20:15a
Sailing on from there, we arrived the next day: Paul and the others spent the night at Mitylene. Then they got on a ship heading south toward Chios.
opposite Chios: There are two ways to interpret the Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as opposite:
(1) It means across from. The ship was near the mainland and the people on the ship could see Chios across the sea/channel. For example, see the Berean Standard Bible.
(Berean Standard Bible, Revised Standard Version, New Jerusalem Bible, New American Standard Bible, English Standard Version)
(2) It means near. The ship approached Chios but remained some distance away. For example:
approached the island of Chios (God’s Word)
(New International Version, Good News Translation, Contemporary English Version, NET Bible, Revised English Bible, New Century Version)
It is recommended that you follow interpretation (1), because that is the usual meaning of the Greek word.
Chios: Chios is an island south of the island of Lesbos. This island is about 54 kilometers (about 34 miles) from north to south. It is narrower east to west. It is only about five miles from the mainland.
This name is spelled Chios in the Greek language. (The Greek sound spelled ‘ch’ here is similar to a ‘k’ but without making the air stop in the mouth.) A few English versions spell this word “Kios.”
20:15b
we arrived at: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as arrived at means “to sail from one shore to another.” For this ship coming from the north, sailing to Samos meant crossing 20–30 kilometers (12–19 miles) of open sea. Other ways to translate this phrase are:
crossed (New Living Translation (2004))
-or-
sailed/went across
The ship probably stopped at Samos for the night.
Samos:
This name refers to both an island and a city on that island. It is southeast of the island of Chios. The island is about 45 kilometers (about 28 miles) across east to west and 20 kilometers (12 miles) north to south. The city is the northeast part of the island. The southeastern part of the island is 1.4 kilometers (0.9 miles) from the mainland.
20:15c
we came to Miletus: The pronoun we is implied from 20:15b.
Paul and the others probably stayed an extra day or several days in Miletus. The road at that time had to go around what is now Lake Bafa. So a trip to Ephesus was probably about 80 kilometers (50 miles) long.
Miletus: Miletus was a city on the coast of the province of Asia. It was about 48 kilometers (about 30 miles) south of the city of Ephesus.
© 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.