This and the following verse are one sentence in Greek. It may be of some interest to note that the word rendered to save in this verse is the same verb rendered when we were safely ashore in 28.1 and he escaped in 28.4. Wanted to save Paul is rendered in some languages as “wanted to prevent Paul from being killed” or “wanted to save Paul’s life.”

He stopped them from doing this may need to be more explicit in some languages—for example, “he stopped the soldiers from killing the prisoners.” However, in some languages this could be ambiguous, suggesting that they had started to kill some of the prisoners. Therefore one may translate as “he prevented the soldiers from carrying out their plan to kill the prisoners.”

After the verb ordered it may be preferable to have direct discourse—for example, “he ordered all the men who could swim, Jump into the water first and swim ashore” or “he ordered, All of you men who can swim must jump overboard and swim ashore.” The fact that those who could swim were the first to go may actually be rendered by placing a conjunctive adverb such as “then” or “later” at the beginning of verse 44.

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on The Acts of the Apostles. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1972. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .