1aSaul fully approved of his execution.
1a Saul, a native of the Cilician city of Tarsus, as we learn later (9:11), may have attended the synagogue in Jerusalem where Stephen engaged in disputation with the spokesmen for the old order (6:9). He too was exceptionally farsighted, and realized as clearly as Stephen did the fundamental incompatibility between the old order and the new. The temporizing policy of his master Gamaliel1 (5:34–39) was not for him: he saw that no compromise was logically possible, and if the old order was to be preserved, the new faith must be stamped out. Hence he expressed his agreement with Stephen’s death sentence as publicly as possible by guarding the executioners’ clothes2—an action which he did not readily forget (cf. 22:20). It has been suggested further that he acted as praeco or herald, charged with proclaiming that the convicted person was about to be executed for the specified offense.3
The refusal to compromise in the issue between Judaism and Christianity which determined his present attitude continued to determine his policy in later days when, as preacher of the gospel and teacher of the church, he built up the work which at first he had endeavored to destroy.
1. Persecution and Dispersion (8:1b–3)
1bThat day a great persecution4 broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all dispersed among the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles.5
2Stephen’s body was taken up and buried by pious men, who made loud lamentation over him.
3But Saul proceeded to ravage the church: he entered their houses one by one, dragged away men and women, and handed them over for imprisonment.
1b-2 The law prescribed the duty of burying the bodies of executed persons, but discouraged public lamentation for them.6 Stephen, at any rate, received the last tribute due to him from devout7 men who evidently disapproved of his condemnation and execution.
His death, however, was the signal for an immediate campaign of repression against the Jerusalem church. If we read the present paragraph in its wider context, we may conclude that it was the Hellenists in the church (the group in which Stephen had been a leader) who formed the main target of attack, and that it was they for the most part who were compelled to leave Jerusalem.8 Some of them, indeed, may have been convinced that, by its rejection of Stephen’s testimony, the city had incurred irrevocable doom; it was the path of wisdom, therefore, to abandon it.9 From this time onward the Jerusalem church appears to have been a predominantly “Hebrew” body.10
The twelve apostles remained in Jerusalem, partly no doubt because they conceived it to be their duty to stay at their post,11 and partly, one may gather, because the popular resentment was directed not so much at them as at the leaders of the Hellenists in the church. The persecution and dispersion, however, brought about a beginning of the fulfilment of the risen Lord’s commission to his disciples: “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria …” (1:8). “The churches of God in Christ Jesus which are in Judaea” (to borrow Paul’s language in 1 Thess. 2:14)12 traced their inception as separate communities from this time of persecution.
3 The prime agent in the repressive campaign was Saul of Tarsus, who now carried into more effective action the attitude to the new movement which he had displayed at the stoning of Stephen. Armed with the necessary authority from the chief-priestly leaders of the Sanhedrin,13 he harried14 the church, arresting its members in their own homes and sending them off to prison. A zealot for the ancestral traditions of his nation,15 he saw that the new faith menaced those traditions. Drastic action was called for: these people, he thought, were not merely misguided enthusiasts whose sincere embracing of error called for patient enlightenment; they were deliberate impostors, proclaiming that God had raised from the tomb to be Lord and Messiah a man whose manner of death was sufficient to show that the divine curse rested on him.16
4Those, then, who were dispersed went about spreading the good news.
5Philip went down to a17 city of Samaria and began to preach Christ to them.
6The crowds paid attention as one man to what Philip was saying as they listened to him and saw the signs which he performed.
7For unclean spirits, with a loud noise, came out of many who were possessed,18 and many paralyzed and lame people were cured.
8There was great joy in that city.
4 As the old Israel had its dispersion among the Gentiles, so must the new people of God be dispersed.19 The words of an apocalyptic writer later in the first century A.D. have been adduced as a parallel to Luke’s narrative here: “I will scatter this people [the Jews of Judaea after A.D. 70] among the Gentiles, that they may do the Gentiles good” (2 Bar. 1:4).20 On the present occasion, the dispersed believers did the utmost good to the people among whom they went, by telling them the good news of the deliverance accomplished by Christ. Not only did they do this in Palestine, but some of them carried the message much farther afield, according to a later passage of Acts which begins with the same wording as this (11:19–26).
5 For the present, however, the interest of the narrative is concentrated on Philip, another Hellenistic leader who, like Stephen, was one of the seven almoners appointed to manage the daily administration of the communal fund. Driven from his work in Jerusalem, Philip went north to Samaria and preached the gospel there.
Between the populations of Judaea and Samaria there was a longstanding cleavage, going back to the isolation of Judah from the other tribes of Israel in the settlement period (cf. Deut. 33:7). This cleavage found notable expression in the disruption of the Hebrew monarchy after Solomon’s death (c 930 B.C.). In spite of attempts to effect a reconciliation in postexilic times,21 the cleavage was widened when the Samaritans were refused a share in the rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple and erected a rival temple on their sacred hill Gerizim.22 The temple on Gerizim was destroyed by the Hasmonaean ruler John Hyrcanus I (134–104 B.C.) when he conquered Samaria and added it to his own realm.23 With the Roman conquest of Palestine in 63 B.C., the Samaritans were liberated from Judaean domination, but the New Testament and the writings of Josephus bear ample witness to the unfriendly relations which persisted between the two groups.
It was thus a bold movement on Philip’s part to preach the gospel to the Samaritans. The Samaritans did, however, share with the Jews the hope of a coming deliverer whom they envisaged in terms of the prophet like Moses of Deut. 18:15–19;24 at a later time, if not at this stage, they described him as the Taheb or “restorer.”25 Philip would be able to build on this hope when he “began to preach Christ to them”: Jesus, it appears, was already identified by his followers in Jerusalem, both “Hebrews” and “Hellenists,” as the promised prophet like Moses.
It is uncertain which city of Samaria was evangelized by Philip. The ancient city called Samaria had been refounded by Herod the Great and renamed Sebaste, in honor of the Roman emperor,26 but it was a Hellenistic city, and the impression given by our narrative is that the people to whom Philip preached were genuine Samaritans. Another suggestion is that it was Gitta, which (according to Justin Martyr) was the home town of Simon Magus.27 Most probably we are intended to think of a place in the neighborhood of Shechem. According to the Fourth Gospel, both John the Baptist and Jesus had been active for a period in this area (John 3:23; 4:4–42); their activity could have provided a foundation on which Philip built.28
6–8 Whichever city it was, Philip’s ministry was marked by works of exorcism and healing so striking that great numbers believed his message and were filled with rejoicing. As usual in the record of Acts, the beneficiaries of the works of healing were paralytics and lame people. As in the ministry of Jesus himself and of his apostles, so in the ministry of Philip these works of mercy and power were visible “signs” confirming the message that he proclaimed.
3. Simon Magus Believes and is Baptized (8:9–13)
9Now at that time there was in the city a man named Simon, practising magic and striking amazement into the Samaritan nation with his claim to be someone great.
10They all paid heed to him, great and small: “This man,” they said, “is the power of God which is called great.”
11They paid him the more heed because he had struck amazement into them for a long time with his magic arts.
12But when they believed Philip as he preached the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.
13Even Simon himself believed and was baptized, and adhered to Philip, and as he saw signs and great works of power being performed, he was amazed.
9–11 Simon Magus plays an extraordinary role in early Christian literature. The word “magus” originally denoted a member of the Median priestly tribe,29 but it came to be used in an extended sense of a practitioner of various kinds of sorcery and even quackery, like Elymas, the sorcerer of Paphos in Cyprus, whom we meet later in the narrative of Acts (13:6–11). The “magi” or “wise men” from the east (Matt. 2:1), who saw the rising star of the newborn king of the Jews, were evidently astrologers. This Simon is depicted in postapostolic writings as the father of all Gnostic heresies.30 Justin Martyr tells how he secured a following of devotees not only in Samaria but in Rome, to which he went in the time of Claudius.31 In the apocryphal Acts of Peter (4–32) he is said to have corrupted the Christians in Rome by his false teaching and made the authorities ill-disposed toward them, but to have been worsted at last in a magical contest with Peter. But it is in the pseudo-Clementine Recognitions and Homilies that the Simon legend is most curiously elaborated: in them he not only appears as the untiring adversary of Peter but seems, to some extent at least, to serve as a camouflage for Paul, reflecting anti-Pauline sentiments among some of the Ebionites and similar Jewish-Christian groups.32 It has been thought by some scholars that the heresiarch Simon, founder of the Gnostic sect of the Simonians,33 was originally a different person from the Simon of Acts, but that they became confused in later tradition.34 More probably they were the same person: Luke knows more about Simon than he records; in this account he relates only what he judged relevant to his purpose.
At any rate, the Samaritan Simon impressed his fellow-countrymen greatly with the exercise of his magic powers, so much so that they accepted his own account of himself and regarded him as the grand vizier of the supreme God, the channel both of divine power and of divine revelation.35
12–13 But Simon Magus himself was impressed by the actions and words of Philip. Like the magicians of Egypt in the presence of Moses, he recognized that the messenger of the true God had access to a source of power that outstripped his own. The proclamation heralded by such an envoy must be accepted with respect, and Simon “believed.” The nature of his belief must remain uncertain. No doubt it was sincere as far as it went, but it was superficial and inadequate. Jesus himself, we are told in John 2:23–24, attached little value to the faith that rests on miracles alone. Yet, when the others who believed Philip’s announcement of the “good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ”36 were baptized, Simon came to receive baptism too, and remained in Philip’s company. No question seems to have been raised about the propriety of baptizing Samaritans: even if Samaritans were excluded from the scope of the original mission of the Twelve, they were indubitably “lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 10:5–6). The adhesion of Simon and his followers to Philip and his converts might have given a peculiar color to Samaritan Christianity, but it was not destined to last long.
4. Peter and John Visit Samaria (8:14–17)
14When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them.
15When Peter and John came down, they prayed for the converts, asking that they might receive the Holy Spirit.
16As yet he had not fallen on any of them; they had only been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus.
17Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.
14 News of Philip’s evangelistic enterprise in Samaria was brought to Jerusalem, and the apostles sent two of their number to Samaria to inspect this work. In the earlier years of the Christian mission, the Jerusalem apostles seem to have regarded it as their duty to exercise a general supervision over the progress of the gospel wherever it might be carried (cf. 11:22). Peter and John, the two leaders of the apostolate, carried out this mission. This is the last occasion on which John plays any part by name in the narrative of Acts; here, as before, his role is a silent one alongside Peter’s. John, with his brother James, had once suggested that fire should be called down from heaven on a Samaritan community for its inhospitable behavior to their Master (Luke 9:52–55). It was with a different attitude that he now set out for Samaria with Peter. The earlier ban on the apostles’ entering any city of the Samaritans (Matt. 10:5) had been rescinded by the unlimited commission of witness laid on them by the risen Christ, in which Samaria was one of the areas explicitly mentioned (Acts 1:8).
Philip now disappears from the Samaritan scene. It has been held that the account of Peter and John’s visit was originally an alternative to the account of Philip’s mission;37 but Philip’s mission is presupposed as a background to the events of Peter and John’s visit.
15–17 The sequel to the apostles’ arrival has been the subject of much theological debate. Unlike the Jerusalem converts on the day of Pentecost, the Samaritan converts, although baptized by Philip “into the name of the Lord Jesus,”38 had not at the same time received the gift of the Holy Spirit, But when Peter and John came to their city, they prayed for them, asking God to grant them the Holy Spirit, and then, when they laid their hands on the converts, the Holy Spirit came on them. It is clearly implied that their reception of the Spirit was marked by external manifestations such as had marked his descent on the earliest disciples at Pentecost.39
Many ancient and modern commentators have inferred that what Peter and John did was to perform the rite of confirmation; some have inferred further that confirmation can be administered only by an apostle or someone in the succession of the apostolic ministry (i.e., in episcopal orders). But it is straining the sense of the present narrative to extract this meaning from it. If confirmation by an apostle were necessary for the reception of the Spirit,40 one might have expected this to be stated more explicitly in one or more of the relevant New Testament passages. But no such thing is hinted at, even in passages where it would certainly be introduced if there were any substance in it. It is not suggested by Paul when he speaks in 2 Cor. 1:21–22 of Christians’ being anointed, sealed, and given the Spirit in their hearts as a guarantee; he does not include the power of thus imparting the Spirit among the spiritual gifts listed in 1 Cor. 12:4–11, and when he thanks God that he did not baptize more than a handful of his Corinthian converts (1 Cor. 1:14–16) the whole force of his argument would disappear if we had to suppose that, even so, he confirmed them all. In other places in Acts, too, there is no hint that apostolic hands were laid on converts before they received the Spirit. Nothing is said about this being done to the Pentecostal believers at Jerusalem (2:38–42) or, later, to the household of Cornelius at Caesarea (10:44–48). The only near parallel to the present occasion is the exceptional case of the Ephesian disciples in 19:1–7. In general, it seems to be assumed throughout the New Testament that those who believe and are baptized have also the Spirit of God.
In the present instance, some special evidence may have been necessary to assure the Samaritans, so accustomed to being despised as outsiders by the people of Jerusalem, that they were fully incorporated into the new community of the people of God. It was one thing for them to be baptized by a free-lance evangelist like Philip, but not until they had been acknowledged and welcomed by the leaders of the Jerusalem church did they experience the signs which confirmed and attested their membership in the Spirit-possessed society. “The imposition of hands is then,” in the words of G. W. H. Lampe, “primarily a token of fellowship and solidarity; it is only secondarily an effective symbol of the gift of the Spirit; it becomes such a symbol solely in virtue of being a sign of incorporation into the Church of the Spirit.”41
Luke presents the Samaritan mission as the first important advance in the Christian mission. The record of a Samaritan “Pentecost” implies that a new nucleus of the expanding community has been established, so that the gospel could now “radiate outwards from this new centre of the Spirit’s mission.”42 Moreover, “the new Israel of the Church of Jesus Christ had succeeded in bringing the whole kingdom of David under the sway of his Son’s sceptre, something the Jews had tried, with much less success, by force of arms during the last five hundred years.”43
5. Peter and Simon Magus (8:18–24)
18When Simon saw that the Spirit44 was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money.
19“Give me also this authority,” he said, “so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”
20But Peter and John said to him, “Perdition take you and your silver together, for thinking that the gift of God could be obtained with money.
21You have no part or share in this matter, for your heart is not upright before God.
22So repent of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that the thought of your heart may be forgiven.
23I see that you are still full of gall and wormwood, still wearing the fetters of unrighteousness.”
24Simon replied, “Do you please pray to the Lord for me, so that none of the things you have said may come on me.”45
18–19 Whether the external signs which accompanied the reception of the Spirit on this occasion were identical with the Pentecostal signs or not, they were at any rate of so impressive a nature that Simon Magus craved the power to reproduce them at will. Now he felt he was getting near the heart of these mysteries; the latest phenomena were obviously associated with the imposition of hands. If only they could be associated with the imposition of his hands, what an access of authority and prestige would be his! So, regarding Peter and John as extraordinarily gifted practitioners of religious magic, he offered to buy from them a share in their secret power. It is this act of Simon that has given the term “simony” to our religious vocabulary.
20–23 Simon was quite unprepared for the stern words which his simple-minded request evoked. On an earlier occasion Peter and John were unable to give silver or gold (3:6); now they refused to accept any, and were shocked that it should have been offered to them. Simon’s idea that God’s free gift could be bought and sold showed that he had no appreciation at all of the inward character of the gospel or the operation of the Spirit. “Perdition take your silver,” said Peter, “as it will take you too unless you repent and seek forgiveness for your wicked thought.” Simon had believed Philip’s message and been baptized, but he still manifested the signs of his old unregenerate nature. The poisonous root of superstitious self-seeking had not been eradicated from his heart; his soul was still held fast in the “fetters of unrighteousness.”46 It was doubtful, in Peter’s eyes, if Simon had experienced the grace of God in any real sense. Simon interpreted all that he saw and heard in terms of his own standards, but the gospel belonged to a completely new dimension, to which he remained a stranger. In this realm he clearly had “neither part nor share.”
Luke’s account of this confrontation between Peter and Simon provides the archetype for accounts of later confrontations between the two. Philip might have been content with Simon’s attachment to his converts, but the more stringent requirements of apostolic orthodoxy could find no room for Simon and his followers in the believing community. Those who care to speculate on the might-have-beens of history may consider what the outcome would have been if Simon and his followers had been incorporated in the church at this early stage, and decide whether it would have been a good thing or a bad thing for the progress of Christianity.47 Arnold Ehrhardt felt that “the Church lost a man here, who might have been saved; St Peter trampled down the new plantation of St Philip.”48 Others will judge the situation differently.49
24 Simon was terror-stricken. That he should have incurred the displeasure of men who apparently had so much power at their command was an awful thought; the Western text which tells us that he kept on weeping all the time Peter was speaking may be true enough to the facts, if Simon was the emotionally unstable type of medium who is not unknown in our own day, although the picture does not agree so well with the Simon Magus of later tradition. Peter had told him to pray for forgiveness, but to Simon’s way of thinking the prayers of such wielders of power as Peter and John would be more prevalent than his own, so he begged them to pray for him. Arnold Ehrhardt commends Simon for the “unexpected humility expressed in his beautiful reply” to Peter’s denunciation; he confesses, indeed, “to a feeling that Simon comes out much better from this encounter with the apostles than the tempestuous St Peter, who gives him no word of consolation.”50
Canonical literature bids farewell to Simon with this entreaty on his lips that by the apostles’ intercession he may escape the judgment pronounced on his crooked heart.51 Later records of his activity give the impression that either they did not intercede for him or else their intercession was ineffective. Even so, Simon and his followers continued to be known as Christians, as Justin Martyr admits52—a tribute, perhaps, to what Simon learned during the short time he spent in the company of Philip.
6. The Apostles Return to Jerusalem (8:25)
25So, when they had borne their witness and spoken the word of the Lord, they made their way back to Jerusalem, and as they went they preached the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans.
25 Luke brings his account of the apostolic visitation to an end with a “generalizing summary” before he resumes the story of Philip. After what Peter and John had seen of the work of God in Philip’s temporary mission field, they had no hesitation in evangelizing other Samaritan communities as they took the southward road to Jerusalem.
7. Philip and the Ethiopian (8:26–40)
26Now the angel of the Lord spoke to Philip. “Rise up,” he said, “and make your way southward53 by the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a desert road.)
27So he rose up and set out on his way. There he came on a man of Ethiopia, a powerful official of Kandakē, queen of the Ethiopians, a chamberlain who was in charge of all her treasury. He had gone to Jerusalem to worship,
28and on his return journey he was sitting in his chariot, reading the prophet Isaiah.
29The Spirit said to Philip, “Go up to this chariot and join it.”
30So Philip ran up to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” he asked.
31“How could I,” said the man, “unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to get up and sit with him.
32The passage of scripture which he was reading was this:
“Like a sheep he was led off to slaughter,
and like a lamb dumb before its shearer,
so he does not open his mouth.
33As he was humiliated his rights were taken away:
as for his progeny, who will declare it?
because his life is taken away from the earth.”
34Then the chamberlain spoke up. “Tell me, please,” he said to Philip: “who is the person about whom the prophet says this? Himself, or someone else?”
35Then Philip began to speak: beginning at this scripture he told him the good news about Jesus.
36As they journeyed along the road, they came to some water. “Look,” said the chamberlain, “here is water.54 What prevents me from being baptized?”55
38He gave orders for the chariot to halt, and both of them, Philip and the chamberlain, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him.
39When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away,56 and the chamberlain did not see him again; for he continued joyfully on his way.
40As for Philip, he turned up at Azotus.57 Then, passing through city after city, he preached the gospel in them all until he came to Caesarea.
26 The story of Philip is now resumed. This part of it is told in a style which is in some respects reminiscent of the Old Testament narratives of Elijah58 While here, as in 5:19, the Greek phrase rendered “the angel of the Lord” is that used in LXX for the supernatural messenger who manifested the divine presence to human beings,59 Luke’s statement that “the angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, ‘Rise up …’ ” is probably a vivid way of denoting Philip’s divine guidance. In the following narrative it is difficult to see any real distinction between “the angel of the Lord” and “the Spirit of the Lord,” although the Western text introduces a distinction in verse 39.
However that may be, Philip received a divine command to go south to join the Jerusalem-Gaza road—probably the road which ran by way of Beth-govrin, Ptolemy’s Betogabris (refounded later as Eleutheropolis by Septimius Severus). The word “desert” might refer either to Gaza or to the road. The older city of Gaza was destroyed by the Hasmonaean king Alexander Jannaeus in 96 B.C.; a new city was built nearer the Mediterranean by Gabinius in 57 B.C., the old city, as Strabo says, “remaining desert.”60 On the other hand, it was important that Philip should know which road to take; had he taken another road, he would have missed the Ethiopian. Gaza figures in the Old Testament as one of the five cities of the Philistines.
27–28 Along the desert road to Gaza Philip came on a travelling chariot or covered wagon making its way southward; in it was seated the treasurer of the kingdom of Ethiopia (Nubia), who had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and was now returning home. The kingdom of Ethiopia lay on the Nile, south of the first cataract (at Aswan); its two chief cities were Meroe and Napata. The king of Ethiopia was venerated as the child of the sun and regarded as too sacred a personage to discharge the secular functions of royalty; these were performed on his behalf by the queen-mother, who bore the dynastic title Kandakē.61
The Ethiopian treasurer was probably a Gentile worshiper of the God of Israel. He is referred to by a term which may have the more general sense of “chamberlain” or the stricter sense of “eunuch.”62 Eunuchs were commonly employed as court officials in the Near East from antiquity until quite recent times. The law of Israel excluded eunuchs from religious privileges enjoyed by other members of the community (Deut. 23:1); the removal of this ban is foreshadowed in Isa. 56:3–5. At any rate, like the Greeks mentioned in John 12:20,63 this man had visited Jerusalem as a worshiper, probably at the time of one of the great pilgrimage festivals, and was now beguiling his homeward journey by studying a scroll of the book of Isaiah in the Greek version.
29–31 The divine monitor (called the Spirit this time) instructed Philip to approach the chariot, and as he did so, he heard the Ethiopian reading aloud from his copy of Isaiah. Reading in antiquity was almost invariably done aloud.64 Why this should be so will be apparent to anyone who tries to read a copy of an ancient manuscript: the words need to be spelled out, and this is done more easily aloud than in silence. In addition, beginners regularly read aloud; it requires considerable experience (not to say sophistication) to read silently, though this stage is reached more quickly with modern print than with ancient handwriting.
The actual passage of the prophecy which the Ethiopian was reading aloud gave Philip his cue immediately: “Do you understand what you are reading?”65 he asked. The man frankly acknowledged that he did not—that he could not without a guide or interpreter. As Philip appeared to know what he was talking about, the reader invited him to come up into the chariot and sit beside him. He certainly could have found no more reliable guide to the meaning of what he read than the man who had thus strangely accosted him.
32–33 For the passage which he was reading was the great prophecy of the suffering Servant of the Lord which had found its fulfilment so recently in the sacrifice and death of Jesus of Nazareth. The prophet himself, as he gave utterance to these words, might well have wondered and “inquired what person or time was indicated by the Spirit of Christ within” him when thus “predicting the suffering of Christ and the subsequent glory” (1 Pet. 1:11), for it must have been almost impossible to understand how his words could be fulfilled until Jesus came and fulfilled them. Jesus himself appears to have spoken of his death in terms of this prophecy (Isa. 52:13–53:12)—for example, when he said that “the Son of man … came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).66 The words addressed to him by the heavenly voice at his baptism (Mark 1:11) implied that the royal Messiah, acclaimed by God as his Son in Ps. 2:7, was to fulfil his destiny in the mission mapped out for the Servant of the Lord introduced in Isa. 42:1. It was natural to link the oracle opening with “Behold my Servant” in Isa. 42:1 with that opening with similar words in Isa. 52:13. There is no evidence that anyone before the time of Jesus had identified the Isaianic Servant with the Davidic Messiah, but he seems to have identified them in his own person and by his own act. When he insisted that it was written concerning the Son of Man67 that he should “suffer many things and be treated with contempt” (Mark 9:12), it is difficult to think of a more suitable scripture as the basis of such words than Isa. 52:13–53:12.
The section which Luke actually quotes (Isa. 53:7–8 LXX) does not indeed include any of the explicit statements of vicarious suffering found elsewhere in this “fourth Servant song.” One may ask if, as often in the New Testament, the quotation of a few clauses from a “testimony” passage carries the whole context with it by implication:68 this question could be answered with greater assurance here if some details were given of Philip’s application of “this scripture.” Luke certainly knows more of the context than is reproduced here: he cites Isa. 52:13 in Acts 3:13 and Isa. 53:12 in Luke 22:37. But if we pay attention only to the clauses that Luke reproduces, it would be difficult to deduce from them anything but a theology of suffering.
34–35 The Ethiopian’s question, “who is the person about whom the prophet says this? Himself, or someone else?” often serves nowadays as the text for an academic essay or examination question, so numerous are the answers that have been offered.69 But Philip found no difficulty, nor did he hesitate between alternative answers. The prophet himself might not have known, but Philip knew, because the prophecy had come true in his day, and so, “beginning at this scripture, he told him the good news about Jesus.” At a time when not one line of any New Testament document had been written, what scripture could any evangelist have used more fittingly as a starting point for presenting the story of Jesus to one who did not know him? It was Jesus, and no other, who offered up his life as a sacrifice for sin, and justified many by bearing their iniquities, exactly as had been written of the obedient Servant. As the historic fact of Jesus’ undeserved suffering and death is certain, equally certain is it that through his suffering and death men and women of all nations have experienced forgiveness and redemption, just as the prophet foretold.70
36–38 Philip’s persuasive exposition of the Servant’s passion found its way home to the Ethiopian’s heart. Did Philip also tell him, as Peter had told his Jerusalem audience on the day of Pentecost, that the appropriate response to such good news was repentance and baptism for the remission of sins and the reception of the Holy Spirit? We do not know. At any rate, as they journeyed on, they came to some running water—whether the Wadi el-Hesi northeast of Gaza, which is traditionally pointed out as the place, has been rightly or wrongly identified with it is totally uncertain. “See, here is water!” said the Ethiopian. “What is to prevent my being baptized?”71 There was nothing to prevent it, so the chariot was halted, they both went down into the water, and Philip baptized him.
This is the account in the original text. But at quite an early date (probably in the second century) an editor felt that this was not adequate. Philip must surely have satisfied himself of the genuineness of the Ethiopian’s faith. (No doubt Philip was well satisfied, but there are some minds which cannot be content to leave such things to be inferred.) So some words were added in which Philip tests the man’s faith, and he responds with a formal confession: “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”72 The added words of the Western text reflect early Christian practice, to which the Ethiopian is made to conform.73
39 The divine purpose in sending Philip to the Gaza road was accomplished; he was now sped northward by the Spirit on another mission. The Western text, however, makes the angel of the Lord snatch Philip away, while the Spirit of the Lord falls on the Ethiopian.74 The purpose of this textual alteration may be partly to bring in the angel of the Lord at the end of the episode, since he was active at the beginning of it; but the much more important effect of the longer reading is to make it clear that the Ethiopian’s baptism was followed by the gift of the Spirit. Even with the shorter reading it is a reasonable inference that he did receive the Spirit,75. although it would be an impermissible inference in the thinking of those who believe that the Spirit is bestowed only through the imposition of apostolic hands.76 When the Ethiopian disappears from our view, continuing joyfully on his way, it need not be doubted that the joy which filled his heart was that “joy in the Holy Spirit” of which Paul speaks in Rom. 14:17.77
What became of him we cannot tell. According to Irenaeus, he became a missionary among his own people,78 which we should naturally expect—although Irenaeus probably had no more specific information on the matter than we ourselves have. But with the record of his conversion Luke has begun to touch on the evangelization of Gentiles—a subject specially dear to his heart. The Ethiopians were regarded by the Greeks and their neighbors, from Homer’s time onward, as living on the edge of the world.79 In Luke’s day interest in them had been quickened by a Roman expedition of A.D. 61–63 which explored the Nile as far up as Meroe and beyond.80 So soon after the risen Lord’s commission to his disciples had their witness reached “the end of the earth” (1:8).
40 Philip next appeared at Azotus, the old Philistine city of Ashdod, some twenty miles north of Gaza. From there he headed north along the coastal road, preaching the gospel in all the cities through which he passed,81 until at last he reached Caesarea.82 There he seems to have settled down—at least, it is there that we find him when he makes his next appearance in the narrative, twenty years later (21:8). By that time he had become a family man, with four daughters, each one a prophetess—worthy children of such a father.83