Philip And The Ethiopian Eunuch
PHILIP AND THE ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH
ACTS 8:25-40
Making Christ known to others isn’t the haphazard thing we sometimes make it! God has his plan and we fit into it.
The church’s leaders leave Samaria (8:25) once their mission is achieved. Philip, however, received a direct summons to keep a lonely rendezvous on the Gaza road (8:26). The other party in the interview was a well-connected courtier, an official in the service of the Candace (a hereditary title borne by Ethiopean queens; “Ethiopia” = Nubia). At Jerusalem, where, probably as a “God-fearer” (see comment on 10:2f.), he had worshiped Israel’s God, he had also acquired a scroll of the book of Isaiah in Greek. The ensuing conversation proceeds by the method of question and answer. Note the three queries which the Ethiopian expresses (8:31,34,36). The evangelist’s answers are straightforward and of immediate help (a lesson here for all Christian counselors today). Philip becomes the interpreter of Scripture, the evangelist with a single text (8:35), and the baptizer of a new convert (8:38).
The Spirit of God who first directed Philip’s footsteps (8:26: here called “an angel of the Lord”) and gave him accurate guidance to the place of human need (8:29) now separates the two men (8:39). Why?
Notes 8:26: “desert” may refer to Gaza, in which case the road ran from Jerusalem to Old Gaza, destroyed by Alexander the Great in 332 BC and in ruins at that time. 8:27: Ethiopia is not the modern Abyssinia, but North Sudan. 8:32-33: a citation from the Suffering Servant poems in Isaiah, interpreted by Philip as fulfilled in Jesus’ life and death, following the example of Jesus’ own application of these passages to his ministry (eg Mark 10:45). 8:35: “opened his mouth”—rabbinical idiom for a lecture on Scripture. 8:36: some instruction on faith and baptism is clearly implied, leading to the eunuch’s request. 8:37 is relegated to the RSV margin as an addition of the Western text. It represents, however, an early baptismal procedure of interrogation and response of faith. Notice the “creed” which the eunuch confessed. 8:39: the same Western text adds a reference to the Holy Spirit’s coming on the new believer. 8:40: in a walking trance, Philip came to himself at Azotus—was it a spiritual elation which upheld him?
Meditation Consider Philip as “the evangelist” (21:8).