Acts Chapter 21 verse 4 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 4. - Having found the disciples for finding disciples, A.V. and T.R.; and these for who, A.V.; set foot in for go up to, A.V. and T.R. Having found the disciples, If the R.T. is right, the meaning is that they had sought out the Christians, apparently not a large body, scattered in the city, and perhaps with some difficulty found them and their place of meeting. This would look as if they were not Jews, as the synagogue was always known. He should not set foot in Jerusalem. The R.T. reads ἐπιβαίνειν for ἀναβαίνειν. It is true that, in the LXX. of Deuteronomy 1:36, Τὴν γῆν ἐφ η}ν ἐπέβη means "The land that he hath trodden upon;" and that in Joshua 1:3 again, ποδῶν ὑμῶν means "Every place on which you shall tread with the sole of your feet;" but the phrase ἐπιβαίνειν εἰς Ιερουσαλήμ must surely mean simply "to go to Jerusalem." Through the Spirit. The Holy Spirit revealed to them, as he did to many ethers (ver. 11 and Acts 20:23), that bonds and affliction awaited St. Paul at Jerusalem. The inference that he should not go to Jerusalem was their own.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(4) And finding disciples, we tarried there seven days.--The word for "finding" implies a previous search. They inquired, when they landed, amid the crowded streets of the still busy port, whether any Christians were to be found there. It will be remembered that St. Paul had passed through that region at least once before. (See Note on Acts 15:3.) The church had probably been planted by the labours of Philip, as the Evangelist of Caesarea. It is clear that the believers there were prepared to welcome St. Paul and his companions, and showed a warm interest in their welfare.The "seven days' " stay, as at Troas (see Note on Acts 20:6), and afterwards at Puteoli (Acts 28:14), was obviously for the purpose of attending one, or possibly more than one, meeting of the church for the Lord's Supper on the Lord's Day. The utterances through the Spirit implied the exercise of prophetic gifts at such a meeting. It seems, at first, somewhat startling that St. Paul should reject what is described as an inspired counsel; or, if we believe him also to have been guided by the Spirit, that the two inspirations should thus clash. We remember, however, that men received the Spirit "by measure," and the prophets of the churches at Tyre, as elsewhere (Acts 20:23), though foreseeing the danger to which the Apostle was exposed, might yet be lacking in that higher inspiration which guided the decision of the Apostle, and which he himself defines as the spirit "of power, and of love, and of a sound mind" (2Timothy 1:7). This is, it is believed, a much more adequate explanation than that which sees in the Apostle's conduct a somewhat self-willed adherence to his own human purpose, and finds a chastisement for that self-will in the long delay and imprisonment that followed on the slighted warnings. He was right, we may boldly say, to go to Jerusalem in spite of consequences. The repeated warnings are, however, an indication of the exceeding bitterness of feeling with which the Judaisers and unbelieving Jews were known to be animated against him. . . .