Acts 19:19 — ExegesisTAB

The verse opens with the nominative subject hikanoi {ἱκανοί | hika-noí} ‘many’, identifying a substantial group within the new believers. This is immediately qualified by a genitive articular participial construction ton ta perierga praxanton {τῶν τὰ περίεργα πραξάντων | tôn tà perí-erga praxán-tōn}, literally “of those having practiced the magic arts,” which functions as a partitive genitive, specifying which “many” are in view. The narrative then moves to a coordinated series of aorist and imperfect verbs: synenegkan {συνήνεγκαν | synḗ-neg-kan} ‘they brought together’ introduces the decisive gathering of the books, while katekaion {κατέκαιον | ka-té-kai-on} ‘they were burning’ is imperfect, likely portraying the burning as a sustained public action rather than a mere instantaneous event. The prepositional phrase enopion panton {ἐνώπιον πάντων | en-ṓ-pi-on pán-tōn} ‘before all’ underscores the open, communal nature of their renunciation, functioning adverbially to modify the burning. A second coordinated aorist, synepsēphisan {συνεψήφισαν | sy-ne-psḗ-phi-san} ‘they counted up together’, introduces a further deliberate step: corporate calculation of the value of what has been destroyed, with tas timas auton {τὰς τιμὰς αὐτῶν | tàs timàs autôn} “the values of them” referring back to the books. The final aorist heuron {εὗρον | heû-ron} ‘they found’ reports the result of this calculation, expressed as argyriou myriadas pente {ἀργυρίου μυριάδας πέντε | ar-gy-rí-ou my-ri-á-das pén-te}, literally “five ten-thousands of silver,” a standard Greek way of saying fifty thousand units of silver currency. In translation, the genitive argyriou is rendered as “pieces of silver” or “silver coins” to convey monetary value, while the plural myriadas is captured as “fifty thousand,” preserving the numerical force without reproducing the idiomatic Greek multiplicative structure. The English rendering maintains the sequence of actions—gathering, burning, counting, finding—to reflect the Greek aspectual progression from decisive renunciation to sober assessment of the costly loss.