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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comJamieson Fausset Brown Commentary - Acts 16:40 - 16:40
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And they went out of the prison - Having attained their object - to vindicate their civil rights, by the infraction of which in this case the Gospel in their persons had been illegally affronted - they had no mind to carry the matter farther. Their citizenship was valuable to them only as a shield against unnecessary injuries to their Master’s cause. What a beautiful mixture of dignity and meekness is this! Nothing secular, which may be turned to the account of the Gospel, is morbidly disregarded; in any other view, nothing of this nature is set store by: - an example this for all ages.
and entered into the house of Lydia - as if to show by this leisurely proceeding that they had not been made to leave, but were at full liberty to consult their own convenience.
and when they had seen the brethren - not only her family and the jailer’s, but probably others now gained to the Gospel.
they comforted them - rather, perhaps, “exhorted” them, which would include comfort. “This assembly of believers in the house of Lydia was the first church that had been founded in Europe” [Baumgarten].
and departed - but not all; for two of the company remained behind (see on Act 17:14): Timotheus, of whom the Philippians “learned the proof” that he honestly cared for their state, and was truly like-minded with Paul, “serving with him in the Gospel as a son with his father” (Phi 2:19-23); and Luke, “whose praise is in the Gospel,” though he never praises himself or relates his own labors, and though we only trace his movements in connection with Paul, by the change of a pronoun, or the unconscious variation of his style. In the seventeenth chapter the narrative is again in the third person, and the pronoun is not changed to the second till we come to Act 20:5. The modesty with which Luke leaves out all mention of his own labors need hardly be pointed out. We shall trace him again when he rejoins Paul in the same neighborhood. His vocation as a physician may have brought him into connection with these contiguous coasts of Asia and Europe, and he may (as Mr. Smith suggests, “Shipwreck,” etc.) have been in the habit of exercising his professional skill as a surgeon at sea [Howson].