This verse gives the two reasons why the Council decided to release the apostles: (1) there were no legal grounds for arrest, and (2) the Council was afraid of the people who had witnessed this miracle.

Warned them even more strongly is an intensive form of the verb used also in verse 17; in both instances the verbs may mean something even stronger than warn; they may mean “threaten.” A term such as “warn” is rather general and must be expressed in somewhat more concrete ways in some languages, for example, “threatened them with punishment,” “said, We will punish you,” or “said strongly, You will suffer.”

An expression such as set them free is rendered quite literally in some languages as “untied them” or “let them go out the door.”

The expression find no reason is sometimes rather radically restructured, for example, “they could not say, This is why we will punish them.” In other instances this expression may be restructured as “they could not justify punishing them” or “they could not give an answer to people who said, Why are you punishing them?” In some languages a term for punish is literally “to cause to suffer.”

An expression for praising God may need to be expressed as direct discourse since it implies speaking, for example, “they said, What has happened shows that God is wonderful.”

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 .