Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 8:26

"But an angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza: the same is desert." — Acts 8:26 (ASV)

Luke does not tell us just where Philip was when he received his divine directive to go south to the road from Jerusalem to Gaza. He highlights instead the fact that Philip’s ministry to the Ethiopian eunuch was especially arranged by God and providentially worked out in all its details.

When Luke desires to stress the special presence and activity of God in his narrative, he frequently uses the expression “the angel of the Lord” (cf. Lk 1:11; 2:6; Acts 12:7, 23) for the more normal reference to “the Spirit of the Lord.” Here Luke begins in just such a way and with such a purpose, telling us that “an angel of the Lord” began the action by giving instructions to Philip—and also sustains it throughout, though the more usual “the Spirit” and “the Spirit of the Lord” are used in vv.29, 39. Gaza was the southernmost of the five chief Philistine cities in southwest Palestine and the last settlement before the desert waste stretching away to Egypt. The fifty-mile journey from Jerusalem to Gaza trailed off at its southwestern terminus into patches of desert.