually, we may believe that solitude was needed to prepare him for the continuous labor of the three years that followed.

I place the journey to Arabia accordingly, with hardly any hesitation, after the certain days of fellowship with the disciples, and his reception at their solemn meeting to break bread in the Supper of the Lord, and before the preaching Christ in the synagogues. We cannot say how far the journey extended. “Arabia” was used somewhat vaguely as a geographical term, but the fact that Damascus was at this time occupied by the troops of Aretas, the king of Arabia Petræa, makes it probable that he went to that region.

In St. Paul’s paronomastic reference to Hagar as a synonym for Mount Sinai in Arabia (Hagar and Sinai both admitting of an etymology that gives “rock” as the meaning of each), we may, perhaps, trace a local knowledge gained during this journey and draw the inference that he had sought communion with God where Moses and Elijah had found it, on the heights of Sinai and Horeb . He learned, it may be, the true meaning and purpose of the Law—as arousing the fear of judgment—amid the terrors of the very rocks from which that Law had first been proclaimed to Israel.