25So, when they had solemnly testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they started back to Jerusalem, and were preaching the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans. 26But an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip saying, “Get up and go south to the road that descends from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a desert road.) 27So he got up and went; and there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure; and he had come to Jerusalem to worship, 28and he was returning and sitting in his chariot, and was reading the prophet Isaiah.
Peter and John left the unnamed city of Samaria, destination Jerusalem. But the road back took them through a large swath of Samaria, preaching the gospel on the way. This went against the innate prejudice all Jews had against Samaritans, for as John recalled later, “The Jews have no dealings with Samaritans” (John 4:9b). In fact, Jesus had prepped them for this foray into Samaritan territory when He brought the disciples to the city of Sychar in Samaria. As John records it, “[Jesus] had to pass through Samaria” (John 4:4). The mission overcomes the prejudice. Like Jesus, Peter and John “had” to go.
For Philip, God had other plans, directing him to the south of Israel to Gaza. Again, no hesitancy, Philip simply “got up and went.” This took him out of Samaria, south through Judea into the areas bordering the desert. Just as Jesus had an appointment with the Samaritan woman (John 4), and Peter and John with Simon the magician, now Philip has an appointment to meet an Ethiopian eunuch who was part of an Ethiopian queen’s inner circle.
A “eunuch” was generally a man, assigned to an official responsibility. Eunuchs were usually emasculated, though not always. Often the term is used for a governmental official or member of a royal court (see Matthew 19:12, where Jesus refers to three kinds of eunuchs). This unnamed individual was in charge of the queen’s financial resources. But Luke is careful to note that he was a God-fearing man, like Cornelius in the next chapter of Acts, one who worshiped the God of the Jews and was influenced by the Jewish Scripture, as he was reading the book of Isaiah while riding in his chariot back home.
The third part of the apostolic commission, namely to preach to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8), will be formally recognized by the apostles as we see recorded in two chapters of the book of Acts (10 and 11). But this story of the eunuch gives the first hint of that movement. Before Luke fully dives into that part of the story, he first will give us the story of Saul/Paul’s conversion (chapter 9); he was to become the “apostle to the Gentiles,” the central focus of the rest of the book of Acts.
Lord, thank You for the relentless march of the Word through faithful witnesses.
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