Acts 8:28

was returning, and, sitting in his chariot, read Esaias, the prophet.

Through the visit of Peter and John the congregation of Samaria had been so thoroughly established and furnished with special gifts of the Spirit that Philip could well be spared for other missionary work. And so an angel of the Lord, one of those special messengers whom the Lord makes use or in carrying out the work of His kingdom, spoke to Philip, whether in a dream by night or in a vision by day, is immaterial. He had a special order for the evangelist. He who had just preached the Gospel to hundreds and to thousands was to be sent a long way to open the Scriptures to one individual soul. Philip was to arise, be ready at once, and journey due south from Samaria down to and along the road which led down from Jerusalem (at an elevation of about 2,400 feet) to Gaza, formerly a city of the Philistines, only a few miles from the Mediterranean. There was a Roman road, built probably for military purposes, which passed from Jerusalem almost due southwest and led over Gaza down to Egypt. For a large part of the way this road led through desert places, comparatively uninhabited districts, The obedience of Philip was immediate and implicit; he did according to the word of the angel. By God's arrangement, Philip either struck the road or was traveling along the road designated by the angel when a chariot came along. In this vehicle sat an Ethiopian man, a eunuch, who was a powerful officer of queen Candace, being her minister of finances or secretary of the state treasury. Though he was a eunuch and as such debarred from actual membership in the Jewish congregation, Deuteronomy 23:1, he could very well have been a proselyte of the gate and admitted to the Court of the Gentiles to perform his acts of worship. He was in the service of the queen of the Ethiopians, the queen of Nubia, whose official title was Candace, and had made the long trip for the express purpose of attending to his religious duties. It is difficult to say whether he had come up in the season without festivals, or whether the fall of the year, with its Festival of New Year, Day of Atonement, and Feast of Tabernacles, had meanwhile come, the latter being very likely. In returning home, the eunuch was employing his time in the best possible manner. Sitting in his chariot, he was reading the book of the Prophet Isaiah, very probably aloud, after the Oriental fashion, Acts 8:30, and trying incidentally to get the meaning of the text. In this he gives an example which might well be emulated in our days. The Christians of our days, in many instances, read the Bible neither at home nor anywhere else, whereas this heathen proselyte was not ashamed to read it on the public road. It was not the original Hebrew text which he was conning, but the so-called Septuagint, or Greek translation, which had been made in Egypt almost two centuries before.