Acts 8:29Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

For according to the Law of Moses, Deut 23:1, a eunuch could not be admitted into the assembly of Jehovah.

The conversion of the Ethiopian man was especially important because, in this case, one deemed worthy of admission into Christ's Church was not merely an unclean Jew, nor even a Samaritan.

He was a Gentile by birth and blood, although a Jew by faith.

Moreover, this Ethiopian man was also a Gentile by the place where he lived. Therefore, by his conversion to Christ, the Church spread far beyond the borders of orthodox Judea, and directly into a Gentile country.

For this reason the conversion to faith in Christ of the Ethiopian man occurs by a special and extraordinary prompting and ordering.

The Angel of the Lord visibly appears to Philip while he still remained in Samaria. He then defines with the greatest exactness the place toward which Philip must direct his preaching journey.

Even this was not enough. When Philip came to the place indicated by the angel, he saw there the Gentile courtier sitting in a chariot and occupied with reading the word of God.

Then there followed a special prompting of the Spirit of God to Philip, that he should begin preaching Christ to this particular man.

The opinion of some interpreters, such as Olshausen, that he was a Jew born in Ethiopia, rests on the fact that he was reading the prophet Isaiah.

This would be well founded if one supposed that he read the prophetic book in the Hebrew text, and not in the Greek translation.

A proselyte is a person who has accepted a new confession of faith, in this case Judaism.

In the East, not only eunuchs in the strict sense were called eunuchs. The name was also given to all persons who occupied the highest offices of state.

Yet here the word "eunuch" is used in the strict sense. This is shown by the fact that this eunuch was a courtier attached to the queen.

It is also shown by the fact that otherwise the word "eunuch" would be superfluous here. The man's high position and office are indicated in the same place by other words.

He was a courtier of Candace, a common title in Ethiopia, like Pharaoh in Egypt, queen of the Ethiopians, and keeper of all her treasures.

Approaching the traveler, he heard that the eunuch was reading aloud the book of the prophet Isaiah. Then he asks the courtier, "Do you understand what you are reading?"

However this question is understood, one thing is certain. The one who asked it knew Holy Scripture well enough to recognize at once the words of the prophet Isaiah and was ready to explain them.

This would be so in whatever language they were written, whether Hebrew or Greek.

In relation to the Ethiopian, whom Philip of course recognized by his bronze darkness and curly hair, Philip's question could have had a twofold meaning.

It could ask whether he understood the literal words of Scripture, since they were written in a language foreign to him. If he understood them linguistically, it could ask whether he understood the deeper meaning of the prophetic word.

This, of course, was the essential point of the question.

Yet there could have been nothing offensive to the courtier even if the question had been understood only in relation to language.

At that time the prophetic Hebrew language was not clearly understood even by all Jews.

The Greek translation was in a generally accessible language. Yet in its application to lofty, sacred, spiritual, and religious concepts, it could still not be understood easily.

Everyday Greek had little of this, so the translators introduced into it many new and rather unusual words.