Acts 13:40-41

13:40 Watch out, ¹  then, that what is spoken about by ²  the prophets does not happen to you:

13:41 ‘Look, you scoffers; be amazed and perish! ³ 

For I am doing a work in your days,

a work you would never believe, even if someone tells you.’” ⁴ 

¹ sn The speech closes with a warning, “Watch out,” that also stresses culpability.

² tn Or “in.”

³ tn Or “and die!”

⁴ sn A quotation from Hab 1:5. The irony in the phrase even if someone tells you, of course, is that Paul has now told them. So the call in the warning is to believe or else face the peril of being scoffers whom God will judge. The parallel from Habakkuk is that the nation failed to see how Babylon’s rising to power meant perilous judgment for Israel.