Acts 28:30 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

And Paul dwelt two whole years... — On the probable incidents of this period, see Excursus on the Later Years of St. Paul’s Life. The word translated “hired house” (the exact equivalent for the Latin meritorium, or conductum) means rather a lodging (as in Acts 28:23) or apartment, and does not imply that he occupied a whole house. The words that follow exactly describe his position. He was a prisoner, and therefore was not allowed to go out to preach in the synagogues, or the “churches” in the houses of this or that disciple, or the open places of the city, but his friends were allowed free access to him, and in this way there was probably a wider and more effectual opening for his personal influence than if he had spoken publicly, and so exposed himself to the risk of an organised antagonism. What seemed at first a hindrance to his work was so ordered, as he afterwards acknowledged, that it fell out “rather unto the furtherance of the gospel” (Philippians 1:12).