Acts 20:30

Also of your own selves, &c. Better (with Rev. Ver.) "And from among your own selves." This gives an idea of the greater nearness of the apostasy which the Apostle predicts. Not some who may come ofthose to whom he speaks, but even out of the present existing Christian body. We know from St Paul's own experience that he had learnt how out of the professedly Christian body some would go back like Demas (2 Timothy 4:10) through love of this world's good things, and some would err concerning the truth, like Hymenæus and Philetus, and that their word would eat like a canker, and they would overthrow the faith of some. These are the speakers of perverse things, things which should twist even the Apostle's own words into a wrong sense.

shall men arise … draw away disciples after them Better, " the disciples," i.e. other members of the Christian body. It is not that these men will desire and endeavour to gain disciples, but they will do their best, after their own falling-away, to drag others likewise from the true faith. This is expressed also by the verb which implies the tearing awayfrom that to which they are already attached, and this more literal translation of the verb expresses the labour and exertion which these false teachers will spend to achieve their object.