Acts 27:30, commentary and pictures

This moment belongs to Paul's long and tedious voyage to Italy as a prisoner in chains, whose hardship was lightened by the permitted companionship of Luke and Aristarchus, with Aristarchus by choice sharing Paul's bondage to minister to him in his afflictions. It belongs to first-century sea travel in the Christian era, which involved peculiar hardship and peril, since mariners steered largely by the sun and stars, and when these did not appear and there were signs of storm, shipowners feared to venture into the open sea, and during part of the year safe navigation was almost impossible. The sea journey served God's purpose that the ship's crew would witness God's power through Paul and that the heathen would hear about Jesus and have opportunity to be converted through Paul's teaching and miracles. In the shipwreck account Paul, though a prisoner, gives orders aboard the storm-tossed ship and helps preserve everyone on board.

The attempted desertion happened at break of day, when the heathen sailors lost all courage because the stormy coast was only dimly visible with no familiar landmarks and the outlook was gloomy. That break of day was on the fourteenth night. The sailors had let down the boat into the sea under cover of pretending to make preparations for casting anchors out of the foreship, while secretly trying to flee out of the ship to save themselves.

Their plan threatened everyone aboard, for if they had succeeded they would have been wrecked on the rocks and the people left aboard would have perished because they could not handle the sinking vessel. Paul perceived their base design and recognized the danger, and warned that except these men abode in the ship they could not be saved. He said this to the centurion and the soldiers, and the soldiers immediately cut off the ropes of the boat and let her fall off into the sea.