Acts 9:4-7

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

[9:4]  ¹ 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]  ² tn The double vocative suggests emotion.

[9:4]  ³ sn Persecuting me. To persecute the church is to persecute Jesus.

[9:6]  ⁴ tn Or “But arise.”

[9:6]  ⁵ 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]  ⁷ 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]  ⁸ tn That is, unable to speak because of fear or amazement. See BDAG 335 s.v. ἐνεός.

[9:7]  ⁹ 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.