And when they had preached the word in Perga. — The travellers retrace their steps. There is a coincidence more or less striking in the report of what they did at Perga. In Acts 13:13 there is no mention of their having preached in that city. We are simply told that Mark left them there, and that they then went on to Antioch. On their return, accordingly, they did what they had then left undone.
They went down into Attalia. — On their first journey they had gone straight from Paphos to Perga up the Cestrus. Now they made a détour which led them to the port at the mouth of the Catarrhactes, named after Attalus Philadelphus, King of Pergamus. There is no record of any work done there, and they probably only went to it as the port where they were most likely to find a sailing-vessel that would take them to Antioch. Their ship would naturally pass between Cilicia and Cyprus, enter the Orontes at Seleucia, and sail up to Antioch.
Whence they had been recommended. — Better, perhaps, commended, the compound form having slightly changed its meaning. The words seem to imply a mental survey on the part of the travellers of all that had passed since they had started on their journey. The “grace of God,” to which they had then been commended, had not failed them.