Acts 20:18-21

20:18 When they arrived, he said to them, “You yourselves know how I lived ¹  the whole time I was with you, from the first day I set foot ²  in the province of Asia, ³  20:19 serving the Lord with all humility ⁴  and with tears, and with the trials that happened to me because of the plots ⁵  of the Jews. 20:20 You know that I did not hold back from proclaiming ⁶  to you anything that would be helpful, ⁷  and from teaching you publicly ⁸  and from house to house, 20:21 testifying ⁹  to both Jews and Greeks about repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus. ¹⁰ 

¹ tn Grk “You yourselves know, from the first day I set foot in Asia, how I was with you the whole time.” This could be understood to mean “how I stayed with you the whole time,” but the following verses make it clear that Paul’s lifestyle while with the Ephesians is in view here. Thus the translation “how I lived the whole time I was with you” makes this clear.

² tn Or “I arrived.” BDAG 367 s.v. ἐπιβαίνω 2, “set foot in…εἰς τ. ᾿Ασίαν set foot in Asia Ac 20:18.” However, L&N 15.83 removes the idiom: “you know that since the first day that I came to Asia.”

³ tn Grk “Asia”; see the note on this word in v. 16.

⁴ sn On humility see 2 Cor 10:1; 11:7; 1 Thess 2:6; Col 3:12; Eph 4:2; Phil 2:3-11.

⁵ sn These plots are mentioned in Acts 9:24; 20:13.

⁶ tn Or “declaring.”

⁷ tn Or “profitable.” BDAG 960 s.v. συμφέρω 2.b.α has “τὰ συμφέροντα what advances your best interests or what is good for you Ac 20:20,” but the broader meaning (s.v. 2, “to be advantageous, help, confer a benefit, be profitable/useful”) is equally possible in this context.

⁸ tn Or “openly.”

⁹ tn BDAG 233 s.v. διαμαρτύρομαι 1 has “testify of, bear witness to (orig. under oath)…of repentance to Judeans and Hellenes Ac 20:21.”

¹⁰ tc Several mss, including some of the more important ones (Ì⁷⁴ א Α C [D] E 33 36 323 945 1175 1241 1505 1739 pm and a number of versions), read Χριστόν (Criston, “Christ”) at the end of this verse. This word is lacking in B H L P Ψ 614 pm. Although the inclusion is supported by many earlier and better mss, internal evidence is on the side of the omission: In Acts, both “Lord Jesus” and “Lord Jesus Christ” occur, though between 16:31 and the end of the book “Lord Jesus Christ” appears only in 28:31, perhaps as a kind of climactic assertion. Thus, the shorter reading is to be preferred.