Acts 21:4
And finding disciples, we tarried there seven days: who said to Paul through the Spirit, that he should not go up to Jerusalem.
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- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Inventis autem discipulis, mansimus ibi diebus septem : qui Paulo dicebant per Spiritum ne ascenderet Jerosolymam.
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- ἀνευρόντες δὲ τοὺς μαθητὰς ἐπεμείναμεν αὐτοῦ ἡμέρας ἑπτά, οἵτινες τῷ Παύλῳ ἔλεγον διὰ τοῦ πνεύματος μὴ ἐπιβαίνειν εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα.
Haydock's commentary
Not go up to Jerusalem. St. Paul says in the foregoing chapter that he was pressed by the Holy Ghost to go to Jerusalem; and do these prophets now advise him to stay away, and disobey the inspiration? No: their dissuasion was not the effect of inspiration, but the expression of their tenderness and affection for him, which made them fear what they saw he was going to endure. (Denis the Carthusian)
Hence St. Paul disregarded their entreaties, as well as the imminent dangers that every where stared him in the face. See his heroic answer to the melting entreaties of the faithful of Cęsarea, and their final acquiescence: "the will of the Lord be done." (below, ver. 14)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St John Chrysostom A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, Homily XLV on Acts xx. 32
What he does when writing in an Epistle, this he does also when speaking in council: from exhorting, he ends with prayer: for since he had much alarmed them by saying, “Grievous wolves shall enter in among you” ( v. 29 ), therefore, not to overpower them, and make them lose all self-possession, observe the consolation (he gives). “And now,” he says, as always, “I commend you, brethren, to God, and to the word of His grace:” that is, to His grace: it is grace that saveth. He constantly puts them in mind of grace, to make them more earnest as being debtors, and to persuade them to have confidence. “Which is able to build you up.” He does not say, to build, but, “to build up,” showing that they had (already) been built. …
St John Chrysostom A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, Homily XLV on Acts xx. 32
(Recapitulation.) “Silver, or gold, or apparel,” etc. ( ch. xx. 33, 34; 1 Cor. ix; 2 Cor. xi .) So then, it was not in Corinth only that they did this, they that corrupted the disciples, but in Asia as well. But he nowhere casts this up as a reproach to the Ephesians, when writing to them. And why? Because he did not fall upon any subject that obliged him to speak of this. But to the Corinthians he says, “My boasting has not been stopped in the regions of Achaia.” ( 2 Cor. xi. 10 .) And he does not say, Ye did not give to me; but, “Silver, or gold, or apparel, I coveted not,” that it might not seem to be their doing, that they had not given. And he does not say, From no man have I coveted the necessaries of life, that again it might not look like accusing them: but he covertly hints as much, seeing that he provided subsistence for others as well as himself. …