Deuteronomy 29:10

29:10 You are standing today, all of you, before the Lord your God – the heads of your tribes, ¹  your elders, your officials, every Israelite man,

Ezra 10:1

The People Confess Their Sins

10:1 While Ezra was praying and confessing, weeping and throwing himself to the ground before the temple of God, a very large crowd of Israelites – men, women, and children alike – gathered around him. The people wept loudly. ² 

Jonah 3:5

3:5 The people ³  of Nineveh believed in God, ⁴  and they declared a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them. ⁵ 

Acts 21:5

21:5 When ⁶  our time was over, ⁷  we left and went on our way. All of them, with their wives and children, accompanied ⁸  us outside of the city. After ⁹  kneeling down on the beach and praying, ¹⁰ 

¹ tc Heb “your heads, your tribes.” The Syriac presupposes either “heads of your tribes” or “your heads, your judges,” etc. (reading שֹׁפְטֵכֶם [shofÿtekhem] for שִׁבְטֵיכֶם [shivtekhem]). Its comparative difficulty favors the originality of the MT reading. Cf. KJV “your captains of your tribes”; NRSV “the leaders of your tribes”; NLT “your tribal leaders.”

² tn Heb “with much weeping.”

³ tn Heb “men.” The term is used generically here for “people” (so KJV, ASV, and many other English versions); cf. NIV “the Ninevites.”

⁴ sn The people of Nineveh believed in God…. Verse 5 provides a summary of the response in Nineveh; the people of all ranks believed and gave evidence of contrition by fasting and wearing sackcloth (2 Sam 12:16, 19-23; 1 Kgs 21:27-29; Neh 9:1-2). Then vv. 6-9 provide specific details, focusing on the king’s reaction. The Ninevites’ response parallels the response of the pagan sailors in 1:6 and 13-16.

⁵ tn Heb “from the greatest of them to the least of them.”

⁶ tn Grk “It happened that when.” The introductory phrase ἐγένετο (egeneto, “it happened that”), common in Luke (69 times) and Acts (54 times), is redundant in contemporary English and has not been translated.

⁷ tn Grk “When our days were over.” L&N 67.71 has “ὅτε δὲ ἐγένετο ἡμᾶς ἐξαρτίσαι τὰς ἡμέρας ‘when we brought that time to an end’ or ‘when our time with them was over’ Ac 21:5.”

⁸ tn Grk “accompanying.” Due to the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was begun in the translation and the participle προπεμπόντων (propempontwn) translated as a finite verb.

⁹ tn Grk “city, and after.” Because of the length of the Greek sentence, the conjunction καί (kai) has not been translated here. Instead a new English sentence is begun.

¹⁰ sn On praying in Acts, see 1:14, 24; 2:47; 4:23; 6:6; 10:2; 12:5, 12; 13:3; 16:25.