TROPHIMUS
trof'-i-mus (Trophimos, literally, "a foster child" (Acts 20:4; Acts 21:29 2 Timothy 4:20)): An Asiatic Christian, a friend and companion-in-travel of the apostle Paul.

1. An Ephesian:

In the first of the three passages in which Trophimus is mentioned, he and Tychicus are called Asianoi, that is, natives of the Roman province of Asia; and making it still more definite, in Acts 21:29, he is termed an "Ephesian." Trophimus was one of eight friends, who accompanied Paul at the close of his 3rd missionary journey, and traveled with him from Greece through Macedonia into Asia, and onward by sea until Jerusalem was reached (see TYCHICUS). Trophimus went with Paul all the way, for, in the second of the passages referred to, he is mentioned as being with Paul in Jerusalem immediately on the close of this journey.

2. Cause of Paul's Arrest:

He was the innocent cause of Paul being assaulted, in the courts of the temple by the Jewish mob, and then of his being arrested and imprisoned by the Romans. The occasion of this outrage was that the Jews supposed that Paul had "brought Greeks also into the temple, and.... defiled this holy place" (Acts 21:28). The modicum of fact lying at the root of this false accusation was that they had seen Paul and Trophimus in each other's company in the city. On this slender basis "they supposed" that Paul had brought Trophimus past the barrier or middle wall of partition (Ephesians 2:14; see PARTITION), beyond which no Gentile was allowed to penetrate on pain of death. They supposed that Trophimus who was neither a Jew nor a proselyte, but Gentile Christian, had been introduced into the temple itself by Paul-which would have been profanation. Hence, their fury against the apostle.

How strongly they insisted on the crime which Trophimus was falsely alleged to have committed on that occasion, is seen again in the way in which the orator Tertullus repeated the charge against Paul before the Roman governor Felix, who moreover assayed to profane the temple" (Acts 24:6).

3. At Miletus:

The third reference to Trophimus is in 2 Timothy 4:20, "Trophimus I left at Miletus sick." This final notice shows that he was again-several years after the date indicated in the previous passages-traveling with Paul on one of the missionary journeys which the apostle undertook after being liberated from his first imprisonment in Rome. It is exceedingly difficult, perhaps impossible, to trace the course of the different journeys which Paul now made, as there is no such narrative as is given in Acts for the former journeys, but merely incidental notices of his later travels, in the Pastoral Epistles. In this, the last of all his letters-2 Timothy-Paul indicates various places which he had visited, and also the names of friends who traveled with him on this the last of his apostolic journeys.

Among other places, he had visited Miletus, a city on the coast of the province of Asia; and there his old friend Trophimus had been laid down with illness, so severe that he could travel no farther, but Paul left him "at Miletus sick." It is to be noted that Miletus was not far from Ephesus, which was Trophimus' native city. There would be much intercourse between the two cities (see Acts 17, where Paul sends for the elders of the church at Ephesus to come to him at Miletus, which they did). Trophimus therefore, in his sickness, could easily reach Ephesus, or his friends from that city could quickly come to him at Miletus, and give him whatever attention and nursing he might require.

Source: Internet