Acts 20:15 - Exposition

Sailing from for we sailed, A.V.; we came for and came, A.V.; following for next, A.V. ; touched for arrived, A.V. ; and the day after for and tarried at Trogyllium ; and the next day, A.V. and T.R. Over against Chios . Their course would lie through the narrow strait between Chios on the west and the mainland on the east. Samos . The large island opposite Ephesus. There they touched , or put in ( παρεβάλομεν ) . If the clause in the T.R. is genuine, they did not pass the night at Samos, but "made a short run from thence in the evening to Trogyllium (Alford), "the rocky extremity of the ridge of Mycale, on the Ionian coast, between which and the southern extremity of Samos the channel is barely a mile wide" ('Speaker's Commentary'). We came to Miletus . Anciently the chief city of Ionia, and a most powerful maritime and commercial place, about twenty-eight miles south of Ephesus; though in the time of Homer it was a Carian city. In St. Paul's time it was situated on the south-west coast of the Latmian gulf, just opposite the mouth of the Meander on the east. But since his time the whole gulf of Latmos has been filled up with soil brought down by the river, so that Miletus is no longer on the seacoast, and the new mouth of the Meander is to the west instead of to the east of Miletus, which lies about eight miles inland. Miletus was the scat of a bishopric in after times. As regards this visit to Miletus, some identify it with that mentioned in 2 Timothy 4:20 . And it is certainly remarkable that so many of the same persons in connection with the same places are mentioned in both passages and in the pastoral Epistles generally. The identical persons are Paul, Timothy, Luke, Trophimus, Tychicus, and Apollos ( Acts 20:4 , Acts 20:5 , compared with 2 Timothy 4:11 , 2 Timothy 4:12 , 2 Timothy 4:20 ); and the identical places are Corinth, Thessalonica, Troas, Ephesus, Miletus, and Crete. But the other circumstances do not agree well with the events of this journey, but seem to belong to a later period of St. Paul's life (see below, verse 25, note).