In Episode 16, the court heard from the Philippian jailer who had placed Paul and Silas in the inner prison after their beating. During the night, he heard the two prisoners praying and singing hymns. Around midnight, an earthquake shook the prison, opened the doors and loosened the prisoners’ bonds. Believing the prisoners had escaped, the jailer prepared to take his own life until Paul called from the darkness and assured him that everyone was still there.

The jailer described how completely the night changed his understanding of the men in his custody. Paul and Silas could have fled, yet they remained, and Paul’s first concern when he saw what the jailer was about to do was to save his life. The jailer asked what he must do to be saved, listened as Paul and Silas told his household about Jesus, washed their wounds, brought them into his home and fed them. Before the night was over, he and his household had been baptized.

Varro recognized the significance of the reversal. Paul had entered the prison under the jailer’s authority, but before sunrise the jailer had accepted the Lord proclaimed by his prisoner. Paul also reminded the court that he had subsequently invoked his rights as a Roman citizen when the Philippian magistrates attempted to release him quietly. The episode showed that Paul did not simply reject Roman authority, but it also gave Varro another example of something Rome could not easily control: a prisoner whose conduct transformed the person assigned to guard him.