In Greek, verses 23-25 comprise one sentence. Most translators, however, divide this sentence into several parts for the sake of clarity.

The first reference to two hundred soldiers identifies the most common kind of soldier, namely, those which in ancient time employed a shield and sword. In addition, there were seventy soldiers who rode horseback.

The word rendered spearmen is of uncertain meaning, though many translators render it in this way. The term spearmen may be translated as “soldiers who fought with spears.”

Get … ready … and be ready to leave translates the verb rendered by many other translators as “get ready.” Nine o’clock tonight is literally “the third hour of the night.” Since the night would have begun around six o’clock, the Good News Translation is in agreement with most other translations. However, the Revised Standard Version has rendered the translation literally, and the New English Bible has “three hours after sunset.” In most languages it is increasingly more useful to employ generally accepted expressions for time, whether “nine o’clock at night” or “at twenty-one o’clock” (if in the language the twenty-four hour system of reckoning is more general). However, in a number of languages a local system of determining time is widely employed, and since it often seems far more natural, particularly for this kind of context, its use is certainly to be encouraged.

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 .