About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds unfastened. When the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. ( Acts 16:25-27)
An earthquake usually has a major impact when it occurs. The magnitude of the earthquake had to of been great for it to have broken down the foundations of the prison. How is it that the jailer slept though such a major earthquake? It says he had supposed the prisoners had escaped. If it was so great would he not have seen the damage from it? Since he didn’t notice that there was an earthquake that had taken place that leads me to suspect that the earthquake was not major. Possibly the jail itself was made out of structure that would be easy for a prisoner to escape from, resulting in the jailer having no suspicion of an earthquake at all. Big or small, how could someone sleep through an earthquake?
The location of where the jailer was could help us answer this question. The jailer heard Paul and Silas praying and singing. He may have fallen asleep as he listened to them. He had been commanded to guard them carefully. v23. So, perhaps, the security conscious jailer slept in the prison block close to the cell of the two missionaries. Though it is not certain where the jailer was exactly a possibility is that he could have been in another part away from where they were.
As I researched further I found that the jailer could have been awakened by the earthquake. In our book it does not clearly say that is what woke him. While the prisoners had been listening to the singing, it says nothing of the jailer having done so (he was apparently somewhere adjacent, as the record says he was awakened during the earthquake). Or perhaps all heard and the preachers had stopped by midnight from their praise to get some sleep. We cannot know. This resource also opposes the fact of the jailer hearing Paul and Silas singing and praying. What we can determine is that the jailer was in fact in another room making it possible for him to sleep though this earthquake.
I found another source that claimed that the earthquake was the cause for the jailer waking up. At midnight, the jailer was aroused and awakened from his sleep by “a great earthquake.” The text does not clearly state that he awoke from an earthquake and it leads to suspicion to what really happened? If the earthquake did awake him wouldn’t he have seen the men escaping, resulting in him not having to question what happened to them? If he was close enough to hear them singing he was close enough to see them escaping. I think he slept through this earthquake and was woken possibly by the other prisoners during the chaos and aftermath of the earthquake. The mystery of what did or didn’t wake up the jailer is still unresolved.
The Bible As Literature 