Biblion Bible Commentary
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They Glorified God in Me
Galatians 1:21-24
21 Then I came to the regions of Syria and Cilicia. · WEB
The chapter of self-defense ends with Paul unknown by sight and praised by reputation, and the last word about him is God's glory.
The itinerary continues north and west — SYRIA and CILICIA — and away from Jerusalem, which is the point of listing it.
Verse 22 completes the argument of the whole chapter with a single clause: I was still unknown by face to the assemblies of Judea. The churches nearest the apostles had never seen him. Whatever authority his critics claimed for Jerusalem, Paul's ministry had run for years without a face-to-face relationship with the region they appealed to.
What those churches did have was a report, and Paul quotes it: he who once persecuted us now preaches the faith he once tried to destroy. The sentence is stated from their side, not his — this is how he sounded to the people he had hunted. And the two verbs are the same in kind: he had tried to destroy the faith, and he now proclaims it. Nothing intermediate is described.
Then verse 24, and the chapter that has been about Paul's independence ends by taking the attention off him. So they glorified God in me. Not they approved of me, which would have made the Judean churches a credential — the very thing he has spent twenty verses refusing. The preposition is in: he is the occasion, and God is the object.
A chapter of vigorous self-defense closes with the defender out of the frame.
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