I had them punished is literally “I punished them,” but the meaning is not that Paul did this on his own but that he had others punish them.

Most translators understand the Greek phrase “made them deny their faith” in the sense of tried to make them deny their faith, though the King James Version and Moffatt indicate that he did in fact make them deny their faith. The question cannot be settled absolutely and depends on whether or not one assumes that Paul was successful in some cases, while in others he was unsuccessful, otherwise he would not have had them put in prison and sentenced to death.

Tried to make them deny their faith is rendered in some languages as “tried to make them say, We no longer believe in Jesus.”

To persecute them may simply be rendered as “to cause them harm” or, in a more technical sense, “to bring accusations against them,” but such actions were designed primarily to cause serious difficulty and harm.

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 .