Acts 9:18

And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales The word rendered "scales" is used as a technical term for a disease of the eye by Hippocrates, and the verb derived from it is found (Tob 11:13) used of the cure of a disease of similar character. "And the whiteness pilled awayfrom the corners of his eyes." This "whiteness" is rendered in the margin (Tob 2:10) "white films," and was clearly something like the "scales" which caused Saul's blindness, and a process for the cure thereof is called (Acts 3:17) "to scaleaway the whiteness of Tobit's eyes." St Paul (Acts 22:11) ascribes his blindness to the glory of the heavenly light, and it may have been some secretion, caused by the intensity of that vision, which formed over them, and at his cure fell away. Some have thought that his constant employment of an amanuensis, and the mention of the large characters in which he wrote in his Epistle to the Galatians (Acts 6:11) "Ye see in what large letters I have written to you," are indications that the Apostle suffered permanently in his eyesight from the heavenly vision.

and he received[recovered, and so in 17] sight forthwith The oldest MSS. omit the last word.

and arose, and was baptized In the fuller account (Acts 22:16) we learn that the exhortation to be baptized was part of the message with which Ananias was charged, and so was divinely commissioned to receive Saul thus into the Christian Church.