Acts 12:5–18

⁵So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.^s

⁶The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains,^t and sentries stood guard at the entrance. ⁷Suddenly an angel^u of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. “Quick, get up!” he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists.^v

⁸Then the angel said to him, “Put on your clothes and sandals.” And Peter did so. “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me,” the angel told him. ⁹Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision.^{w 10}They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself,^x and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him.

¹¹Then Peter came to himself^y and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me^z from Herod’s clutches and from everything the Jewish people were hoping would happen.”

¹²When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark,^a where many people had gathered and were praying.^{b 13}Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer the door.^{c 14}When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed^d she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!”

¹⁵“You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, “It must be his angel.”^e

¹⁶But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished. ¹⁷Peter motioned with his hand^f for them to be quiet and described how the Lord had brought him out of prison. “Tell James^g and the other brothers and sisters^h about this,” he said, and then he left for another place.

¹⁸In the morning, there was no small commotion among the soldiers as to what had become of Peter.