Stretch out your hand is in the Greek a subordinate clause dependent upon the main verb phrases take notice of the threats and allow us … to speak (v. 29). It may be related to the main verbs as temporal “while you are stretching out your hand,” or as instrumental “by means of stretching out your hand.” However, it is also possible to do as the Good News Translation has done and to understand this verb and the following verb, grant, as an extension of the imperative content of the main verb. If the passage is understood in this fashion, then there are four requests made on the part of the disciples: take notice of the threats, allows us … to speak your message, stretch out your hand, and grant that wonders and miracles may be performed.

The phrase stretch out your hand is in many languages quite meaningless. A nonfigurative equivalent in some languages is “show your power,” “make people see your strength,” or “cause people to see that you are strong.”

The verb to heal must frequently have some goal, for example, “to heal people” or “to cause people to become well.” The causative implied in grant … may be performed may be restructured as a straightforward causative in a number of languages, such as “caused wonders and miracles to happen” or “… to be performed.”

Whenever two terms such as wonders and miracles or “signs and wonders” can be employed, this is, of course, preferable. However, in some languages there is simply no way of designating two different types of miracles, and in this context there is no special emphasis upon the distinctive varieties. Therefore, in some languages it is simply “great miracles,” since the two terms tend merely to reinforce one another rather than to provide distinctions between types of events.

The passive construction may be performed may be equivalent in some languages to “happen.” In other languages an agent, such as “we,” may be introduced, for example, “so that we may perform wonders and miracles.”

If one retains the use of the word name, it is possible in this type of context to use the phrase “using the name of your holy Servant Jesus.” Where the use of name is misleading, this expression may be equivalent to “by the power of your holy Servant Jesus.”

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 .