Acts 21:16-33

¹⁶Some of the believers from Caesarea also went with us. On the way to Jerusalem, we stayed one night in the house of a man whose name was Mnason. He was from Cyprus Island, and he had believed in Jesus when people were first beginning to hear the message about him.

¹⁷When we arrived in Jerusalem, a group of the believers greeted us happily.

¹⁸The next day Paul and the rest of us went to speak with James, who was the leader of the congregation there. All of the other leaders/elders of the congregation in Jerusalem were also there.

¹⁹Paul greeted them, and then he reported all of the things that God had enabled him to do among the non-Jewish people.

²⁰When they heard that, James and the other elders said, “Praise the Lord!” Then one of them said to Paul, “Brother/Friend, you (sg) know that there are very many thousands of us (inc) Jewish people here who have believed in the Lord Jesus. Also, you know that we (inc) all continue very carefully to obey the laws that Moses gave us.

²¹But our fellow Jewish believers have been told {have heard people say} that when you are among non-Jews, you tell the Jewish believers who live there that they should stop obeying the laws MTY ◄ of Moses/ that Moses received from God►. People say that you tell those Jewish believers not to circumcise their sons and not to practice our other customs. We(exc) do not believe that this is true.

²²But our fellow Jewish believers will certainly hear that you have arrived, and they will be angry with you. So you need to do something RHQ to show them that what they heard about you is not true.

²³So you should do what we suggest to you. There are four men among us who have strongly promised to God about something.

²⁴Go with these men to the Temple and ritually purify yourself along with them. Then, when it is time for them to offer the sacrifices for that ritual, pay for what they offer as sacrifices. After that, they can shave their heads to show that they have done what they promised to do. And when people see you in the courts of the Temple with those men, they will know that what they have been told {what people have told them} about you is not true. Instead, all of them will know that you obey all our Jewish laws and rituals.

²⁵As for the non-Jewish believers, we elders here in Jerusalem have talked about which of our laws they should obey, and we (exc) wrote them a letter, telling them what we decided. We wrote that they should not eat meat that people have offered as a sacrifice to any idol, that they should not eat blood from animals, and that they should not eat meat from animals that people have killed by strangling them. We also told them that they should not have sex with someone to whom they are not married.”

²⁶So Paul agreed to do what they asked, and the next day he took the four men, and together they ritually purified themselves. After that, Paul went to the Temple courts and told the priest what day they would finish purifying themselves ritually and when they would offer the animals as sacrifices for each of them.

²⁷When the seven days for purifying themselves were nearly finished, Paul returned to the Temple courtyard. Some Jews from Asia province saw him there, and they were very angry at him. On another day they had seen Paul walking around in Jerusalem with Trophimus, who was a non-Jew. Their laws did not permit non-Jews to be in the Temple, and they thought that Paul had brought Trophimus into the Temple courtyard that day. So they called out to many other Jews who were in the Temple courtyard to help them seize MTY Paul. They shouted, “Fellow Israelites, come and help us punish this man! This is the one who is constantly teaching people wherever he goes that they should despise the Jewish people. He teaches people that they should no longer obey the laws of Moses nor respect this holy Temple. He has even brought non-Jews here into the court of our Temple, causing God to consider it no longer holy!”

³⁰People throughout MTY the city heard that there was trouble at the Temple courtyard, and they came running there. They grabbed Paul and dragged him outside of the Temple area. The gates to the Temple courtyard were shut { The Temple guards shut the doors to the Temple courts} immediately, so that the people would not riot inside the Temple area.

³¹While they were trying to kill Paul, someone ran to the fort near the Temple and told the Roman commander that many HYP people MTY in Jerusalem were rioting at the Temple.

³²The commander quickly took some officers and a large group of soldiers and ran to the Temple area where the crowd was. When the crowd of people who were yelling and beating Paul saw the commander and the soldiers coming, they stopped beating him.

³³The commander came to where Paul was and seized him. He commanded soldiers to fasten a chain to each of Paul's arms. Then he asked the people in the crowd, “Who is this man, and what has he done?”