Acts 18:3

3 Paul moved in with them, and they worked together at their common trade of tentmaking.

Acts 18:3 Meaning and Commentary

Acts 18:3

And because he was of the same craft,
Art, occupation, or trade:

he abode with them;
in the same house in which they were:

and wrought;
with his own hands, to support himself, for he was a stranger in this place; and as yet here was no church to minister to him; and when there was, he would take nothing of them, that the false teachers, who rose up among them, might not make any handle of it against him, and to the prejudice of the Gospel; though otherwise he thought it his just due to receive a maintenance from the churches; and insisted upon it as an ordination of Christ. He learned a trade whilst among the Jews, with whom it was common for their greatest doctors to be brought up to some trade or another; (See Gill on Mark 6:3).

for by their occupation they were tent makers;
either for the soldiers, and which were made of sack cloth of hair, or of leather, and of the skins of various animals ^F6, sewed together; hence the phrase, "sub pellibus", "under the skins", is used for to lie in tents {g}: or those tents they made, were canopies made of linen, and other things, which were erected in the summer season to shade and screen from the heat of the sun; though others take them for a sort of tapestry, or hangings, which they made for theatres, palaces, and stately rooms; and according to the Syriac version, they were horses' trappings which they made: perhaps they were of the same occupation with Menedemus the philosopher, who was (skhnorrafov) , "a sewer of tents" ^F8.

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FOOTNOTES:

F6 Alex. ab Alex. Genial. Dier. l. 1. c. 12.
F7 Caesar. Comment. l. 5. de Bello Africano. p. 471. Liv. Hist. l. 5. in principio.
F8 Laert. Vit. Philosoph. l. 2. p. 172.

Acts 18:3 In-Context

1 After Athens, Paul went to Corinth.

2 That is where he discovered Aquila, a Jew born in Pontus, and his wife, Priscilla. They had just arrived from Italy, part of the general expulsion of Jews from Rome ordered by Claudius.

3 Paul moved in with them, and they worked together at their common trade of tentmaking.

4 But every Sabbath he was at the meeting place, doing his best to convince both Jews and Greeks about Jesus.

5 When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was able to give all his time to preaching and teaching, doing everything he could to persuade the Jews that Jesus was in fact God's Messiah.