And fled unto Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia. — Here again, as in Acts 13:51, we can scarcely fail to trace a literal obedience to our Lord’s commands. (See Note on Matthew 10:23.) The direction of the Apostles journey now took them into a wilder and less civilised region. The range of the Taurus cut it off from the more cultivated country of Cilicia and Pisidia. It is described as a dreary plain, bare of trees, destitute of fresh water, and with several salt lakes. So Ovid (Metaph. 8:621) speaks of it, as the result of personal observation:
“Where men once dwelt a marshy lake is seen,
And coots and bitterns haunt the waters green.”
The very name Lycaonia, interpreted traditionally as Wolf-land (the local legend derived it from Lycaon, who had been transformed into a wolf), represented but too faithfully the character of the inhabitants. The travellers were also losing the protection which a Roman citizen might claim in a Roman province, Lycaonia, which had been annexed in A.D. 17 to the Roman province of Galatia, having been assigned by Caligula to Antiochus, King of Commagene. So wild a country was hardly likely to attract Jewish settlers; and there is no trace in St. Luke’s narrative of the existence of a synagogue in either of the two cities. For the first time, so far as we know, St. Paul had to begin his work by preaching to the heathen. Even the child of a devout Jewish mother had grown up to manhood uncircumcised (see Note on Acts 16:3). Of the two towns named, Lystra was about forty miles to the south-east of Iconium, Derbe about twenty miles further to the east. The former, which lies to the north of a lofty conical mountain, the Kara-dagh (=Black Mountain) is now known as Bin-bir-Kilisseh, i.e., “the thousand and one churches,” from the ruins that abound there. The addition of “the region that lieth round about” suggests the thought that the cities were not large enough to supply a sufficient field of action. The work in the country villages must obviously — even more than in the cities — have been entirely among the Gentiles. Among the converts of this region, and probably of this time, we may note the names of Timotheus of Lystra (see Note on Acts 16:1), and Gaius, or Caius, of Derbe (Acts 20:4).