Discovery BoxActs 16:27 
Context16:27 When the jailer woke up 1 and saw the doors of the prison standing open, 2 he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, 3 because he assumed 4 the prisoners had escaped.
Acts 27:42
Context27:42 Now the soldiers’ plan was to kill the prisoners 5 so that none of them would escape by swimming away. 6
1 tn L&N 23.75 has “had awakened” here. It is more in keeping with contemporary English style, however, to keep the two verbal ideas parallel in terms of tense (“when the jailer woke up and saw”) although logically the second action is subsequent to the first.
2 tn The additional semantic component “standing” is supplied (“standing open”) to convey a stative nuance in English.
3 sn Was about to kill himself. The jailer’s penalty for failing to guard the prisoners would have been death, so he contemplated saving the leaders the trouble (see Acts 12:19; 27:42).
4 tn Or “thought.”
5 sn The soldiers’ plan was to kill the prisoners. The issue here was not cruelty, but that the soldiers would be legally responsible if any prisoners escaped and would suffer punishment themselves. So they were planning to do this as an act of self-preservation. See Acts 16:27 for a similar incident.
6 tn The participle ἐκκολυμβήσας (ekkolumbhsa") has been taken instrumentally.
