The hand of the Lord is upon thee. — The anthromorphic phrase would convey to every Jew the thought of a chastisement which was the direct result of the will of God. (Comp. 1 Kings 18:46; Ezekiel 1:3; Ezekiel 8:1.)
Thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a season. — The form of the punishment may have been, in part, determined by the Apostle’s choice as manifested in prayer. If so, it suggests the thought that he had looked back on his own blindness, the exclusion of the outward light, as being that which had been to him the process by which he was led to the Sun of Righteousness and the Light that lighteth every man, and hoped that it might be so now. (See Note on Acts 9:8-9.) In any case, there was a moral fitness in blindness as the penalty of the sin the very essence of which was that the man was fighting against light. That the blindness was to be “for a season” only implies that it was designed to be remedial and not simply retributive.
There fell on him a mist and a darkness... — Here, as in the “scales” of Acts 9:13, we seem to trace something of the precision of the trained physician. The first effect of the loss of the power to see was, as in the case of St. Paul, that Elymas, who had selfishly used his knowledge to guide others to his own advantage, now had to seek for others to guide his own steps. The tense of the Greek verb (he was seeking) seems to imply that he sought and did not find. He had no friends to help him, and was left to his fate unpitied.