The phrase the place of prayer is the same as the one referred to in verse 13. In the earlier verse one can render this as “a place where Jewish people habitually gathered together to pray to God.” In verse 16 a similar expression can be employed “a place where people habitually gathered to pray to God.” It may be necessary to specify habitual action and also the goal of prayer, namely, God. Otherwise the reader might assume that this was only a place where someone on some particular occasion happened to be praying.

We were met by a slave girl may, of course, be rendered in the active form as “a slave girl met us.” However, “met” must not be understood in the technical sense of becoming acquainted with, but simply “coming across” or “chance meeting up with.”

A slave girl may be rendered in some languages as “a girl who had been sold into slavery” or “a girl who had been bought as a slave.”

Who had an evil spirit in her that made her predict the future is literally “who had a python-spirit.” “Python” was originally the name given to the snake that guarded the sacred place at Delphi where divine oracles were given. Later, the word “python” was used of anyone who possessed the power to foretell the future. Looked at from the Christian point of view, this “python-spirit” would have been an evil spirit, and therefore the Good News Translation has rendered the phrase an evil spirit (in her) that made her predict the future. Predict the future may be rendered as “tell people what would happen in the future” or “tell people what was going to happen.”

Some persons have assumed that the owners were a man and his wife, but the incidents which took place later would seem to indicate that several men were involved as the owners of this slave girl.

Much money may also be taken in the sense of “much profit.” Telling fortunes (see New English Bible, Jerusalem Bible) better qualifies what she was doing than “foretelling the future” (Phillips). The word translated by telling fortunes appears only here in the New Testament, but when used in the Septuagint it never refers to true prophecy but is always used of lying prophets and of forbidden ways of seeking God’s will. In practically all languages there are expressions for telling fortunes—this is simply the practice of divination. But if there is no generally recognized term or expression for this practice, one can always translate “telling people what would happen to them in the future.”

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 .