According to Galatians 1:17, Saul went to the region of Arabia for three years. Clearly, he spent some time in Damascus to begin with (Acts 9:19–22) before he went away. It is not clear exactly how long he was away from Damascus since it was typical practice at the time to make use of inclusive counting whereby part of a year was counted as if it were a whole year. Thus, Saul could have been away for only one and a half years rather than three full years.1 It is also possible that he used Damascus as a base to which he returned periodically while he was away in Arabia.2
23 When many days had passed, the Jews plotted to kill him,