Acts 17:1-9

Thessalonica (cf. 1 Thessalonians 2:2). From Philippi to Amphipolis is a distance of 30 miles, from Amphipolis to Apollonia 29, from Apollonia to Thessalonica 35 miles, all on the Via Egnatia which connected the Adriatic and the Hellespont. Why there was no preaching at Amphipolis and Apollonia, we cannot tell; probably there was no synagogue at either place.

Thessalonica (p. 876), on the Thermaic Gulf, made the capital of Macedonia by the Romans 146 B.C., and a free city after the Second Civil War, had a parliament (the people; demos, Acts 17:5) and magistrates (politarchs, 6) of its own. That it had a Jewish population the text shows. Salonika is still a populous city. [Since this was written it has again become famous. A. S. P.]

Acts 17:2. Sabbaths: read weeks (mg.). Paul's own description (1 Thessalonians 1:5 to 1 Thessalonians 2:12) points to a longer stay, and shows him labouring with his hands to support himself amid the manifold efforts and cares the budding church imposed on him. The account here given of his preaching (read he preached to them from the Scriptures, i.e. the OT) is inadequate, as 1 Th. shows. There is no advance on Peter's sermon in ch. 2. His success (Acts 17:4) is immediate, but only some Jews adhered to him; of the Greek frequenters of the synagogue, on the contrary, a large number, and not a few of the leading women. The change to Acts 17:5 is abrupt; nothing is said of the withdrawal of the believers from the synagogue or of the first members of the church. It is the Jews, members of the synagogue where the preaching began, who set up an attack on the missionaries, enlisting a body of loafers and producing an uproar. Paul and others of the preachers are in the house of Jason, and an attempt is made to get them out and place them before the assembly of the citizens. Failing in this they turn to the magistrates; Jason and some of the brethren are produced to them with a vague accusation that they go about the world creating disturbance and that they had another king Jesus. The latter charge was true; the Christians did refuse to call the Emperor their Lord. The charge that they do contrary to the decrees of Cæ sar means this. It is this that appeals to the minds of the magistrates, and makes them take bail from Jason and the others before letting the missionaries go.