Acts 13:42-52

The Result: the Missionaries leave Antioch.

Acts 13:42 reads as if the congregation as a whole invited the preachers to speak to them again on the following Sabbath, but a meeting or meetings at once took place at the instance of many Jews and proselytes in some place not mentioned. The first statement is followed up in Acts 13:44; to account for the crowded synagogue, D and a few other authorities add to Acts 13:43, and it came to pass that the word of God passed through the whole city. There is something awkward in the statement; in the synagogue the Jews need not have allowed the missionaries to speak at all; the scene was possibly elsewhere. The speech which follows is an apology for the Gentile mission which occurs repeatedly in the following narrative, and appears to suggest that the apostles would not have spoken to the Gentiles at all if the Jews had listened to them better. Paul does appear to have spoken to Jews (1 Corinthians 9:20; Galatians 5:11), but in his epistles he never speaks of his preaching to the Gentiles as an ungrateful necessity.

Acts 13:46. unworthy of eternal life: i.e. the life of the coming age; by rejecting the Gospel they declare themselves, before God, unworthy to live in that age. Isaiah 49:6 is represented by the preachers as directly addressed by God to them (cf. Matthew 5:14).

Acts 13:48. ordained to eternal life: cf. Acts 24:7.

Acts 13:50. The women are spoken of before the men; the author tends to bring women forward (cf. Acts 17:4; Acts 17:12; Acts 17:34), and not only in the case of believers. The apostles are compelled to leave Antioch, but they have planted a church there (Acts 14:21 f.).