Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 9:33

"And there he found a certain man named Aeneas, who had kept his bed eight years; for he was palsied." — Acts 9:33 (ASV)

At Lydda Peter came upon Aeneas, a paralytic who had been bedridden for eight years. Luke does not say that Aeneas was a Jew nationally or a Christian by profession, though presumably he was both. It would hardly have been consistent with Luke’s purpose to show Peter ministering to a Gentile before his encounter with Cornelius, and the “there” of the sentence has as its antecedent the community of saints at Lydda and not just the city itself.