Acts 23:24

23:24 and provide mounts for Paul to ride ¹  so that he may be brought safely to Felix ²  the governor.” ³ 

Acts 28:1

Paul on Malta

28:1 After we had safely reached shore, ⁴  we learned that the island was called Malta. ⁵ 

Acts 27:44

27:44 and the rest were to follow, ⁶  some on planks ⁷  and some on pieces of the ship. ⁸  And in this way ⁹  all were brought safely to land.

Acts 27:43

27:43 But the centurion, ¹⁰  wanting to save Paul’s life, ¹¹  prevented them from carrying out their plan. He ordered those who could swim to jump overboard first and get to land, ¹² 

Acts 28:4

28:4 When the local people ¹³  saw the creature hanging from Paul’s ¹⁴  hand, they said to one another, “No doubt this man is a murderer! Although he has escaped from the sea, Justice herself ¹⁵  has not allowed him to live!” ¹⁶ 

[23:24]  ¹ tn Grk “provide mounts to put Paul on.”

[23:24]  ² sn Felix the governor was Antonius Felix, a freedman of Antonia, mother of the Emperor Claudius. He was the brother of Pallas and became procurator of Palestine in a.d. 52/53. His administration was notorious for its corruption, cynicism, and cruelty. According to the historian Tacitus (History 5.9) Felix “reveled in cruelty and lust, and wielded the power of a king with the mind of a slave.”

[23:24]  ³ tn Grk “Felix the procurator.” The official Roman title has been translated as “governor” (BDAG 433 s.v. ἡγεμών 2).

[28:1]  ⁴ tn Grk “We having been brought safely through” [to land] (same verb as 27:44). The word “shore” is implied, and the slight variations in translation from 27:44 have been made to avoid redundancy in English. The participle διασωθέντες (diaswqente") has been taken temporally.

[28:1]  ⁵ sn Malta is an island (known by the same name today) in the Mediterranean Sea south of Sicily. The ship had traveled 625 mi (1,000 km) in the storm.

[27:44]  ⁷ tn The words “were to follow” are not in the Greek text, but are implied. They must be supplied to clarify the sense in contemporary English.

[27:44]  ⁸ tn Or “boards” according to BDAG 913 s.v. σανίς.

[27:44]  ⁹ tn Grk “on pieces from the ship”; that is, pieces of wreckage from the ship.

[27:44]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “And in this way it happened that.” 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.

[27:43]  ¹⁰ sn See the note on the word centurion in 10:1.

[27:43]  ¹¹ tn Or “wanting to rescue Paul.”

[27:43]  ¹² tn BDAG 347 s.v. I. ἔξειμι has “ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν get to land Ac 27:43.”

[28:4]  ¹³ tn Although this is literally βάρβαροι (barbaroi; “foreigners, barbarians”) used for non-Greek or non-Romans, as BDAG 166 s.v. βάρβαρος 2.b notes, “Of the inhabitants of Malta, who apparently spoke in their native language Ac 28:2, 4 (here β. certainly without derogatory tone…).”

[28:4]  ¹⁴ tn Grk “his”; the referent (Paul) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[28:4]  ¹⁵ tn That is, the goddess Justice has not allowed him to live. BDAG 250 s.v. δίκη 2 states, “Justice personified as a deity Ac 28:4”; L&N 12.27, “a goddess who personifies justice in seeking out and punishing the guilty – ‘the goddess Justice.’ ἡ δίκη ζῆν οὐκ εἴασεν ‘the goddess Justice would not let him live’ Ac 28:4.” Although a number of modern English translations have rendered δίκη (dikh) “justice,” preferring to use an abstraction, in the original setting it is almost certainly a reference to a pagan deity. In the translation, the noun “justice” was capitalized and the reflexive pronoun “herself” was supplied to make the personification clear. This was considered preferable to supplying a word like ‘goddess’ in connection with δίκη.

[28:4]  ¹⁶ sn The entire scene is played out initially as a kind of oracle from the gods resulting in the judgment of a guilty person (Justice herself has not allowed him to live). Paul’s survival of this incident without ill effects thus spoke volumes about his innocence.