1 tn Grk “And when.” Because of the length of the Greek sentence and the tendency of contemporary English style to use shorter sentences, καί (kai) has not been translated here; a new sentence is begun instead.
2 sn They began to stone him. The irony of the scene is that the people do exactly what the speech complains about in v. 52.
3 tn Or “outer garments.”
sn Laid their cloaks. The outer garment, or cloak, was taken off and laid aside to leave the arms free (in this case for throwing stones).
4 tn Grk “After hoisting it up, they…”; the referent (the ship’s crew) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
5 tn The participle ἄραντες (arantes) has been taken temporally.
6 tn Possibly “ropes” or “cables”; Grk “helps” (a word of uncertain meaning; probably a nautical technical term, BDAG 180 s.v. βοήθεια 2).
7 tn BDAG 308 s.v. ἐκπίπτω 2 states, “drift off course, run aground, nautical term εἴς τι on someth….on the Syrtis 27:17.”
8 tn That is, on the sandbars and shallows of the Syrtis.
sn On the Syrtis. The Syrtis was the name of two gulfs on the North African coast (modern Libya), feared greatly by sailors because of their shifting sandbars and treacherous shallows. The Syrtis here is the so-called Great Syrtis, toward Cyrenaica. It had a horrible reputation as a sailors’ graveyard (Pliny, Natural History 5.26). Josephus (J. W. 2.16.4 [2.381]) says the name alone struck terror in those who heard it. It was near the famous Scylla and Charybdis mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey.
9 tn Or perhaps “mainsail.” The meaning of this word is uncertain. BDAG 927 s.v. σκεῦος 1 has “τὸ σκεῦος Ac 27:17 seems to be the kedge or driving anchor” while C. Maurer (TDNT 7:362) notes, “The meaning in Ac. 27:17: χαλάσαντες τὸ σκεῦος, is uncertain. Prob. the ref. is not so much to taking down the sails as to throwing the draganchor overboard to lessen the speed of the ship.” In spite of this L&N 6.1 states, “In Ac 27:17, for example, the reference of σκεῦος is generally understood to be the mainsail.” A reference to the sail is highly unlikely because in a storm of the force described in Ac 27:14, the sail would have been taken down and reefed immediately, to prevent its being ripped to shreds or torn away by the gale.