20:30a

Even: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as Even is often translated as “and.” It indicates additional information and sometimes surprising or unexpected information. So the Berean Standard Bible translates it here as Even. Another way to translate it is:

Also (New Century Version)

from your own number: This phrase in Greek is literally “from you yourselves.” Some people (probably men) from their church would begin to distort the truth. Other ways to translate this phrase are:

from among your own selves (Revised Standard Version)
-or-
Some of your own men (God’s Word)

men will rise up: Here the phrase rise up indicates that men would begin distorting the truth and so others would notice them. The word can mean “stand up,” but that is not what it means here. Other ways to translate this clause are:

there will be men coming forward (New Jerusalem Bible)
-or-
Some…will come (New Revised Standard Version)
-or-
men will begin to

men: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as men usually refers only to men, but can refer to people in general. Here it is probably expected that the false teachers would be men. But it does not exclude women as false teachers.

distort the truth: The Greek words are literally “speaking that which has been bent/perverted.” These men would take true teachings and change them so that they were lies. Other ways to translate this phrase are:

speaking perverse things (Revised Standard Version)
-or-
teaching perversions of the truth (NET Bible)

20:30b

draw away disciples after them: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as draw away refers to forcefully taking someone away from somewhere. Here it refers to persuading disciples to stop believing the correct teachings about Jesus. Other ways to translate this clause are:

induce the disciples to follow them (New Jerusalem Bible)
-or-
entice the disciples to follow them (New Revised Standard Version)
-or-
lure disciples into following them (God’s Word)

disciples: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as disciples refers to learners who were in a special relationship with a teacher. The learner committed himself to his teacher in order to learn and live according to his teaching and example.

This is Luke’s usual term in Acts to describe Christians. See how you translated this word in 6:1 or 20:1.

The context implies that only some of the disciples in Ephesus would follow the false teachers. For example:

⌊some⌋ disciples

© 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.