22. What is to be done? They will surely hear that you have arrived.
23. So do what we tell you. We have four men who have taken a vow.
24. Take these men and purify yourself with them, and pay their expenses that they may have their heads shaved. In this way everyone will know that there is nothing to the reports they have been given about you but that you yourself live in observance of the law.
25. As for the Gentiles who have come to believe, we sent them our decision that they abstain from meat sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, and from unlawful marriage.”
26. So Paul took the men, and on the next day after purifying himself together with them entered the temple to give notice of the day when the purification would be completed and the offering made for each of them.
27. When the seven days were nearly completed, the Jews from the province of Asia noticed him in the temple, stirred up the whole crowd, and laid hands on him,
28. shouting, “Fellow Israelites, help us. This is the man who is teaching everyone everywhere against the people and the law and this place, and what is more, he has even brought Greeks into the temple and defiled this sacred place.”
29. For they had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian in the city with him and supposed that Paul had brought him into the temple.
30. The whole city was in turmoil with people rushing together. They seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple, and immediately the gates were closed.
31. While they were trying to kill him, a report reached the cohort commander that all Jerusalem was rioting.
32. He immediately took soldiers and centurions and charged down on them. When they saw the commander and the soldiers they stopped beating Paul.
33. The cohort commander came forward, arrested him, and ordered him to be secured with two chains; he tried to find out who he might be and what he had done.
34. Some in the mob shouted one thing, others something else; so, since he was unable to ascertain the truth because of the uproar, he ordered Paul to be brought into the compound.