Acts 13:7Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Such men eagerly seized upon everything that seemed new to them. Therefore he greatly desired to hear what new teaching Barnabas and Paul were preaching. But, carried away by religious needs which he himself did not clearly understand, he was in the nets of a deceiver, the Jewish magician Bar-Jesus.

In later times these magicians were among the strongest enemies of Christianity, because Christianity threatened to destroy their power over the Gentiles. Therefore Bar-Jesus also used every effort to hinder the spread of the Gospel and set the proconsul against it.

But Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, pronounced the judgment that he deserved as a hater of the light. At the Apostle's word, he lost his sight. This proof of the power of the new teaching against its enemies acted decisively upon the proconsul, and he believed in the Gospel.

They sought it even through the mystical sorcery of the East. It is known that Marius turned to the divinations of the Jewish woman Martha.

In that remarkable period, augurs, stargazers, Chaldeans, mathematicians, astrologers, magicians, foretellers, predictors of fate, ventriloquists, and interpreters of dreams streamed into Rome from everywhere in great numbers.

They acquired such importance that they drew upon themselves the indignation of both satirists and historians. Some of them, such as Apollonius of Tyana, and later Alexander of Abonoteichus and the Cynic Peregrinus, attracted universal attention.

There was hardly a Roman household that did not maintain its own fortune-teller. Juvenal says sarcastically that the emperor Tiberius, after withdrawing from Rome to the island of Capri, lived there surrounded by “a whole herd of Chaldeans.”

The same was true of Sergius Paulus, who kept with him, as a magician, a Jewish impostor named Bar-Jesus. When he heard about the preaching of the two newcomers from Antioch, he became interested in them also and wished to hear their teaching.

It may also be seen in the fact that he found no satisfaction even from this magician. When he heard of the preachers of a new teaching, he wished to hear their preaching. Finally, it is seen especially in his believing in the Lord Jesus, preached to him by Barnabas and Saul (verse 12).

Bar-Jesus resembled Simon Magus in many ways, but differed from him in this. Simon was more carried away by wonderworking powers and sought them everywhere, while this man kept more to Jewish ground, so to speak.

Already in his name there was an adaptation to messianic concepts. He presented himself as the son of the Savior, Jesus. As the writer of Acts observes, he imitated the manner of life and action of the prophets, which is why he is called a false prophet.

Yet to give a special character to his prophetic claim, which the Jews evidently did not recognize, he called himself an Arabian sage, or magician, Elymas, that is, ulema.

The good proconsul was probably very interested in him at first. But soon, as a prudent man, he saw the falsehood of Bar-Jesus. Therefore, when Barnabas and Saul appeared, he immediately summoned them, in order to satisfy his thirst for truth.

So many had wholly despaired of acquiring this truth, as another proconsul, Pilate, showed, though before him stood incarnate Truth Himself.

Artobolevsky portrays the image of the proconsul Sergius Paulus in a very elevated way. He writes: The writer of Acts characterizes him as an intelligent man (see Acts 13:7; compare 11:24).

We must not think that this description referred to any personal qualities of the proconsul, to his worldly experience, political tact, administrative abilities, or even scientific pursuits, if he is identical with the naturalist mentioned by Pliny.

Undoubtedly, the inner spiritual life of the proconsul is described here in the Old Testament sense. We must think that, amid pagan errors, the proconsul managed to preserve within himself that wisdom in the heart (Job 38:36).

This was the natural moral sense which the Apostle later calls conscience (see Rom 2:14-15). This lamp had not been extinguished in his heart. Guided by it, the Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature what the law requires.

By the duty of his office, Sergius Paulus was, if one may say so, in the very furnace of immoral eastern cults. Yet he found no inner satisfaction in them.

He had already almost come to believe in the existence of the Great Being. He knew Him in spirit, in spiritual understanding (Col 1:9), and thirsted only for His manifestation in the outward, material world.

But when Bar-Jesus noticed Sergius Paulus's inclination toward his preaching and his desire to see an outward manifestation of the Deity, he decided to put forward the mysterious, Judeo-theosophical element.

He performed wonders and surrounded himself with a halo of divine majesty. Then a reaction began in the heart of the proconsul, expressed in dissatisfaction with the teaching of Bar-Jesus.

His proud self-designation as Elymas, a sage like other magicians, and then his conduct during the Apostles' preaching, in verse 8, reveal clearly enough the moral side of the magician's person.

Pride, or extreme self-love, which excluded all love for one's neighbor, and base self-interest: these formed the inner world of the magician.