Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 16:30

"and brought them out and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" — Acts 16:30 (ASV)

Sirs, what must I do to be saved?—The use of “Sirs” here differs from that in Acts 7:26, as it corresponds to a Greek word (the one used in John 20:15) that expresses respect.

We ask what the jailer meant by the question. Was he thinking of temporal safety from the earthquake, or from punishment? Or had there come upon him, in that suicidal agony, the sense of an inward misery and shame, a horror of great darkness from which he sought deliverance? The latter seems in every way most probable.

It must be remembered that the very circumstances which had brought Saint Paul to the prison had pointed him out as proclaiming the way of salvation (Acts 16:17). The witness of the demoniac girl was thus not altogether fruitless.