Acts 16:34

αὐτοῦ omitted after αἶκον with BCP. Vulg. ‘in domum suam.’

34. παρέθηκεν τράπεζαν, he set meat (lit. a table) before them. He would not let them remain longer in the dungeon, but took means to testify how the dawn of faith had filled him with joy.

καὶ ἠγαλλιάσατο πανοικὶ πεπιστευκὼς τῷ θεῷ, and rejoiced with all his house, having believed in God. He had been taught in Acts 16:31 ‘to believe on the Lord Jesus,’ and we must explain this verse by that. To believe on Jesus is to believe what God has made known concerning Him. This the jailor had heard in ‘the word of the Lord’ (Acts 16:32), that story which told how in Jesus all the prophecies were fulfilled, and how by His mighty works He had shewn that He was the Son of God.

It is scarcely possible to help being struck in this chapter with the account of the effect of the first preaching of the Gospel in Europe. We see at once its universality and its power. The first notable convert is Lydia, the Asiatic settler, a woman evidently of wealth, position and refinement; then the demoniac slave-girl is made an instrument of proclaiming the presence and power of the Most High God; and last, the Roman jailor, of a class, insensible as a rule and hardened by habit, and also disposed to despise the Jews who were the bearers of the message of the Gospel. The converts of Philippi (the firstfruits of St Paul’s preaching in Europe) were types and an earnest of how Christ’s cause would make its way.