Acts 20:25

25. I know The anticipation that he would never revisit Ephesus, a large body of critics hold to have been mistaken. They maintain that Paul at his first arraignment before Cesar’s tribunal was acquitted; that an interval of years intervened before a second arrest, arraignment, and execution. In this interval he wrote the epistles to Timothy and Titus, and performed labours and travels indicated in those epistles, including a return to Ephesus. That return, therefore, depends upon the question whether Paul had a first acquittal and a second arrest. The discussion of this question we postpone to the Introduction to the above-named epistles.

Those who affirm a revisitation maintain that this I know was simply the expression of one of his uninspired expectations, like the not knowing of Acts 20:22, or the strong confidence of Acts 26:27. Baumgarten’s deep suggestion is, that, owing to the prayers of Christians in Paul’s behalf, (like the prayer of Hezekiah in his own behalf,) the divine order was changed, and the period of Paul’s ministry on earth extended. And thus it was that Paul’s I know was subjectively true at the time; and yet the Roman tribunal was so withheld from execution that a sacred appendix was added to his life. (See notes on Acts 1:7; Acts 2:1.)