What does Acts 13:14 mean?

With John Mark returning to Jerusalem, Paul and Barnabas make their way north from the port town of Perga to Pisidian Antioch near central modern-day Asia Minor. Sergius Paulus, the proconsul of Cyprus (Acts 13:7), was from Antioch and may have suggested Paul and Barnabas go there next. Pisidian Antioch is one of five cities named Antioch; the other significant Antioch is Paul and Barnabas' base of operations in Syria.

Jesus chose Paul to be the apostle to the Gentiles (Acts 9:15), yet in every city large enough to have one, Paul goes first to the synagogue (Acts 9:20; 14:1; 17:1, 10; 18:4; 19:8). He does this in part because he desperately wants Jews to be saved (Romans 9:1–5). But God's plan has always been that the Jews would reveal Him to the Gentiles (Genesis 12:3). In honor of that covenant, Jesus and His first followers are Jewish, and Paul offers salvation through Jesus to the Jews first. Some individual Jews will accept Paul's message, but the larger community of Jews as represented by the synagogues will not, so he will take his message directly to the Gentiles (Acts 13:45–47).

Paul's description of being in danger from rivers and robbers (2 Corinthians 11:26) may have come from his journey from Perga in Pamphylia to Pisidian Antioch. The rivers there are prone to flash floods, but the criminals were so prolific even Alexander the Great had trouble passing through. Not far from Perga is the rough western half of Cilicia. East Cilicia hosted Tarsus, a sophisticated academic city and Paul's place of birth. But in the western half were the home ports of thousands of pirates who had 1,000 ships and captured 400 towns. They so disrupted the grain trade that farmers quit planting and the inhabitants of Rome went hungry. Finally, the Roman council commissioned and equipped Pompey to act. He reportedly cleared out the pirates in eighty days, killing about ten thousand and settling the rest in under-populated areas where the people needed manual laborers. Though this had happened nearly a hundred years prior to Paul and Barnabas' travels, it's easy to imagine the area was still home to land-based brigands.