Acts 13:27

For they that dwell at Jerusalem. — The implied reason of the mission to the Gentiles and more distant Jews is that the offer of salvation had been rejected by those who would naturally have been its first recipients, and who, had they received it, would have been, in their turn, witnesses to those that were “far off,” in both the local and spiritual sense of those words.

The voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath day. — See Note on Acts 13:15. The Apostle appeals to the synagogue ritual from which the discourse started, as in itself bearing witness, not to the popular notions of a conquering Messiah, but to the true ideal of the chief of sufferers, which had been realised in Jesus.