Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 13:51

"But they shook off the dust of their feet against them, and came unto Iconium." — Acts 13:51 (ASV)

Having been expelled from Pisidian Antioch, Paul and Barnabas “shook the dust from their feet in protest against them”—a Jewish gesture of scorn and disassociation, which was directed at the city’s magistrates and the Jewish leaders. Then they went southeast on the Via Sebaste, heading for Iconium some eighty miles away. The new “disciples” left behind at Pisidian Antioch, far from being discouraged at this turn of events, were “filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.”