Acts 14:28 - Exposition

They tarried for there they abode, A.V.; no little for long, A.V. Bishop Pearson reckons it a little more than a year; Lewin, "about a year;" Renan, "several months." No accurate statement can be gathered from St. Luke;s indefinite expression. With this chapter closes the account of St. Paul's first missionary tour. Cony-beare and Howson assign to it a duration of about nine months, from early spring, March, to November, when the sea would be closed; bringing him to Perga in May, and thence for the next five or six months into the mountains of Pisidia, where it was the custom for the inhabitants of the lowlands to congregate during the hot months. Others, however, as Lewin, think the circuit must have occupied "about two years;" Wieseler, "more than one year;" but Renan assigns to it " five years". "Conjectural estimates vary between two and eight years" ( ' Speaker's Commentary'). Lewin's estimate is, perhaps, the most probable. Whatever the exact period may have been, it was a time fruitful in consequences to the immortal interests of mankind.