Acts 9:19

Acts 9:19. Then was Saul certain days with the disciples which were at Damascus. The writer in this portion of his history of the ‘acts of Paul' is very brief. Paul, in his Galatian Epistle (Acts 1:16-18), tells how, shortly after his conversion, he went into Arabia, then returned to Damascus, and after a space of three years went up to Jerusalem to see Peter and the older apostles. In this passage of the ‘Acts' the Arabian visit is not mentioned (see note on Acts 9:22), but several distinct periods of time are alluded to: (a) Acts 9:19-21. Certain days, a period immediately succeeding his conversion, when he preached in the Damascus synagogue; (b) Acts 9:23. After that many days were fulfilled, a much longer period, which probably included two years or more; (c) Acts 9:24-26. The close of this more extended period, when the hatred of the Jews compelled him finally to quit Damascus, when he went to Jerusalem. On the question of the Arabian journey referred to in Galatians 1:17, considerable doubt exists as to the meaning of the word ‘Arabia.' From the time when the word ‘Arabia ‘was first used by any of the writers of Greece and Rome, it has always been a term of vague and uncertain import.

Sometimes it includes Damascus; sometimes it ranges over Lebanon itself, and extends even to the borders of Cilicia (see Conybeare and Howson, St. Paul, chap. iii.). Ewald suggests that the word Damascus (Acts 9:19), used by the writer of the ‘Acts,' includes this residence in ‘Arabia' as in a part of the Damascene district or territory, the name of the capital city being used as including all the territory or district of Damascus.

It is, however, possible that Saul, after the first excitement wrought by his conversion had in some measure passed away, longed for solitude, for a time of meditation before setting out on his great life's work, and in the stillness of the Arabian desert, near the Red Sea, the well-known desert of the wanderings of his fathers, sought and found opportunity for solitary communion with God.