Acts 22:6-9

22:6 As ¹  I was en route and near Damascus, ²  about noon a very bright ³  light from heaven ⁴  suddenly flashed ⁵  around me. 22:7 Then I ⁶  fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ 22:8 I answered, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ He said to me, ‘I am Jesus the Nazarene, whom you are persecuting.’ 22:9 Those who were with me saw the light, but did not understand ⁷  the voice of the one who was speaking to me.

[22:6]  ¹ tn Grk “It happened that as.” 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.

[22:6]  ² tn Grk “going and nearing Damascus.”

[22:6]  ³ tn BDAG 472 s.v. ἱκανός 3.b has “φῶς a very bright light Ac 22:6.”

[22:6]  ⁴ tn Or “from the sky” (the same Greek word means both “heaven” and “sky”).

[22:6]  ⁵ tn Or “shone.”

[22:7]  ⁶ tn This is a continuation of the same sentence in Greek using the connective τέ (te), but due to the length and complexity of the Greek sentence a new sentence was begun in the translation here. To indicate the logical sequence for the modern English reader, τέ was translated as “then.”

[22:9]  ⁷ tn Grk “did not hear” (but see Acts 9:7). BDAG 38 s.v. ἀκούω 7 has “W. acc. τὸν νόμον understand the law Gal 4:21; perh. Ac 22:9; 26:14…belong here.” If the word has this sense here, then a metonymy is present, since the lack of effect is put for a failure to appreciate what was heard.