Acts 28:14 — ExegesisTAB

The verse begins with hou {οὗ | hoû} used as a relative adverb, “where,” linking back to the previous location and setting a spatial frame. The aorist participle heurontes {εὑρόντες | heu-rón-tes} “having found” precedes the main verb and is circumstantial, indicating action completed prior to the core event. Its object is adelphous {ἀδελφοὺς | a-del-phoús} “brothers,” here denoting fellow believers. The main finite verb is pareklēthēmen {παρεκλήθημεν | pa-re-klḗ-thē-men}, an aorist passive indicative, “we were invited or urged,” marking the community as the agents of hospitality. The prepositional phrase par autois {παρ᾿ αὐτοῖς | par au-toîs} “with them” specifies the hosts as those alongside whom the stay occurs, and the infinitive epimeinai {ἐπιμεῖναι | e-pi-meî-nai} functions as a complementary infinitive to pareklēthēmen, expressing the content of the invitation, “to remain, to stay on.” The object phrase hēmeras hepta {ἡμέρας ἑπτά | hē-mé-ras hep-tá} “seven days” quantifies the duration of the stay. The conjunction kai {καὶ | kaí} coordinates the hospitality scene with the travel outcome, while houtōs {οὕτως | hoú-tōs} “thus, so” draws an inferential link, presenting their arrival as the result or outcome of this sequence. The prepositional phrase eis tēn Rhōmēn {εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην | eis tēn Rhṓ-mēn} “into Rome” marks movement toward the goal city, and the aorist ēlthamen {ἤλθαμεν | ḗl-tha-men} completes the narrative with a simple past arrival. In translation, the participial construction is retained more literally in the formal rendering (“having found”) to preserve the temporal nuance, while the dynamic version reshapes it as a temporal clause (“when we found”) for natural contemporary English. The passive plus infinitive construction (pareklēthēmen … epimeinai) is rendered with “were invited to remain / invited to stay” to maintain both the sense of hospitality and the dependence of the infinitive on the passive verb. Houtōs is expressed as “thus” or “in this way” to preserve its inferential force connecting the hospitality at that location with the eventual arrival in Rome.