Acts 7:11

7:11 Then a famine occurred throughout ¹  Egypt and Canaan, causing ²  great suffering, and our ³  ancestors ⁴  could not find food.

Acts 11:28

11:28 One of them, named Agabus, got up ⁵  and predicted ⁶  by the Spirit that a severe ⁷  famine ⁸  was about to come over the whole inhabited world. ⁹  (This ¹⁰  took place during the reign of Claudius.) ¹¹ 

[7:11]  ¹ tn Grk “came upon all Egypt.”

[7:11]  ² tn Grk “and,” but logically causal.

[7:11]  ³ sn Our. Stephen spoke of “our” ancestors (Grk “fathers”) in an inclusive sense throughout the speech until his rebuke in v. 51, where the nation does what “your” ancestors did, at which point an exclusive pronoun is used. This serves to emphasize the rebuke.

[7:11]  ⁴ tn Or “forefathers”; Grk “fathers.”

[11:28]  ⁵ tn Grk “getting up, predicted.” The participle ἀναστάς (anasta") has been translated as a finite verb due to requirements of contemporary English style.

[11:28]  ⁶ tn Or “made clear”; Grk “indicated beforehand” (BDAG 920 s.v. σημαίνω 2).

[11:28]  ⁷ tn Grk “great.”

[11:28]  ⁸ sn This famine is one of the firmly fixed dates in Acts. It took place from a.d. 45-48. The events described in chap. 11 of Acts occurred during the early part of that period.

[11:28]  ⁹ tn Or “whole Roman Empire.” While the word οἰκουμένη (oikoumenh) does occasionally refer specifically to the Roman Empire, BDAG 699 s.v. οἰκουνένη 2 does not list this passage (only Acts 24:5 and 17:6).

[11:28]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “world, which.” The relative pronoun (“which”) was replaced by the demonstrative pronoun “this” and a new sentence was begun in the translation at this point to improve the English style, due to the length of the sentence in Greek.

[11:28]  ¹¹ sn This is best taken as a parenthetical note by the author. Claudius was the Roman emperor Tiberius Claudius Nero Germanicus, known as Claudius, who ruled from a.d. 41-54.