Galatians 1:20-24 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Now the things which I write unto you With respect to all these circumstances of them; I lie not As I affirm before God, who searcheth the heart, and from whom nothing is hid. Afterward Departing from Jerusalem; I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia To exercise my ministry there, and, if possible, to bring those among whom I was born and brought up, to the knowledge of Christ and his gospel. It appears from Acts 9:30, that some of the brethren in Jerusalem, who advised him to depart, kindly accompanied him to Cesarea, a well known sea-port town on the Mediterranean, from whence it seems he intended to go by sea to Tarsus. But, as he here says that he went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, it is probable, that after embarking at Cesarea, contrary winds forced him into some of the ports of Syria; so that, altering his plan, he went through that country preaching the gospel, and from thence proceeded to Cilicia by land. And was personally unknown to the churches in Judea Except to that of Jerusalem. In travelling from Damascus to Jerusalem, after his return from Arabia, it seems by this, that he did not preach or make himself known to any of the Christians in the cities of Judea through which he passed. But they had heard only This wonderful account in general, which would doubtless spread rapidly through all the land; that he which persecuted us in times past To imprisonment and death, was become a convert to the religion of Jesus; so that he now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed That is, the great truths of the gospel, which he once laboured with all his might to extirpate from the minds of men, and from the face of the earth; and they glorified God in me That is, on my account, as they well might, beholding in me so wonderful an instance of the power and grace of God. This the apostle mentions, because it implied that the Christians in Judea believed him to be a sincere convert, and were persuaded that his conversion would be an additional proof of the divine original of the gospel.