Acts 27:44

τοὺς λ., sc. ἐξιέναι ἐπὶ τῆν γῆν. οὓς μὲν … οὓς δὲ, Luke 23:33, and in classical Greek. ἐπὶ σανίσιν : “some on planks and some on pieces from the ship,” Ramsay; the planks which were in use in the ship as distinguished from actual parts or fragments of the ship in the next clause; in LXX, Ezekiel 27:5, the word is used of planks for the deck of a ship (Song of Solomon 8:9; 2 Kings 12:9 (?)). Breusing, pp. 45, 203 (so Blass), takes it of the boards or planks which were used for keeping the cargo firmly in its place. The furniture of the vessel had already been thrown overboard, so that we can only think of the pieces broken away as the ship stranded, or perhaps broken off by the escaping crew, ἐπί : here used promiscuously with dative and genitive in the same sense. ἐγένετο : with infinitive following, characteristic of St. Luke, Friedrich, p. 13. διασωθῆναι : on its use by St. Luke here and in Acts 28:1; Acts 28:4 (Luke 7:3), see Hobart, pp. 9, 10, 284. For the remarkable correspondence between the details of the scene of the shipwreck and the topography of St. Paul's Bay see not only J. Smith and Ramsay, but Goerne, p. 374, Breusing, p. 204, and Vars, p. 257. Breusing and Vars both admit that it is not safe to trust too much to tradition, but in this case, as they both point out, it was only likely that St. Paul would have won loyal adherents in the island who would have handed down every detail of his visit to their children, and the local tradition is in striking accordance with the description of the sacred narrative; see further Introd., p. 8.