Acts 9:9

Why did not the Jews believe when they were told of these things? That he spoke truth was manifest: for he would not have been changed, had this not happened; so that all were bound to believe. He was not inferior to them that preached the Resurrection, and was more credible, by being all at once converted. He had no intercourse with any of the believers; it was at Damascus that he was converted, or rather before he came to Damascus that this happened to him.

I ask the Jew: Say, by what was Paul converted? He saw so many signs, and was not converted: his teacher Gamaliel was converted, and he remained unconverted. Who convinced him-and not only convinced, but all at once inspired him with such ardent zeal? Wherefore was it, that he wished even to go into hell itself for Christ's sake? The truth of the facts is manifest.

Be it so, that the other Apostles favored His pretensions: what say you to this man? Why then not immediately after His resurrection? That his hostility might be more clearly shown as open war. The man who is so frantic as even to shed blood and cast men into prisons, all at once believes! It was not enough that he had never been in Christ's company: the believers must be warred upon by him with vehement hostility: he left to none the possibility of going beyond him in fury: none of them all could be so violent.

And he was without sight for three days. Because he had not believed that the Lord had conquered death by rising on the third day, he is now instructed by his own example, who would change the darkness of three days with the returning light.

"And for three days he did not see, and did not eat, and did not drink." Why did he do this? Because he greatly repented of having persecuted the Church, and he grieved, and prayed, and besought God that this might be forgiven him.

And he was three days - An important season! So long he seems to have been in the pangs of the new birth. Without sight - By scales growing over his eyes, to intimate to him the blindness of the state he had been in, to impress him with a deeper sense of the almighty power of Christ, and to turn his thoughts inward, while he was less capable of conversing with outward objects.

It was not so much this glaring light that, by dazzling his eyes, had dimmed them--Nimium sensibile lædit sensum; for then those with him would have lost their sight too; but it was a sight of Christ, whom the rest saw not, that had this effect upon him. Thus a believing sight of the glory of God in the face of Christ dazzles the eyes to all things here below.

And he was three days without sight,....

And he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink--that is, according to the Hebrew mode of computation: he took no food during the remainder of that day, the entire day following, and so much of the subsequent day as elapsed before the visit of Ananias.

Neither did eat nor drink - The anxiety of his mind and the anguish of his heart were so great that he had no appetite for food; and he continued in total darkness and without food for three days, till Ananias proclaimed salvation to him in the name of the Lord Jesus.