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41 Look, you scoffers; be amazed and perish![a]
For I am doing a work in your days,
a work you would never believe, even if someone tells you.’”[b]

42 As Paul and Barnabas[c] were going out,[d] the people[e] were urging[f] them to speak about these things[g] on the next Sabbath. 43 When the meeting of the synagogue[h] had broken up,[i] many of the Jews and God-fearing proselytes[j] followed Paul and Barnabas, who were speaking with them and were persuading[k] them[l] to continue[m] in the grace of God.

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Footnotes

  1. Acts 13:41 tn Or “and die!”
  2. Acts 13:41 sn A quotation from Hab 1:5. The irony in the phrase even if someone tells you, of course, is that Paul has now told them. So the call in the warning is to believe or else face the peril of being scoffers whom God will judge. The parallel from Habakkuk is that the nation failed to see how Babylon’s rising to power meant perilous judgment for Israel.
  3. Acts 13:42 tn Grk “they”; the referents (Paul and Barnabas) have been specified in the translation for clarity.
  4. Acts 13:42 tn Or “were leaving.” The participle ἐξιόντων (exiontōn) is taken temporally.
  5. Acts 13:42 tn Grk “they”; the referent (the people) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
  6. Acts 13:42 tn Or “begging,” “inviting.”
  7. Acts 13:42 tn Or “matters.”
  8. Acts 13:43 sn See the note on synagogue in 6:9.
  9. Acts 13:43 tn BDAG 607 s.v. λύω 3 has “λυθείσης τ. συναγωγῆς when the meeting of the synagogue had broken up Ac 13:43.”
  10. Acts 13:43 tn Normally the phrase σεβόμενοι τὸν θεόν (sebomenoi ton theon) refers to Gentiles (“God-fearers”) who believed in God, attended the synagogue, and followed the Mosaic law to some extent, but stopped short of undergoing circumcision. BDAG 918 s.v. σέβω 1.b lists in this category references in Acts 16:14; 18:7; with σεβόμενοι alone, Acts 13:50; 17:4, 17; the phrase is also found in Josephus, Ant. 14.7.2 (14.110). Unique to this particular verse is the combination σεβόμενοι προσηλύτων (sebomenoi prosēlutōn). Later rabbinic discussion suggests that to be regarded as a proper proselyte, a Gentile male had to submit to circumcision. If that is the case here, these Gentiles in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch should be regarded as full proselytes who had converted completely to Judaism and undergone circumcision. It is probably more likely, however, that προσηλύτων is used here in a somewhat looser sense (note the use of σεβομένας [sebomenas] alone to refer to women in Acts 13:50) and that these Gentiles were still in the category commonly called “God-fearers” without being full, technical proselytes to Judaism. See further K. G. Kuhn, TDNT 6:732-34, 743-44. Regardless, the point is that many Gentiles, as well as Jews, came to faith.
  11. Acts 13:43 tn This is the meaning given for ἔπειθον (epeithon) in this verse by BDAG 791 s.v. πείθω 1.b.
  12. Acts 13:43 tn Grk “who, as they were speaking with them, were persuading them.”
  13. Acts 13:43 tn The verb προμένειν (promenein) is similar in force to the use of μένω (menō, “to reside/remain”) in the Gospel and Epistles of John.