Acts 16:27

27. The jailer seems not to have heard the singing, but was awakened by the motion of the earthquake, the slamming of the doors, and the clanking of the fetters which fell from the hands of the prisoners. (27) " And the jailer, awaking out of sleep, and seeing the prison-doors open, drew his sword, and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had fled. " It was not so dark as to prevent him from seeing, to some extent, what had taken place. He supposed that the prisoners had, as a matter of course, all rushed out through the open doors. He knew what the penalty, under Roman law, for allowing prisoners to escape, was death; and that peculiar code of honor among the Romans, which made them prefer to die by their own hands, rather than by that of an enemy or an executioner, drove him to this attempt at suicide.