⁴ After they had been sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went to Seleucia and from there sailed to Cyprus. ⁵ Arriving in Salamis, they began to preach God’s word in the Jewish synagogues. They also had John to help them.

⁶ They went through the whole island as far as Paphos, where they found a Jewish occult practitioner and false prophet named Bar-jesus. ⁷ He was associated with the proconsul Sergius Paulus, who was an intelligent man. He sent for Barnabas and Saul because he wanted to hear the word of God. ⁸ But Elymas the occult practitioner (that is the meaning of his name) continued to oppose them and tried to turn the proconsul away from the faith. ⁹ But Saul, also known as^[a] Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked him straight in the eye ¹⁰ and said, “You’re full of every form of deception and trickery, you son of the Devil, you enemy of all that is right! You’ll never stop perverting the straight ways of the Lord, will you? ¹¹ The^[b] Lord is against you now, and you’ll be blind and unable to see the sun for a while!” At that moment a dark mist came over him, and he went around looking for someone to lead him by the hand. ¹² When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, because he was astonished at the Lord’s teaching.