You and the Council is more accurately rendered in some languages as “you on behalf of the Council,” since it was not the chief priests, elders, and Council who collectively or individually sent the word to the Roman commander, but the leaders who did this on behalf of the Council as a whole.

Send word is a term which means “to impart official information,” and in the present context it seems to be used at least in a semitechnical sense. The same verb occurs in 23.22; 24.1; 25.2, 15.

Since this message to the Roman commander was primarily a request, it may be necessary to indicate this fact so as not to imply that it was an order—for example, “request the Roman commander, Please bring Paul down to us.”

Pretending … may be translated as “say to him….”

To get more accurate information about him renders a verb phrase in which the verb combines both the ideas of inquiry and of decision. More accurate information may be rendered as “to learn better just what he has done.”

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 .