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2. διελθών δὲ τὰ μέρη ἐκεῖνα, and when he had gone over those parts, visiting especially, of course, the Churches of Philippi, Thessalonica and Berœa, among which St Luke may have been left from the former visit, and have laboured to carry on the work which St Paul had begun. Some have judged this to be very probable, and that in this Macedonian residence St Luke’s Gospel may have been written. It was also, as it seems, at this time that St Paul made the journey into Illyricum alluded to in Rom 15:19.
λόγῳ πολλῷ, with much exhortation. We may form some idea of the topics which would be embraced by such exhortation, if we read the two Epistles to the Thessalonians which had been written to that Church since St Paul’s former visit to Macedonia. The most marked language in the first Epistle is against sorrowing immoderately for the dead. By the words of St Paul on this subject the Christian congregation had been much troubled concerning the nearness of the coming of the Son of Man, and the second letter is written to bring them to a calm and thoughtful mind. The Apostle’s ‘much exhortation’ would be an echo of what he had said in his letters, ‘Watch and be sober,’ ‘Abstain from every form of evil,’ ‘Be at peace among yourselves.’
The use of the masculine pronoun αὐτούς after τὰ μέρη is not unexampled. The people are understood when the land is mentioned. See above on Act 8:5.