15:13a

When they had finished speaking: This clause in Greek is literally “After they were silent.” Barnabas and Paul finished speaking, then James spoke. For example:

After they had stopped speaking (New American Standard Bible)

James: This name is spelled Iakobos in the Greek language. In the Old Testament this name is written in English as “Jacob.”

This James was probably the brother of Jesus, not the brother of the apostle John. You may want to include a footnote to explain this. An example footnote is:

This James was probably the brother of Jesus.

declared: The Greek phrase is literally “responded saying.” James responded to what Peter and the others had said and so spoke as he did in 15:13b–21b. For example:

responded and said

In some languages a simple “said” is all that is needed. This allows the context to indicate he responded to the previous speeches. For example:

said (Contemporary English Version)

15:13b

Brothers: The Greek phrase here is literally “Men, brothers.” See how you translated this phrase in 15:7.

listen to me: This phrase is a command to listen. It is a polite request for people to listen to what he wants to say. James was a leader in the church at Jerusalem, so he had some authority.

In some languages a command to listen would not be polite. If that is true in your language, translate in a way that is polite in this situation. For example:

I would like you to listen to me.
-or-
Could you please listen to me?

© 2001, 2021 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.