Acts 18:20

Acts 18:20. When they desired him to tarry longer with them. Ephesus appears to have been, from these days onward, favourably disposed to receive the gospel. This earnest request to Paul to stay longer with them on this the occasion of his first visit, no doubt induced him to fix upon the great Asian city as the centre of his work after his Third Missionary Journey. Ephesus, in the earliest Christian annals, occupied a foremost and most distinguished place. It was not only one of the churches founded by Paul, but it was trained up under his own personal superintendence nearly for three years. Timothy, Paul's most intimate and perhaps his most loved disciple, after an interval, succeeded the apostle in the personal superintendence of the church at Ephesus, and later it was the home of St. John, who, according to universal tradition, spent the latter years of his eventful life in this city. Here, too, this friend of Christ was buried.

He consented not; Acts 18:21. But bade them farewell, saying, I must by all means keep this feast that cometh in Jerusalem. There is a curious variation in the readings in this verse; the words from ‘I must' down to ‘Jerusalem' are omitted in many of the ancient authorities; but as there is no conceivable reason for the insertion of such a clause, and some of the better MSS. and Fathers, and, above all, the Syriac Version, contain the words, it is better with many of the modern commentators to retain them as genuine. ‘The feast' is most probably that of Pentecost, as the sea, either before the feast of Passover in the spring, or of Tabernacles in late autumn, would not have been considered safe for ships, it being hardly probable that under the circumstances, which did not seem very pressing, one like Paul would have undertaken an exceptionally expensive and dangerous voyage. This explains his words to the Ephesian Jews, ‘I must by all means keep the feast that cometh in Jerusalem.' The next feast in rotation would be that of ‘Tabernacles' in October. It is not unlikely that the means of transit from the great cities of the Mediterranean seaboard, for a Jew who wished to keep his ‘Pentecost' in Jerusalem, were abundant and inexpensive. Large bodies of these Jewish pilgrims from distant countries were evidently present at the first Pentecost feast described in Acts 2 (see especially Acts 18:9-11).

But I will return again unto you, if God will. The apostle made haste to fulfil this promise (see Acts 19:1).