Acts 16:25

Acts 16:25. And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God. ‘ Peter sleeps in prison between the two soldiers; Paul and Silas sing in the stocks: they cannot raise their hands or bend their knees in prayer, but they can lift up their heart and voice to heaven. Such is the power of joy in the Holy Ghost' (Wordsworth). ‘The limbs,' says Tertullian, ‘do not feel the stocks when the heart is in heaven;' or as another writer has beautifully paraphrased Isaiah 52:7, ‘The feet of those who publish peace are never more beautiful than when they are bound in fetters and in iron.' Wordsworth suggests the prisoners were singing one of the psalms which are entitled a prayer of David, the 17th or 86th.

The Greek verbs in this verse are in the imperfect, and the literal translation brings the scene that night more vividly before us, thus: ‘Paul and Silas in prayer were singing hymns to God, and the prisoners' (in the outer prison) ‘were listening to them' when the earthquake happened.