13:8,9
Elymas tried to interfere, not wanting the proconsul to listen to the gospel. Presumably he feared that if he did so, and believed the gospel, then Elymas would no longer be in favour. Saul took direct action! Note that it also says that he was filled with the Holy Spirit, so the action was approved off by God. It is also from this point onwards that Saul is now called Paul, the Roman version of his name.
13:10,11
First Paul speaks very directly to Elymas telling him he is a “child of the devil” and is “full of all kinds of deceit and trickery”. There is no beating about the bush here, saying that he has “an interesting point of view, and his views must be respected”, which is the way our culture would probably address him! Then Paul takes an even more direct approach, he tells Elymas that he will be blind for a period of time. And so Elymas did indeed become blind, and totally blind. Now this raises interesting questions for us. Should this sort of thing happen today? Now, I think it is safe to say that it should not be a commonplace occurrence, but this is not the only occurrence of such an action. Nor does it mean that Paul did this on numerous occasions. He was thrown into prison or beaten up far more often than this sort of thing happened. However, we should not be totally closed off to it.
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