Galatians 2:13

the other—Greek, "the rest."

Jews—Jewish Christians.

dissembled likewise—Greek, "joined in hypocrisy," namely, in living as though the law were necessary to justification, through fear of man, though they knew from God their Christian liberty of eating with Gentiles, and had availed themselves of it already (Acts 11:2-17). The case was distinct from that in 1Co. 8:1-10:33; Rom. 14:1-23. It was not a question of liberty, and of bearing with others' infirmities, but one affecting the essence of the Gospel, whether the Gentiles are to be virtually "compelled to live as do the Jews," in order to be justified (Galatians 2:14).

Barnabas also—"Even Barnabas": one least likely to be led into such an error, being with Paul in first preaching to the idolatrous Gentiles: showing the power of bad example and numbers. In Antioch, the capital of Gentile Christianity and the central point of Christian missions, the controversy first arose, and in the same spot it now broke out afresh; and here Paul had first to encounter the party that afterwards persecuted him in every scene of his labors (Acts 15:30-35).