They shook off the dust of their feet against them. — The act was one of literal obedience to our Lord’s commands (see Note on Matthew 10:14), and may fairly be regarded as evidence that that command had come to the knowledge of Paul and Barnabas as well as of the Twelve. It was in itself, however, the language of a natural symbolism which every Jew would understand, a declaration that not the heathen, but the unbelieving and malignant Jews, were those who made the very dust on which they trod common and unclean.
And came unto Iconium. — The journey to Iconium is passed over rapidly, and we may infer that it presented no opportunities for mission work. That city lay on the road between Antioch and Derbe at a distance of ninety miles south-east from the former city, and forty north-west from the latter. When the travellers arrived there they found what they probably had not met with on their route — a synagogue, which indicated the presence of a Jewish population, on whom they could begin to work. The city, which from its size and stateliness has been called the Damascus of Lycaonia, was famous in the early Apocryphal Christian writings as the scene of the intercourse between St. Paul and his convert Thekla. In the middle ages it rose to importance as the capital of the Seljukian sultans, and, under the slightly altered name of Konieh, is still a flourishing city. By some ancient writers it was assigned to Phrygia, by others to Lycaonia.