Paragraph 16:29–30

16:29a

Calling for lights, the jailer: This phrase in Greek is literally “having asked for lights.” The jailer probably asked his servants or his prison guards to go and bring lamps. Other ways to translate this clause are:

The jailer asked for ⌊someone to bring⌋ lamps
-or-

⌊He heard this and⌋ asked that ⌊someone go and bring⌋ ⌊lighted⌋ lamps

lights: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as lights probably refers to clay lamps. At that time a lamp was shaped for a wick on one side and burned oil. The exact kind of lamp is not important here. So you should use a general word for a lamp or light producing device. Some of the styles of lamps used at this time are shown below.

Such lamps had a single flame so were not very bright. The jailer asked for more than one lamp so that his prison guards could check the whole prison, or he wanted the place where he was to be well lit.

16:29b

fell: Here the word fell refers to quickly kneeling and putting the face to the ground with arms outstretched toward someone. The jailer did this deliberately in order to show humility and respect. In some languages a literal translation will not have the correct meaning. If that is true in your language, you may want to:

• Translate the meaning of this phrase. For example:

prostrated himself
-or-
threw himself…at the feet of (New Jerusalem Bible)

• Translate the figure of speech literally and explain it in a footnote. An example footnote is:

Here the word “fell” refers to quickly kneeling and putting the face to the ground with arms outstretched toward someone.

• If your language has a different action that shows humility and respect to someone, you may want to use that word or phrase. You may then want a footnote to explain the literal word. An example footnote is:

Literally “fell.” Here the word refers to quickly kneeling and putting the face to the ground with arms outstretched toward someone.

trembling: This word indicates that the jailer was afraid or overwhelmed by all that had just happened. If he was afraid, he was probably afraid that some god had caused all this. He probably assumed that Paul and Silas were the god’s representatives.

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