Acts 27:33

ἄχρι δὲ οὐ : only used by Luke in the historical books of the N.T., cf. Luke 21:24; Acts 7:18; in St. Paul's Epistles three or four times, Hebrews 3:13; Revelation 2:25. Ramsay renders “and while the day was coming on,” so A. and R.V.; dum with imperfect, Hebrews 3:13 (Blass). But Rendall takes it as = until, as if Paul had continued his entreaties until close on dawn (imperfect). μεταλαβεῖν τροφῆς, cf. Acts 2:46 for the same phrase, only in Luke in N.T. τεσσαρεσκ.… προσδοκῶντες κ. τ. λ.: “this is the fourteenth day that ye wait (A.V. ‘tarry,' Ramsay, ‘watch') and continue fasting”. Rendall renders “this is the fourteenth day that ye have continued fasting on the watch for the dawn” προσδ. sc. ἡμέραν, as if St. Paul did not mean a fourteenth day of continuous fasting, but fourteen successive nights of anxious watching for the dawn, all alike spent in restless hungry expectation of what the day might reveal (Acts, p. 347), but προσδοκᾶν is here without an object as in Luke 3:15 (Weiss). For the word see further Acts 28:6, and cf. προσδοκία only in Acts 12:11 and Luke 21:26. On the accusative of time, as expressed here, cf. Blass, Gram., p. 93. ἄσιτοι διατελεῖτε : precisely the same collocation of words occur in Galen, εἴ ποτε ἄσιτος διετέλεσεν, so also καὶ ἄδιψοι διατελοῦσιν, and Hippocrates speaks of a man who continued suffering πάσχων διατελέει for fourteen days (see Hobart and Zahn). It must however be admitted that the same collocation as in this verse ἄσιτοι and διατελεῖν is found in Dion. Hal. (Wetstein, in loco). For the construction see Winer-Moulton, xlv., 4; cf. Thuc., i., 34. μηδὲν προσλ., i.e., taking no regular meal, so Weiss, Blass, Zöckler, Alford, Plumptre, Felten, Bethge, Wendt. Breusing, p. 196, and Vars, p. 250, both explain the word as meaning that in their perilous and hopeless condition those on board had not gone to fetch their regular food and rations, but had subsisted on any bits of food they might have by them; in ancient ships there were no tables spread, or waiters to bring food to the passengers, and each one who wanted refreshment must fetch it for himself. Plumptre takes πρός as meaning no extra food, only what would keep body and soul together, but it is doubtful whether the Greek will bear this or Breusing's interpretation.