Biblion Bible Commentary
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Iconium: a city divided
Acts 14:1-7
1 In Iconium, they entered together into the synagogue of the Jews, and so spoke that a great multitude both of Jews and of Greeks believed. · WEB
The same method produces the same results in the next town — a great believing and an organized attempt to kill them — and the pair stay on anyway.
In Iconium, they entered together into the synagogue of the Jews. One verse after announcing that they turn to the Gentiles, they walk into a synagogue. Whatever the declaration at Antioch meant, it did not mean abandoning the method, and this is how the reader learns that the turn was a response to a particular refusal rather than a change of policy.
The result is stated without embellishment: they so spoke that a great multitude both of Jews and of Greeks believed. The manner of speaking is credited, which is unusual in this book, and the outcome is mixed — Jews and Greeks together, which is exactly the arrangement the opposition will find intolerable.
The resistance begins at once and its method is worth naming. The unbelieving Jews stirred up and embittered the souls of the Gentiles against the brothers. They did not argue with the preaching; they worked on the pagan population, who had no stake in the theological question at all. The technique is the same one used against Stephen and it will be used again at Thessalonica and at Ephesus: when the argument is unwinnable, change the audience.
Then a sentence that runs against every instinct of self-preservation. Therefore they stayed there a long time, speaking boldly in the Lord. The word therefore is the surprise. Opposition is given as the reason for staying rather than for leaving. Nothing in the paragraph explains the logic, and the following clause supplies the only justification offered: the Lord testified to the word of his grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands. God was corroborating the message where it was being contested, which is a reason to stand still.
The city divides — part sided with the Jews and part with the apostles — and the division is reported without lament. It is the outcome the book records again and again, and the writer never treats it as a failure of tact. A message about a crucified man raised from the dead is not the kind of thing a town can be neutral about.
The word apostles is used here of Barnabas and Paul, and it is one of only two places in the book where it is applied to anyone outside the twelve. Given how carefully chapter one defined that office by eyewitness qualification, the usage is loose — the word means one who is sent, and these two were sent by the church at Antioch. The narrative does not pause to distinguish, and neither should a reader who has noticed the earlier definition.
What finally moves them is not opposition but a specific plan: a violent attempt to mistreat and stone them, made by Gentiles and Jews together with their rulers. Stoning had killed Stephen, and Paul had been among the men who arranged it.
They became aware of it and fled. This book has no doctrine of standing one's ground when leaving is available; Paul goes over a wall in a basket, out of a city at night, and down the road to Lystra and Derbe , and the writer records each escape without embarrassment. The clause that closes the paragraph explains why the flights never look like defeats: There they preached the Good News.
settled What this mark means