Acts 10
The full text of Acts 10 in the Trinity Bible Version — clear modern English, translated from the original Greek. Free to read.
1 At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was called the Italian Regiment.
2 He was devout and God-fearing, as was his whole household; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly.
3 One afternoon, about three o'clock, he had a vision. He clearly saw an angel of God come to him and say, "Cornelius!"
4 Cornelius stared at him in fear and said, "What is it, lord?" The angel said, "Your prayers and your gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God."
5 Now send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter.
6 He is staying with Simon the tanner, whose house is by the sea.
7 When the angel who spoke to him had gone, Cornelius called two of his servants and a devout soldier from among his personal attendants.
8 He told them everything and sent them to Joppa.
9 About noon the next day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray.
10 He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared he fell into a trance.
11 He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners.
12 In it were all kinds of four-footed animals, along with reptiles and birds of the air.
13 Then a voice said to him, "Get up, Peter. Kill and eat."
14 "Certainly not, Lord!" Peter replied. "I have never eaten anything impure or unclean."
15 The voice spoke to him a second time: "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean."
16 This happened three times, and at once the sheet was taken back up to heaven.
17 While Peter was puzzling over the meaning of the vision he had seen, the men sent by Cornelius found Simon's house and stopped at the gate.
18 They called out, asking whether Simon who was called Peter was staying there.
19 While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to him, "Look, three men are looking for you."
20 So get up and go downstairs. Go with them without hesitation, for I have sent them."
21 Peter went down to the men and said, "I am the one you are looking for. Why have you come?"
22 They answered, "We come from Cornelius the centurion. He is a righteous and God-fearing man, well respected by the whole Jewish nation. A holy angel told him to send for you to come to his house so he could hear what you have to say."
23 So Peter invited them in to be his guests. The next day he got ready and went with them, and some of the believers from Joppa went along.
24 The following day he arrived in Caesarea. Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends.
25 As Peter was about to enter, Cornelius met him and fell at his feet in reverence.
26 But Peter lifted him up, saying, "Stand up. I am only a man myself."
27 As he talked with him, Peter went inside and found many people gathered there.
28 He said to them, "You know it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean.
29 That is why I came without objection when I was sent for. So may I ask why you sent for me?"
30 Cornelius answered, "Four days ago at this very hour, three in the afternoon, I was praying in my house, and suddenly a man in shining clothes stood before me.
31 He said, 'Cornelius, your prayer has been heard and your gifts to the poor have been remembered before God.
32 Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. He is a guest in the home of Simon the tanner, by the sea.'
33 So I sent for you right away, and you were kind enough to come. Now we are all here in the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to tell us."
34 Then Peter began to speak: "I now truly understand that God does not show favoritism,
35 but in every nation he accepts anyone who fears him and does what is right.
36 This is the message God sent to the people of Israel, announcing the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.
37 You know what has happened throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached—
38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how he went about doing good and healing all who were under the devil's power, because God was with him.
39 We are witnesses of everything he did in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a tree,
40 but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen—
41 not by all the people, but by us whom God had already chosen as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.
42 He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one God appointed as judge of the living and the dead.
43 All the prophets testify about him, that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name."
44 While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message.
45 The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles.
46 For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God. Then Peter said,
47 "Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptized with water. They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have."
48 So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked Peter to stay with them for a few days.
Translation notes (12)
- Acts 10:1a Speira (σπεῖρα), 'cohort', rendered here as 'Regiment', designates a Roman auxiliary unit of roughly six hundred men; a hekatontarches, 'centurion', commanded about a hundred of them. Inscriptional evidence attests an Italian cohort (Cohors II Italica) serving in Roman Syria in the first century, supporting the historical plausibility of Luke's detail.
- Acts 10:2a Phoboumenos ton theon (φοβούμενος τὸν θεόν), 'fearing God', is widely regarded as a semi-technical designation for Gentiles who worshiped Israel's God and attended the synagogue without becoming full proselytes. Cornelius thus stands at the threshold between the Gentile world and Israel, preparing for the narrative that follows. The Greek behind 'gave generously' is eleemosynas, literally 'alms'.
- Acts 10:3a Greek hōran enatēn, 'the ninth hour', is rendered here as 'three o'clock', counting from sunrise. This was the established hour of afternoon prayer in Jewish practice (compare Acts 3:1), so the vision comes to Cornelius, a God-fearer, at a set time of devotion.
- Acts 10:6a Greek byrseus (βυρσεύς), 'tanner', names a trade that handled animal carcasses and was therefore malodorous and, in rabbinic tradition, held in low regard; tanneries were commonly sited near water outside town. That Peter lodges with such a man foreshadows the dismantling of clean-unclean boundaries in the vision that follows.
- Acts 10:14a Greek pairs two distinct terms: koinon (κοινόν), 'common' or 'profane', denoting food defiled by association or contact, and akatharton (ἀκάθαρτον), 'unclean', denoting animals prohibited outright by the dietary laws of Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14. Peter's emphatic refusal, medamos, 'certainly not', echoes Ezekiel's protest in Ezekiel 4:14 against eating defiled food.
- Acts 10:28a The Greek athemiton, 'contrary to custom', describes established Jewish practice rather than an explicit commandment of the Torah, which nowhere forbids all contact with Gentiles. The word for Gentile here is allophylos, literally 'one of another tribe'. The pairing koinon e akatharton, 'impure or unclean', repeats the very words of Peter's rooftop vision in Acts 10:14.
- Acts 10:34a Greek prosōpolēmptēs, 'one who shows favoritism', reflects the Hebrew idiom nasa panim, 'to lift the face', that is, to grant partial regard; Deuteronomy 10:17 and 2 Chronicles 19:7 deny this of God in the same terms. The phrase rendered 'began to speak' is literally 'opening his mouth', a formula introducing a solemn declaration.
- Acts 10:36a The phrase euangelizomenos eirenen, 'announcing the good news of peace', echoes Isaiah 52:7. The Greek pantōn kyrios (πάντων κύριος), 'Lord of all', is a sweeping claim of universal lordship; spoken to a Gentile household, it grounds the preceding statement that God shows no partiality among the nations.
- Acts 10:39a Greek xylon (ξύλον), 'wood' or 'tree', is used here instead of stauros, 'cross', deliberately evoking Deuteronomy 21:22-23, where one hanged on a tree is under God's curse. Peter's wording, repeated in Acts 5:30, frames the crucifixion in this cursed-death language, a connection Paul develops in Galatians 3:13. The rendering 'tree' preserves the echo.
- Acts 10:41a The Greek prokecheirotonēmenois, 'appointed beforehand', occurs only here in the New Testament and stresses that the resurrection witnesses were designated by God in advance. The compound verbs synephagomen kai synepiomen, 'we ate with and drank with', present shared meals as concrete evidence that Jesus rose bodily, not merely as a vision.
- Acts 10:44a The Greek verb epepesen (ἐπέπεσεν), 'fell upon', marks the Spirit's sudden, unmediated descent while the sermon is still in progress and before any baptism. Luke narrates this Gentile outpouring as a deliberate parallel to Pentecost in Acts 2, a connection Peter himself draws in Acts 11:15.
- Acts 10:48a The formula follows the Greek en to onomati Iesou Christou, 'in the name of Jesus Christ', the reading of the earliest witnesses, including Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. Later Byzantine manuscripts, followed by the King James tradition, read 'of the Lord' instead. Luke consistently records baptism in the name of Jesus (Acts 2:38; 8:16; 19:5), distinct from the triadic formula of Matthew 28:19.
About this translation
The Trinity Bible Version (TBV) is Trinity Bible's own modern English translation, worked directly from the original Greek and honest to the earliest manuscripts. It was completed in 2026 — the most modern English Bible translation — and is exclusive to Trinity Bible. Every chapter, including all of Acts, is free to read here on the web.
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