And when they had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many, they returned again to Lystra, and to Iconium, and Antioch,
And when they had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many - rather 'had made disciples of a considerable number' х matheeteusantes (G3100) hikanous (G2425)]. It is a pity that our version (following the Vulgate) has not observed the important distinction between the two words used in Matthew 28:19-20 - the one for 'making disciples,' the other for "teaching" the disciples so made. That distinction is carefully observed in this book. The former word is used here; nor could the other have properly been used where the Gospel was now for the first time preached, and there was no time for any after "teaching:" but the latter is used in Acts 11:26, where, the disciples having been already made, the thing aimed at was their establishment in the faith and growth in grace.
They returned again. They appear to have experienced no persecution here, since the apostle, long after this, when reminding Timothy of what he endured for, the Gospel "at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra," seems studiously to omit Derbe (2 Timothy 3:11). Beyond this our missionaries did not see fit for the present to prosecute their journey. Not that they were hurried home by urgent business-else they might have gone by a considerably shorter route than they took-taking a southeasterly direction from Derbe to Tarsus, and thence to Antioch. And one would imagine that, when so near the home of his youth, the great apostle, whose human affections were so keen, would prefer that route. But he had reasons for returning by the way he came, which with him were of paramount weight. 'At Derbe (says Howson admirably) Paul was not far from the well known pass which leads down from the central table-land to Cilicia and Tarsus. But his thoughts did not center in an earthly home. He revisted the places where he had been reviled and persecuted, but where he had left, as sheep in the desert, the disciples whom his Master had enabled him to gather. They needed building up and strengthening in the Faith comforting in the midst of their inevitable suffering, and fencing round by permanent institutions. Undaunted, therefore, by the dangers that awaited them, our missionaries return to them, using words of encouragement which none but the founders of a true Religion would have ventured to address to their earliest converts, that "we can only enter into the kingdom of God by passing through much tribulation."
To Lystra, and to Iconium, and Antioch - taking these places now, of course, in the reverse order from the former visit.