Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 9:29

"preaching boldly in the name of the Lord: and he spake and disputed against the Grecian Jews; but they were seeking to kill him." — Acts 9:29 (ASV)

At Jerusalem Saul took up a ministry to Jews in the Hellenistic synagogues there. It was a ministry that had been neglected, it appears, since Stephen’s death and the expulsion of the Hellenistic Jewish Christians. But it was one that Saul may have felt himself particularly suited to, coming as he did from Tarsus in Cilicia and having probably carried on such a ministry at Damascus. In so doing, however, he soon faced the same opposition Stephen had faced, and he seems to have gotten into the same difficulty Stephen did. The Jerusalem church apparently did not care to go through again the same kind of thing that followed Stephen’s preaching. So when they realized what was taking place in Saul’s newly begun ministry in Jerusalem, “they took him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus.” Saul took it as by divine approval, for in his defense in Ac 22 he speaks of having received a vision in the Jerusalem temple that not only confirmed his apostleship to the Gentiles but also warned him to flee Jerusalem (22:17–21).

Saul is not mentioned in the period between these experiences in Jerusalem and his ministry at Antioch (11:25–30), though from his words in Gal 1:21–24 it seems fairly certain that he continued his witness to Diaspora Jews in Caesarea and his hometown of Tarsus. The cordiality of the Christians in Caesarea at the end of his third missionary journey may imply that Saul had an earlier association with Philip and the believers there. Many of the hardships and trials he enumerates in 2 Corinthians 11:23–27 may stem from situations in Caesarea and Tarsus during those days, and perhaps also the ecstatic experience of 2 Corinthians 12:1–