Acts 23:4-16

⁴The men who were standing near Paul rebuked him. They said, “Are not you (sg) afraid to insult God's servant, our supreme priest?”

⁵Paul replied, “My fellow Jews, I am sorry that I said that. I did not know that the man who told one of you to hit me is the high priest. If I had known that, I would not have insulted our supreme priest, because I know that it is written { that Moses wrote} in our Jewish law, ‘Do not speak evil of any of your rulers!’”

⁶Paul realized that some of the Council members were Sadducees and others were Pharisees. So, in order to cause the Pharisees and Sadducees to argue among themselves instead of accusing him, he called out loudly in the Council hall, “My fellow Jews, I am a Pharisee, like my father was. I have been put { You have put me} on trial here because I confidently expect that some day God will ◄cause people who have died to become alive again/raise people from the dead►.”

⁷When he said that, the Pharisees and Sadducees started to argue with one another about whether people who have died will become alive again or not.

⁸The Sadducees believe that after people die, they will not become alive again. They also believe that there are no angels and no other kinds of spirits. But the Pharisees believe that all people who have died will one day become alive again. They also believe that there are angels and other kinds of spirits.

⁹So the Council members ◄were divided/did not agree with each other►, and they began shouting at one another as they argued. Some of the teachers of the laws that God gave Moses who were Pharisees stood up. One of them said, “We (exc) think that this man has done nothing wrong.” Another said, “Maybe an angel or some other spirit really spoke to him and what he says is true.”

¹⁰Then the Pharisees and Sadducees argued even more loudly with one another. As a result, the commander ◄was afraid/thought► that they would tear Paul to pieces. So he commanded soldiers to go down from the barracks and forcefully take Paul away from the Council members and bring him up into the barracks. So the soldiers did that.

¹¹That night, in a vision Paul saw the Lord Jesus come and stand near him. The Lord said to him, “Be courageous! You (sg) have told people here in Jerusalem about me, and you must tell people in Rome about me, too.”

¹²The next morning some of the Jews MTY who hated Paul met secretly and talked about how they could kill him. They promised themselves that they would not eat or drink anything until they had killed him. They asked God to curse them if they did not do what they promised.

¹³There were more than forty men who planned to do that.

¹⁴They went to the chief priests and Jewish elders and told them, “God has heard us promise/vow that we (exc) will not eat or drink anything until we (exc) have killed Paul.

¹⁵So we request that you go to the commander and ask him, on behalf of the whole Jewish Council, to bring Paul down to us from the barracks. Tell the commander that you want to question Paul some more. But we (exc) will be waiting to kill Paul while he is on the way here.”

¹⁶But the son of Paul's sister heard what they were planning to do, so he went into the barracks and told Paul.