Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 4:17

"But that it spread no further among the people, let us threaten them, that they speak henceforth to no man in this name." — Acts 4:17 (ASV)

Let us straitly threaten them.—The Greek gives literally, let us threaten them with threats. The phrase gives the Hebrew idiom for expressing intensity by reduplication, as in blessing I will bless thee (Genesis 22:17), dying thou shalt die (Genesis 2:17, marginal note), and, as far as it goes, indicates that St. Luke translated from a report of the speech which Caiaphas had delivered in Aramaic. It is a perfectly possible alternative that the High Priest, speaking in Greek, reproduced, as the LXX often does, the old Hebrew formula.