Acts 16:35
And when the day was come, the magistrates sent the serjeants, saying, Let those men go.
Open Acts 16:35 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Et cum dies factus esset, miserunt magistratus lictores, dicentes : Dimitte homines illos.
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- Ἡμέρας δὲ γενομένης ἀπέστειλαν οἱ στρατηγοὶ τοὺς ῥαβδούχους λέγοντες· Ἀπόλυσον τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἐκείνους.
Haydock's commentary
Sent the serjeants,2 vergers, or such like officers. (Witham)
2 Lictores, rabduchous, vergers, rod-bearers.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St John Chrysostom A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, Homily XXXVI on Acts xvi. 25, 26
What could equal these souls? These men had been scourged, had received many stripes, they had been misused, were in peril of their lives, were thrust into the inner prison, and set fast in the stocks: and for all this they did not suffer themselves to sleep, but kept vigil all the night. Do you mark what a blessing tribulation is? But we, in our soft beds, with none to be afraid of, pass the whole night in sleep. But belike this is why they kept vigil, because they were in this condition. Not the tyranny of sleep could overpower them, not the smart of pain could bow them, not the fear of evil east them into helpless dejection: no, these were the very things that made them wakeful: and they were even filled with exceeding delight. …
St Jerome The Letters of St. Jerome, To Riparius
You tell me farther that Vigilantius execrates vigils. In this surely he goes contrary to his name. The Wakeful one wishes to sleep and will not hearken to the Saviour’s words, “What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak.” And in another place a prophet sings: “At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto thee because of thy righteous judgments.” We read also in the gospel how the Lord spent whole nights in prayer and how the apostles when they were shut up in prison kept vigil all night long, singing their psalms until the earth quaked, and the keeper of the prison believed, and the magistrates and citizens were filled with terror. …