The apostles now seem to have “left Jerusalem for wider fields of action.”[191]
9. After a special religious consecration (Acts 13:3), Barnabas and Saul, accompanied by John Mark, a nephew of Barnabas, set out from Antioch on the first missionary tour to foreign countries.
Seleucia was nearly four miles north of the mouth of the Orontes, upon which river the city of Antioch was built. From this port the missionaries set sail for Cyprus, 130 miles distant.
Salamis at this time was a populous city on the southeastern shore of Cyprus. In this city there was a colony of Jews, and Barnabas was a native of Cyprus, and therefore the visitors did not feel themselves entirely strangers. But they passed along the southern coast road until Paphos, 100 miles distant, was reached. Here the apostle Paul met with the proconsul Sergius Paulus.
A PROCONSUL.
10. From the time of Augustus, B. C. 27, the provinces were of two kinds, Senatorial and Imperial. The former were governed by a proconsul, who was appointed by lot and had no military power, and was in office for one year only.
The latter, or imperial provinces, were governed by a legate or commissioner chosen directly by the emperor, and he served so long as the emperor wished. He always went out to his province with military pomp as a commander.
11. Syria was an imperial province, and was governed by a legate or commissioner of the emperor stationed at Antioch. Judæa, however, was a special province, and its distance from Antioch and its peculiar people required a special officer under the commissioner at Antioch, and this officer was called a procurator. He had his headquarters at Cæsarea, Acts 23:23, wore the military dress, and had a cohort as a body-guard, Matt. 27:27, called in this passage “the soldiers of the governor;” moreover,he had the power of life and death, Matt. 27:26, in his own province.
12. At the interview which Saul had with the proconsul, called here the “deputy,” there was one of the class known at that day as sorcerers. This man greatly interfered with the apostle’s effort to explain the new faith to the proconsul, who had requested instruction.
13. Peter had encountered one of this class before, Acts 8:9. The apostle now addressed the so-called sorcerer in terrible rebuke, foretelling his immediate blindness for a season, and thereby showing that behind the earnest and reasonable presentation of the great truths of the new faith which had fully persuaded the proconsulthere lay the reserved authority of so great supernatural power to attest the divinity of the doctrine.[192] That this is the meaning of the verse in Acts 13:12 is evident from a verse in Luke 4:32, which shows that it was the method of confirming the doctrine, and not the doctrine itself, which caused the astonishment spoken of in the verse.