Acts 9:3-7

9:3 As he was going along, approaching ¹  Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed ²  around him. 9:4 He ³  fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, ⁴  why are you persecuting me?” ⁵  9:5 So he said, “Who are you, Lord?” He replied, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting! 9:6 But stand up ⁶  and enter the city and you will be told ⁷  what you must do.” 9:7 (Now the men ⁸  who were traveling with him stood there speechless, ⁹  because they heard the voice but saw no one.) ¹⁰ 

[9:3]  ¹ tn Grk “As he was going along, it happened that when he was approaching.” The 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.

[9:3]  ² tn Or “shone” (BDAG 799 s.v. περιαστράπτω). The light was more brilliant than the sun according to Acts 26:13.

[9:4]  ³ tn Grk “and he.” Because of the length of the Greek sentence, the conjunction καί (kai) has not been translated here. Instead a new English sentence is begun.

[9:4]  ⁴ tn The double vocative suggests emotion.

[9:4]  ⁵ sn Persecuting me. To persecute the church is to persecute Jesus.

[9:6]  ⁶ tn Or “But arise.”

[9:6]  ⁷ tn Literally a passive construction, “it will be told to you.” This has been converted to another form of passive construction in the translation.

[9:7]  ⁸ tn The Greek term here is ἀνήρ (anhr), which is used only rarely in a generic sense of both men and women. In the historical setting here, Paul’s traveling companions were almost certainly all males.

[9:7]  ⁹ tn That is, unable to speak because of fear or amazement. See BDAG 335 s.v. ἐνεός.

[9:7]  ¹⁰ sn This is a parenthetical note by the author. Acts 22:9 appears to indicate that they saw the light but did not hear a voice. They were “witnesses” that something happened.