1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• This is the second of two stories of Philip’s ministry to the Samaritans that make up chapter 8. The first story is about Simon, a Samaritan magician who made a name for himself by doing magic and calling himself “great.” Simon tried to pay the apostles to give him the power to give the Holy Spirit. Like Simon the Samaritan, the Ethiopian eunuch was an outsider to Israeli society, excluded from full participation. However, he is the contrast to Simon, a foreigner who earnestly seeks to understand the scripture.
• This story highlights Luke’s preferential option for the poor and powerless. The eunuch was not an outsider for his social standing; he was, after all, a court official. Nor was his spiritual outsider status of his own doing, he was described as earnestly seeking God through scripture. Rather the existing understanding of membership requirements of the community—his castration and nationality—that kept him out. Philip’s baptism of the eunuch into the community is about demonstrating the expanding nature of membership in the family of God after Christ’s death and resurrection.
• This passage—like Acts 4:32-35 a few weeks ago—follows a chiastic structure. As before, the key to the passage lies in the center, when the Ethiopian eunuch asked the right question, “About whom does the prophet say this?”
A (v. 26-27a): Philip “got up and went” from Samaria south to Gaza
B (v. 27b-28): the Ethiopian eunuch worships and reads Scripture (Isaiah 56)
C (v. 29-30a): Philip “runs” according to the Spirit’s command
D (v. 30b-31): the eunuch queries Philip
E (v. 32-33): Scripture quoted (Isaiah 53:7-8)
F (v. 34): “About whom is the prophet talking?”
E’ (v. 35): Scripture interpreted by Philip
D’ (v. 36-38): the eunuch queries Philip
C’ (v. 39a): Philip snatched away by the Spirit
B’ (v. 39b): the eunuch rejoices
A’ (v. 40): Philip passes through “all the towns” from Gaza north to Samaria
• The opening two verses introduce the characters of the ensuing conversion experience. The angel sending Philip and the eunuch’s chariot cause the scene to echo details of Elijah’s story (1 Kings 17-2 Kings 3). There are also echoes of Jesus’ early mission in Nazareth (Luke 4:26-27) and his appearance to his disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24). Philip is portrayed as the next iteration of Jesus’ work, leading the church’s mission “from place to place” (8:4) beyond Jerusalem.
• V. 26 calls the road between Jerusalem and Gaza “a wilderness road.” This is not geographically true. Some scholars suggest the point of this is to place the incident in the sort of wilderness settings where conversion stories tend to be set. • The eunuch has a very advanced religious resume. He seems to have been a convert to Judaism who had recently made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, an event which has triggered his anxiety about his place in the Jewish community.
• That the man is reading Isaiah is interesting because the man’s biography echoes Isaiah 56:3-8, in which God promises to “gather the outcasts of Israel” (56:8), including those “eunuchs and foreigners” (56:3-4) who “keep the Sabbath and do not profane it” (56:6) and come to “my holy mountain, my house of prayer” (56:7). The Ethiopian eunuch returning from worship in Jerusalem fits all these descriptors.
• While Philip’s abrupt question if the eunuch understood what he was reading (v.30) sounds at first condescending, it gets to the deeper idea of scripture being not simply literary but theological. The eunuch’s reply, “How can I unless someone guides me” (v. 31) shows the eunuch also understood the text to be theological, and was seeking spiritual guidance. His invitation to Philip to “sit beside him” in the role of teacher also highlights this.
• The quoted scripture is from Isaiah 53:7-8, which Luke quotes directly from the Septuagint, which is the first century Greek translation of the Old Testament. The first important connection to this particular text is the choice of part of the prophecy which talks of the suffering Servant’s “humiliation.” Wall asserts that if the Servant’s “humiliation” means social ostracism, than the eunuch relates to the Servant by also being an outcast. There are also several key places where the Septuagint differs from the original Hebrew (which is why if you go to Isaiah 53:7-8, the quote doesn’t match). In the last section “for his life is taken away from the earth, the Hebrew verb in Isaiah is gzr which translates “cut off from the earth” (he dies). But the Septuagint translated gzr as airo which translates as “lifted up” as in exalted, which allows Luke to interpret the Servant’s humiliation as his exaltation.
Works Sourced:
Kirk, J. R. Daniel. “Commentary on Acts 8:26-40.” Working Preacher.
Wall, Robert W. “The Acts of the Apostles.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume X. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2002.
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