Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus, for to seek Saul:
Then departed Barnabas (or, 'departed he,' according to the better reading), to Tarsus - a short run by sea from Seleucia, which he would probably prefer to the more tedious land-route, which would have obliged him to thread the defiles of the Amanus range of mountains as one rounds the northeast head of the Mediterranean, at the Gulf of Issus.
For to seek Saul - entrusting the church at Antioch meantime, beyond all doubt, to the honoured brethren to whose instrumentality it had owed its existence. Barnabas had been the first at Jerusalem to recognize the genuineness of Saul's conversion, and, on the first visit of the great convert to Jerusalem after the change, to convince the brethren there that in the dread persecutor they had not an enemy in disguise, but a true brother, and already a mighty preacher of the Faith which once he destroyed (Acts 9:26-27). That visit lasted but 15 days (Galatians 1:18); for such was the boldness of his preaching in the capital, that, to prevent his assassination, the brethren had to hurry him off to Caesarea, and thence to Tarsus. Probably Barnabas alone discerned, at this early stage of his ministry, those special endowments in the new convert in virtue of which he was to eclipse all others. How he spent his time at Tarsus-at this his first visit to his native city since his conversion, and probably his last-we can but conjecture from incidental notices; but the words that follow,