Acts 9:19 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

And when he had received meat. — Better, as elsewhere, food. The three days’ fast had obviously brought about a state of extreme prostration. In St. Paul’s account of his conversion in Galatians 1:17, he states that when it pleased God to reveal His Son in him, immediately he “conferred not with flesh, and blood,” but went into Arabia and returned again to Damascus. We have, it is obvious, no certain data for fixing the time, nor the extent of that journey. St. Luke does not mention it, and his “straightway” balances the “immediately” of St. Paul’s account. On the whole. it seems most probable that it was the first step taken by him after he had regained his sight and been baptised. Physically, rest and seclusion would be necessary during the period of convalescence after the great crisis of his conversion. Spiritually, that solitude was needed, we may believe, to prepare him for the continuous labour of the three years that followed. I place the journey to Arabia accordingly, with hardly any hesitation, after the “certain days” of fellowship with the disciples, and his reception at their solemn meeting to break bread in the Supper of the Lord, and before the “preaching Christ” in the synagogues. How far the journey extended we cannot say. “Arabia” was used somewhat vaguely as a geographical term; but the fact that Damascus was at this time occupied by the troops of Aretas, the king of Arabia Petræa, makes it probable that he went to that region. In St. Paul’s paronomastic reference to Hagar as a synonym for Mount Sinai in Arabia (Hagar and Sinai both admitting of an etymology which gives “rock” as the meaning of each), we may, perhaps, trace a local knowledge gained during this journey, and draw the inference that he had sought communion with God where Moses and Elijah had found it, on the heights of Sinai and Horeb. (Comp. Galatians 4:25.) He learnt, it may be, the true meaning and purpose of the Law, as arousing the fear of judgment, amid the terrors of the very rocks from which that Law had first been proclaimed to Israel.