Acts 21:18-26

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.