Acts 9:3

Acts 9:3. And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus. The first view of this city, when the dim outline of her gardens becomes visible, is universally famous. The prospect has been always the same. The white buildings of Damascus gleamed in the mid-day sun before the eyes of Saul, as they do before a traveller's eyes at this day, resting like an island of Paradise in the green enclosure of its beautiful gardens. It is the oldest city in the world. It was founded before Baalbec and Palmyra, and it has outlived them both. While Babylon is a heap in the desert and Tyre a ruin on the shore, it remains what it was called in the prophecy of Isaiah, ‘the head of Syria' (Isaiah 7:8). Abraham's steward, we read, was Eliezer of Damascus (see Howson, St. Paul, chap. 3).

Throughout the history of Israel, Damascus, her kings and armies, are constantly mentioned. Her mercantile greatness during this period is indicated in Ezekiel's words addressed to Tyre (Ezekiel 27:16-18). As centuries passed by, Damascus seemed to grow in power and grandeur. The Emperor Julian, in the fourth century of the Christian era, describes it as the ‘eye of the East' It reached its highest point of prosperity in the golden days of Mohammedan rule, when it became the royal residence of the Ommiad Caliphs and the metropolis of the Mohammedan world. It is still a great and most important city, with a population variously stated from 150,000 to 250,000 souls.

And suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven. From the recitals of the same event in chaps, 22 and 26, we learn it was about noon at midday. Then in the full splendour of an oriental sun at noon, around the Pharisee leader and his companions there flashed the blinding light of the Divine glory. It was the Shekinah, the glory in which Christ now dwells. Rays of this glory now and again have been permitted to fall on men's eyes. It shone round Moses when he had been with the God of Israel on the mount; it rested at intervals on the golden mercy-seat of the ark, between the cherubim; it filled the Temple of Solomon on the dedication morning; it shone round the transfigured Jesus and the glorified Moses and Elias on Tabor; it flashed round the heads of the disciples in tongues of fire, while they prayed and waited for the Holy Ghost on the first Pentecost morning; and years after, John in his lonely watch at Patmos saw it encompassing the Son of man, when, awe-struck, he fell at the feet of the glorified Redeemer as one that was dead. In this blinding light Saul perceived the glorified body of Jesus. This we gather from Ananias' words, Acts 9:17: ‘The Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest;' from Acts 9:27, when Barnabas declares to the apostles ‘how he (Saul) had seen the Lord in the way;' from chap. Acts 22:14, when Saul is spoken of ‘as seeing the Just One;' from 1 Corinthians 9:1, Paul's words, ‘Have I not seen Jesus Christ the Lord?' and again, from 1 Corinthians 15:8, his own words, ‘Last of all He was seen of me also.'

We gather, then, from the narrative that Saul alone saw the form of the Redeemer in the shining glory. Braver perhaps than his companions, owing to his fervid, intense conviction that he was doing what he believed the will and work of the God of his fathers, less terrified than the men who journeyed with him by the awful vision of glory, while they, overcome with fear and awe, did not dare, after the first blinding glare had struck their eyes, to look up and gaze into the dazzling light, the Pharisee Saul seems to have looked on stedfastly for a short time, and as he gazed into the glory he saw the form of the risen Jesus. This at least suggests a reason for Saul's subsequent blindness, which lasted three days, until the visit and action of Ananias, a blindness which seems to have affected only Saul among that company of travellers.

He seems certainly to have gazed into that blinding, glorious light longer and more attentively than his companions; hence his after suffering. For even subsequent to the interview with Ananias, although, when the disciple of Jesus had laid his hands on him, the blinded eyes were opened, Saul does not appear to have ever recovered his sight as before. He came by degrees to learn, that never until he should gaze again on the glory of that light, and the One whom it environed, in the King's city, would that dimness, and perhaps a constant sense of pain, be removed from those dazzled eyes which had gazed for a minute into the Divine splendour. We possess several apparent allusions in the subsequent history of St. Paul of this painful disease in the eyes. See Acts 13:9, where the earnest gaze probably indicated dimness of vision on the part of Paul; and Acts 23:1, on which occasion the same partial blindness, some think, prevented Paul from recognising the high priest when he addressed him in the Sanhedrim council. Compare Galatians 4:13-15, where not improbably this disease in the eyes is alluded to, and Galatians 6:11, where not a few expositors have supposed that the expression πηλίκοις γράμμασιν in Acts 9:2, translated in the English Version, ‘how large a letter,' literally, ‘in what large letters,' refers to the great rugged characters written by his own hand at the end of his Epistle, dictated to a scribe, the weakness in his eyes preventing him from writing, and necessitating the employment of an amanuensis.