Jamieson, Fausset and Brown on Acts 15:36

Ac 15:36-46. Dissension between Paul and Barnabas--They Part Company to Prosecute Separate Missionary Tours.

36. And some days after--How long is a matter of conjecture.

Paul said to Barnabas, Let us go again and visit our brethren--the true reading is, "the brethren."

in every city where we have preached ... and see how they do--whether they were advancing or declining, &c.: a pattern for churches and successful missionaries in every age. ("Reader, how stands it with thee?") [Bengel]. "Paul felt that he was not called to spend a peaceful, though laborious life at Antioch, but that his true work was far off among the Gentiles." We notice here, for the first time, a trace of that tender solicitude for his converts, that earnest longing to see their faces, which appears in the letters which he wrote afterwards, as one of the most remarkable and attractive features of his character. He thought, doubtless, of the Pisidians and Lycaonians, as he thought afterwards at Athens and Corinth of the Thessalonians, from whom he had been lately "taken in presence, not in heart, night and day praying exceedingly that he might see their face and perfect that which was lacking in their faith" [Howson].