Paul answered, "[No], I am a Jew from Tarsus, in Cilicia, a citizen of an important city, and I beg you to allow me to speak to these people."

Just as they were tying him up [in preparation] for the flogging, Paul said to the officer nearby, "Is it lawful for you to whip a Roman [citizen] before he has been [legally] condemned?"

When the officer heard this, he [immediately] went and told the commander, saying, "What are you going to do? For this man is a Roman citizen."

Then the commander came and said to him, "Tell me, are you [really] a Roman citizen?" Paul said, "Yes."

The commander answered, "It cost me a large sum of money to obtain this [right of] citizenship." Paul replied, "But I am a Roman citizen by birth."

Then those who were about to interrogate Paul [with whips] immediately left him, and the commander also became fearful when he realized that he had chained a Roman citizen [illegally].

This man [i.e., Paul] was grabbed by the Jews and almost killed by them when I discovered what they were doing and rescued him, after learning that he was a Roman citizen.

The next day Moses came across a couple of his relatives who were fighting and tried to settle their dispute by saying, 'Brothers, since you are fellow-countrymen, why are you hurting each other?'

[In the meantime] they brought the young fellow [back upstairs] alive, and were greatly comforted.

The head priest can also verify all this, and so can the body of [Jewish] elders. They furnished me with letters to our fellow-Jews in Damascus, to which I also traveled to bring people back here to Jerusalem, bound in chains to be punished.

But Paul responded to the officials, "These city officials had us innocent Roman citizens publicly beaten and thrown in jail. Are they now trying to release us privately? No indeed! Let the officials themselves come and [publicly] release us."

So, the officers reported what Paul had said and the city officials became fearful when they learned that Paul and Silas were Roman citizens.