Acts 21:17-19 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The brethren received us gladly The alms which they brought with them might be one, but certainly were not the only or the chief reason of the welcome reception they met with. The day following, Paul, and those who had attended him in his journey, waited on James Commonly called James the Less, or the Lord's brother, the only apostle then presiding over the churches in Judea. See notes on Acts 15:18. And all the elders were present To receive so important a visitant, of whose arrival and errand they had doubtless been informed. And when he had saluted them With cordial affection, and presented to them those that were of his company; he declared particularly what God had wrought among the Gentiles Since he last left Jerusalem, informing them how many of the idolatrous Gentiles, in all the great cities of the Lesser Asia, Macedonia, and Greece, had embraced the gospel through his ministry; that he had planted churches in those cities, and that the gifts of the Holy Ghost had been communicated to many believers in every church; mentioning also his having visited most of them a second time, as well as taken a review of those in Cilicia, Pamphylia, Lystra, and other parts of Asia, with the plantation of which they had formerly been made acquainted, Acts 15:4. Moreover, in this account we may be sure he did not forget to mention the liberal contributions which the churches of the Gentiles through Asia and Europe had made for the poor of the saints in Judea, and which they had sent by his hands as a testimony of their gratitude for the knowledge of the true God, communicated to them by men of their nation. The collection, Paul, no doubt, now delivered, in presence of the messengers of the churches, to James and to the elders, to be by them distributed to the poor of the Jewish Christians, who by that expression of the good-will of the Gentile believers, ought to have been disposed to think favourably of them as their brethren.