Acts 16:13

Normally Paul went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and this place of prayer may have been a synagogue. On the other hand, Philippi may have had too few Jews to warrant a synagogue. It only took 10 Jewish men to establish a synagogue. [Note: Mishnah Sanhedrin 1:6; Mishnah Pirke Aboth 3:6.] Whether or not this place of prayer was a synagogue, worshippers of Yahweh met beside the Gangites River one and one-half miles west of town to pray together and to do what the Jews did in a normal synagogue service. The Greek word proseuche describes both prayer and a place of prayer. [Note: See Levinskaya, pp. 213-25, "The Meaning of PROSEUCHE."] Sometimes this word for "a place of prayer" was used in Jewish writings as a synonym for "synagogue" since Jewish synagogues were essentially places of prayer. It was customary for Jews and Gentile God-fearers (sebomene ton theon, "worshipper of God," Acts 16:14; Acts 13:43; Acts 18:7) to meet in the open air by a river or the sea when a synagogue was not available. [Note: Josephus, Antiquities of . . ., 14:10:23. Cf. Psalms 137:1-6.]

"Where there was no Synogogue there was at least a Proseuche, or meeting-place, under the open sky, after the form of a theatre, generally outside the town, near a river or the sea, for the sake of lustrations [i.e., purification rites]." [Note: Edersheim, The Life . . ., 1:76.]

Evidently no men were there the day Paul found the place. Nonetheless Paul preached the gospel to the women assembled. That Paul, a former Pharisee, would preach to an audience of women reveals much about his changed attitude since the Pharisees commonly thanked God that they were not Gentiles, slaves, or women (cf. Galatians 3:28). This is hardly the picture of a woman hater that some have painted Paul as being.

"I wonder whether that prayer meeting had anything to do with Paul coming over to Europe and the vision of the man of Macedonia!" [Note: McGee, 4:583.]