Acts 9:20

Straightway - Immediately.

Preached Christ in the synagogues - Instead of ΧριϚον, Christ, Ιησουν, Jesus, is the reading of ABCE, several others of high importance, together with the Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Slavonic, and Vulgate.

The great question to be determined, for the conviction of the Jews, was that Jesus was the Son of God. That the Christ, or Messiah, was to be the Son of God, they all believed. Saul was now convinced that Jesus, whom they had crucified, and who had appeared to him on the way, was the Son of God, or Messiah; and therefore as such he proclaimed him. The word Christ should be changed for Jesus, as the latter is, without doubt, the genuine reading.

The first offers of the grace of the Gospel were uniformly made to the Jews. Saul did not at first offer Jesus to the heathens at Damascus; but to the synagogues of the Jews.

And straightway - Immediately. It was an evidence of the genuineness of his conversion that he was willing at once to avow himself to be the friend of the Lord Jesus.

He preached Christ - He proclaimed that Jesus was the Christ. See Acts 9:22. Many manuscripts read here Jesus instead of Christ. Griesbach has adopted this reading. Such is also the Syriac, the Vulgate, and the Ethiopic. The reading accords much better with the subject than the common reading. That Christ, or the Messiah, was the Son of God, all admitted. In the New Testament the names Christ and Son of God are used as synonymous. But the question was whether Jesus was the Christ, and was therefore the Son of God, and this Paul showed to the Jews. Paul continued the practice of attending the synagogues; and in the synagogues anyone had a right to speak who was invited by the officiating minister. See Acts 13:15.

That he is the Son of God - That he is the Messiah.