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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - Acts 23:27 - 23:27
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Was seized (sullēmphthenta). First aorist passive participle of sullambanō.
Rescued him having learned that he was a Roman (exeilamen mathōn hoti Romaios estin). Wendt, Zoeckler, and Furneaux try to defend this record of two facts by Lysias in the wrong order from being an actual lie as Bengel rightly says. Lysias did rescue Paul and he did learn that he was a Roman, but in this order. He did not first learn that he was a Roman and then rescue him as his letter states. The use of the aorist participle (mathōn from manthanō) after the principal verb exeilamen (second aorist middle of exaireō, to take out to oneself, to rescue) can be either simultaneous action or antecedent. There is in Greek no such idiom as the aorist participle of subsequent action (Robertson, Grammar, pp. 1112-14). Lysias simply reversed the order of the facts and omitted the order for scourging Paul to put himself in proper light with Felix his superior officer and actually poses as the protector of a fellow Roman citizen.