Acts 18:19

St. Paul returns to Antioch by way of Ephesus and Jerusalem, and there closes his Second Missionary JourneyHe then starts on his Third Missionary Enterprise, 19-23.

Acts 18:19. And he came to Ephesus, and left them there. For a note on Ephesus, see Acts 18:1 of the next chapter, where a lengthened sojourn of the apostle in that city is related. ‘Them,' that is, Aquila and Priscilla, who had removed to Ephesus with a view of carrying on there their tentmaking trade. In the Syriac Version we read at the beginning of Acts 18:21, ‘And he left Aquila and Priscilla at Ephesus, and he himself sailed and came to Cæsarea.' The voyage from Corinth to Ephesus under favourable circumstances was then accomplished in two or three days, though Cicero relates how he once, and on another occasion his brother Quintus, occupied two weeks in sailing from Ephesus to Athens; but unusual delays in both of these cases retarded the voyages.

But he himself entered into the synagogue, and reasoned with the Jews. These words were evidently inserted in the narrative by the writer of the ‘Acts' to make it clear that Paul's purpose at Ephesus was to carry out no business plans with his old friends and associates, Priscilla and her husband. They came to Ephesus together; they remained behind when he left; and even while there, the apostle took no part in the old work of the tentmaking, but, as his custom was, preached and taught Paul's association with Aquila and other workers was always only a temporary one, taken up and laid down when the necessity which had occasioned his working with his own bands had passed. His life shows the dignity of all labour, still Paul's real work was something very different to that of an ordinary handicraftsman.