Episode 341 Of Jailers and Slave Girls (Acts 16:16-40)

This week BibleWorm reads Acts 16:16-40, a story of Paul and Silas being thrown into prison in Phillipi. It’s a rich and complex story about power and faith and imprisonment and freedom, and it raises the ever-present question - how do we overturn harmful systems of power, while also protecting the vulnerable people who are bound up in those systems? We are amazed at the transformation that happens while Paul and Silas are in prison, where they sing and the others listen; where nobody bothers to run away once the shackles that bind their bodies are opened. And we are only more amazed at the care that Paul and Silas have taken to protect the prison guard. But there is someone else in this story whose fate they seem to overlook, whose story seems primarily to set up the main story. So we wonder, what ever happened to the slave girl?