Acts 12:19

Be put to death. Literally, “that they should be led away,” that is, to execution. The same verb is rendered “led … away” in the accounts given in the Gospels of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus (Matt. 26:57; 27:2, 31; Mark 14:53; Luke 23:26). A Roman law promulgated about A.D. 529, declares: “The custody and care of imprisoned persons devolves upon the jailor, who must not think that some abject and vile dependent will be responsible, if a prisoner should, in any way escape, for We desire that he himself shall suffer the same penalty to which the prisoner who escaped is shown to have been liable” (The Code of Justinian ix. 4. 4; in S. P. Scott, tr., The Civil Law, vol. 14, p. 364). Doubtless this had long been the law, or at least the usage, in respect to a guard from whom a prisoner escaped. At Philippi, the jailer, when he thought his prisoners had all escaped, was ready to commit suicide rather than meet the death penalty at the hands of the law (Acts 16:27). Compare ch. 27:42.

To Caesarea. Agrippa, not a Roman governor, was in power at Caesarea at this time, for Josephus says that he had received Judea and Samaria from Claudius, in addition to the districts over which he had ruled under Caligula (Antiquities xix. 8. 2).