Acts 27:42 - Exposition

The soldiers' counsel , etc. The same stern sense of duty in the Roman soldier as moved the keeper of the jail at Philippi to destroy himself when he thought his prisoners had escaped ( Acts 16:27 ). The prisoners ; by which we learn, as also in Acts 27:1 , that there were other prisoners beside Paul going to be tried before Caesar at Rome (comp. Josephus's account ('Life,' sect. 3) of certain priests, friends of his, who were sent as prisoners to Rome, to be tried). Swim out ; ἐκκολυμβάω , only here, but not uncommon in the same sense in classical Greek (see next verse). Escape ; διαφύγοι , peculiar to St. Luke here, but it is the common medical word for a narrow escape from Illness.