Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.
Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and - rising into the highest style of a last and lofty protestation
Said, it was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you - necessary, both because of the position which the Jews occupied in the immediate terms of the promise, and in obedience to the express injunctions of their Master (Luke 24:47: see the note at Acts 13:5).
But seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life - `passing sentence, as it were, upon yourselves of exclusion from eternal life'-a mode of expression not so uncommon as Hackett represents, and intelligible to everyone. "All they that hate me (says Wisdom, Proverbs 8:36) love death."
Lo, we turn to the Gentiles - not as if they were never again to preach to the Jews, hut to signify that their message was only in the first instance to them, and that their rejection of it but opened the way for its being carried to the Gentiles.