Acts 20:3 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

And there Namely, in Greece; he abode three months Meeting, it seems, with business there as he often did in other places, which detained him longer than he expected. During this time, he received from the churches of Achaia the money which they had collected for the saints in Judea, agreeably to his direction to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 16:1-3. At this time also he wrote his epistle to the Romans, of whose affairs he had heard by Aquila and Priscilla. For, it plainly appears, that epistle was written before his imprisonment at Rome; and in it he speaks of a collection made by the churches of Macedonia and Achaia, with which he was hastening to Jerusalem, Romans 15:25-27; a circumstance which fixes it to this time. It appears, also, from Romans 16:21, that Timothy and Sosipater (or Sopater, one of the noble Bereans) were with him when that epistle was written, which agrees with verse four of this chapter, by which we find they both attended him into Asia. And when the Jews had laid wait for him, as he was about to sail into Syria, he Upon this account; purposed Εγενετο γνωμη, the thought, or design, occurred, or he conceived the intention; to return through Macedonia The fact seems to be, that having finished all his matters in Greece, he had proposed to sail directly into Syria. But the Jews, who had heard of the money he was carrying to Jerusalem; and who, besides, hated him as an enemy to their religion, lying in wait for him in Cenchrea, the eastern port of Corinth, where he was to embark, he changed his resolution. So that avoiding that port, which was about nine miles from Corinth, he returned by land, through Macedonia, in such time that he left Philippi after the days of unleavened bread, and so began his voyage into Syria.