Acts 13:13

Acts 13:13. Paul and his company. Paul now was evidently the leading person of the mission; he and Barnabas had exchanged places; the disputation before Sergius Paulus, and the miracle of punishment worked on the Magian, placed Paul in a new position. The ungrudging spirit of Barnabas seems at once to have conceded the first place to his more gifted fellow-worker.

Perga in Pamphylia. Perga was a large and flourishing city, almost as famous for the worship of the goddess Diana as was Ephesus. For some reasons not known to us, the apostles stayed but a very short time in Perga; on their return, we read in Acts 14:25 how they preached the word there.

The flourishing inland cities of Asia Minor, such as Antioch and Iconium, were the home of many Jews; these, at a distance from Jerusalem and its stern exclusive spirit, appear to have drawn into their synagogues many proselytes and hearers. Mixed marriages between these Jews and the Gentile natives of the country appear not to have been uncommon (see Acts 16:1-3). Paul, whose home was in the not distant Cilician Tarsus, and who had recently spent two or more years there, was of course acquainted with these mixed Jewish and Gentile congregations, and considered that among them the preaching of Jesus as Messiah would receive a welcome.

And John, departing from them, returned to Jerusalem. It is not told us why the nephew of Barnabas abandoned the work here. Some suggest as a reason for his desertion, his dislike to Paul's evident intention to found a great Gentile Church; his Jerusalem training and associations preventing him from sympathising with a policy which would place the Gentile on an equality with the Jew in the kingdom of God. But the more probable reason for his desertion was, that he shrank from the dangers and hardships of the mission. See for a detailed account of the life and work of this John Mark, note on chap. Acts 15:39.