When Paul encounters the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus, he immediately goes to the synagogues in Damascus (Acts 9:19-25). These are the synagogues which had likely informed the Sanhedrin that Hellenistic Jews were proclaiming that Jesus was the Messiah and were expecting Paul to arrive and argue against the Hellenists who have recently arrived from Jerusalem with this new idea that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah.
Instead, the content of Paul’s message is that Jesus was in fact the Son of God (Acts 9). This is a messianic title drawn from Psalm 2. Jesus was the long awaited son of David, the ultimate heir of the Davidic Covenant. That Paul preaches Jesus is as the Son of God is significant because it is the first time such language has appeared in Acts; it will appear a second time in Acts 13:3. This is likely a clue that the synagogue speech in Acts 13 is intended as representative of Paul’s speech before Jews in a synagogue. Paul’s presentation in the synagogue was the exact opposite of expectations – It is little wonder that there was a strong reaction in the synagogues against Paul!
After his encounter with Jesus, we might have thought Paul would have returned to Jerusalem and immediately confronted the Sanhedrin and the High Priest, the very people approved of Paul’s mission to Damascus in the first place. But he does not return to Jerusalem for three years and, according to his own testimony on Gal 1:16-17, when he did go up to Jerusalem, it was only for a short visit of fifteen days.
As Martin Hengel points out, Jerusalem is where the apostles are to be found, not Galilee or elsewhere in Judea. If Jerusalem was the focal point of the messianic preaching of the apostles, why did Paul not immediately go there and work with Peter and John in the Temple courts. Rather than go to Jerusalem, Paul goes into “Arabia” for three years.
Hengel and Schwemer suggest three reasons for Paul’s activities immediately after his conversion. First, Paul was a zealous persecutor of the church and he transferred that zeal into preaching the gospel. He met a resurrected and glorified Jesus who commissioned him as the apostle to the Gentiles. It is only natural that he would want to immediately begin this new task, given to him by his Savior.
Second, belief in an imminent return of Jesus meant that evangelistic activity needed to cover as wide an area as possible. Evangelism in Jerusalem was already underway and the apostles were stationed there to continue their work. Later in his career Paul will constantly move out into un-reached areas of the world, creating strategic bases in larger cities from which the local churches can continue the work of evangelism. For Paul, Arabia was an unreached area and he was uniquely suited to the task as a Hellenistic Jew.
Third, it would have been extremely dangerous to return since he has “switched sides” and now was a passionate supported of Jesus as the Messiah. While Paul is not described as avoiding persecution, he may have thought that it would be better to have success elsewhere rather than go and be executed by his former masters!
Martin Hengel and Anna Maria Schwemer, Paul Between Damascus and Antioch (Louisville: Westminster / John Knox, 1997), 94.
I would suggest a fourth reason for Paul “avoiding” Jerusalem: it may be that the route he took is simply where he was being led by the Spirit. Paul is a person that we tend to think of as being in close communication with God. In fact, many of his post-conversion objectives came straight from God such as when Acts says that the Holy Spirit specifically asks for Paul and Barnabas to be set apart “for the work to which I have called them.” in chapter 13 verse 3. The Spirit’s reasons may have been similar to the ones suggested, but perhaps it had it’s own logic. At the same time, the reverse may be true. Paul’s fleshly fight or flight response may be taking over and he simply wanted to avoid Jerusalem at all costs to safeguard himself, but I find this unlikely considering how recent his conversion was and how sold out and trusting in Christ Paul is depicted as being in all of Acts and his letters.
I would have to agree with Hengel and Schwemer for their second point. Polhill even explained in his book, that Paul was a pioneer missionary (98). Paul wanted to cover much land as possible to share the gospel with people that haven’t heard the message before. As they say in Jerusalem people were already started to evangelize in the city, but with Paul being a pioneer missionary and wanting to spread the word far and fast he probably did not want to go back to Jerusalem where it was already covered. It also said too in 2nd Corinthians 10:13-16 that Paul did not like to evangelize where others are already evangelizing.