Acts 27:42

Acts 27:42. The soldiers' counsel was to kill the prisoners. We have here an illustration of the extreme cruelty of the Roman military system. But we have also, in however cruel a form, an indication of a high sense of honour and duty. Now that the ship had ‘stuck fast,' and they were close to the shore, the fear of the soldiers was that some of the prisoners might ‘swim out and escape.' They might have very little hope that they themselves would be saved; but if they themselves were drowned, while their prisoners escaped, their military reputation would be tarnished. In two passages of this Book of the Acts (Acts 12:19 and Acts 16:27) we have exemplifications of the terrible responsibility of soldiers in charge of prisoners. Each prisoner may originally have been chained to a soldier; but under the circumstances of the moment, and indeed during the voyage, such fastenings would have been loosened.