Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 8:40

"But Philip was found at Azotus: and passing through he preached the gospel to all the cities, till he came to Caesarea." — Acts 8:40 (ASV)

The account of the Ethiopian’s conversion ends as it began—with a stress on the special presence of God and his direct intervention. We are told that the Spirit of the Lord “suddenly took” Philip from the scene. This verb connotes both a forceful and sudden action by the Spirit and a lack of resistance from Philip.

With our Western interest in cause-and-effect relations and our modern understanding of historiography, we would like to know more about what exactly happened between the eunuch and Philip and about their subsequent lives. Irenaeus writes that the eunuch became a missionary to the Ethiopians, though we have no way of knowing whether this is true. All that Luke tells us about the eunuch is that his conversion was a significant episode in the advance of the Gospel and that he “went on his way rejoicing.” Likewise, all Luke tells us about Philip is that his early ministries in Samaria and to the eunuch were important features in the development of the Christian mission from its strictly Jewish confines to its Gentile outreach. He refers to further evangelistic activity on the part of Philip in the maritime plain of Palestine and to a final ministry at Caesarea. Later he mentions Philip and his four prophetess daughters at Caesarea in connection with Paul’s last visit to Jerusalem (cf. 21:8–9). Beyond these meager references, Luke tells us nothing because he is interested in the advances of the Gospel proclamation and not in what happened after that.