Acts 21:32-33

21:32 He ¹  immediately took ²  soldiers and centurions ³  and ran down to the crowd. ⁴  When they saw ⁵  the commanding officer ⁶  and the soldiers, they stopped beating ⁷  Paul. 21:33 Then the commanding officer ⁸  came up and arrested ⁹  him and ordered him to be tied up with two chains; ¹⁰  he ¹¹  then asked who he was and what ¹²  he had done.

[21:32]  ¹ tn Grk “who.” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence and the tendency of contemporary English to use shorter sentences, the relative pronoun (“who”) was translated as a pronoun (“he”) and a new sentence was begun here in the translation.

[21:32]  ² tn Grk “taking…ran down.” The participle κατέδραμεν (katedramen) has been translated as a finite verb due to requirements of contemporary English style.

[21:32]  ³ sn See the note on the word centurion in 10:1.

[21:32]  ⁴ tn Grk “to them”; the referent (the crowd) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[21:32]  ⁵ tn Grk “seeing.” The participle ἰδόντες (idonte") has been taken temporally.

[21:32]  ⁶ tn Grk “the chiliarch” (an officer in command of a thousand soldiers). See note on the term “commanding officer” in v. 31.

[21:32]  ⁷ sn The mob stopped beating Paul because they feared the Romans would arrest them for disturbing the peace and for mob violence. They would let the Roman officials take care of the matter from this point on.

[21:33]  ⁸ tn Grk “the chiliarch” (an officer in command of a thousand soldiers). See note on the term “commanding officer” in v. 31.

[21:33]  ⁹ tn Grk “seized.”

[21:33]  ¹⁰ tn The two chains would be something like handcuffs (BDAG 48 s.v. ἅλυσις and compare Acts 28:20).

[21:33]  ¹¹ tn Grk “and he.” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was begun in the translation, and καί (kai) has been replaced with a semicolon. “Then” has been supplied after “he” to clarify the logical sequence.

[21:33]  ¹² tn Grk “and what it is”; this has been simplified to “what.”