Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 16:1

"And he came also to Derbe and to Lystra: and behold, a certain disciple was there, named Timothy, the son of a Jewess that believed; but his father was a Greek." — Acts 16:1 (ASV)

Pushing on through the Cilician Gates in the Taurus mountains, Paul and Silas came to the Galatian border town of Derbe and then moved on to Lystra. At Lystra he found a young man who was highly spoken of by believers in both Lystra and the neighboring city of Iconium. The Jewish community at Lystra seems to have been small and without influence (cf. comments on 14:8–10). Probably for that reason Timothy’s mother, a Jewess, was allowed to marry a Greek. Timothy, however, had never been circumcised. In Jewish law, a child takes the religion of its mother; so Timothy should have been circumcised and raised a Jew. But in Greek law the father dominates in the home. Apparently the Jewish community at Lystra was too weak or lax to interfere with Greek custom. In 2 Timothy 1:5 Paul speaks of the sincere Jewish faith of Timothy’s grandmother Lois and of his mother, Eunice, and 2 Timothy 3:15 speaks of Timothy’s early instruction in the Hebrew Scriptures. Here Eunice is identified as a Jewess as well as a Christian believer, who had probably been converted during the first visit of Paul and Barnabas to Lystra. The Greek implies that her husband was now dead. From Paul’s reference to Timothy in 1 Corinthians 4:17 as his “son,” we may assume that Timothy’s conversion to Christ also dates from the proclamation of the Gospel on that first missionary journey.