Acts 9:23

ἡμέραι ἱκαναί, many days. As the visit to Jerusalem mentioned in Acts 9:26 seems to follow closely upon the events narrated in Acts 9:25, and as that visit was not made till after the retirement into Arabia of which St Paul speaks (Galatians 1:17-18) thus: ‘Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them that were Apostles before me, but I went into Arabia and returned again unto Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter,’ we must place the visit to Arabia between the events recorded in Acts 9:22 and the fresh narration which commences in this verse. St Luke has marked, as it seems, the two periods as distinct by calling one time of residence ‘certain days,’ and the other ‘many days.’ The following seems to have been the order of events. Saul preached for ‘certain days’ in Damascus immediately after his conversion. He then made his journey into Arabia, either for preaching or for retirement and spiritual communion, after which he made a second visit to Damascus, on which latter occasion his enemies sought to take his life. This latter visit is here spoken of as lasting ‘many days.’ The words thus translated are used in several places of the Acts; as in this chapter, Acts 9:43, of the stay made by Peter at Joppa after the raising of Dorcas; also Acts 18:18, of the time, ‘a good while,’ which St Paul spent in Corinth after he had been brought before Gallio; and in Acts 27:7 of the ‘many days’ of slow sailing during the Apostle’s voyage to Rome. It is clear from these examples that the period covered by the words is very indefinite, but if we reckon the ‘three years’ (Galatians 1:18) from Saul’s conversion, then the first and last times of residence in Damascus would be included in that period, and we need not then extend either the stay in Arabia or the duration of this later visit to Damascus over a great while, especially if we remember that, to a Jew, one whole year with the end of the preceding and the beginning of the succeeding one was counted for three years.

συνεβουλεύσαντο, they took counsel. The deliberation and previous preparation implied in this expression are such as would take place, not among the people who were ‘confounded’ by Saul’s first preaching, but when they had become enraged against him after his second visit, when his words would be even more full of power than before, by reason of the time spent in Arabia, in spiritual communion to prepare himself for the labours which God had set before him.