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Acts

Actschapter 8

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Speaks with:Acts 8×4Matthew 10×4Acts 5×3Acts 13×3Acts 19×3John 5×3

Summary

Chapter summary

Great persecution scatters the church; Philip in Samaria; Simon the sorcerer. Peter and John lay hands and the Spirit is given. Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch on the Gaza road. Isaiah 53 preached; baptism.

Context

History · Luke — Acts overview

  • A. 1–8 Scattered by Persecution, They Preach Everywhere
  • B. 9–25 Simon the Sorcerer Tries to Buy the Gift of God
  • C. 26–40 The Ethiopian Eunuch on the Desert Road

The outline

  1. A.Scattered by Persecution, They Preach Everywherevv. 1 to 8

    Read vv. 1 to 8 →

  2. B.Simon the Sorcerer Tries to Buy the Gift of Godvv. 9 to 25

    Read vv. 9 to 25 →

  3. C.The Ethiopian Eunuch on the Desert Roadvv. 26 to 40

    Read vv. 26 to 40 →

Threads

Each of these runs on past this chapter. The passage you have just read is marked.

A lamb to the slaughter

Pattern

Isaiah's servant is wounded for our transgressions, brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and numbered with the transgressors. Matthew, the Lord himself at the table, the Ethiopian's chariot, and Peter's epistle all quote the same song, each taking a different verse of it.

Acts shows the chapter doing its work inside the canon itself: the eunuch asks of whom speaketh the prophet this, and Philip began at the same scripture and preached unto him Jesus. The song became the church's first recorded sermon outline from Scripture.

  1. Isaiah 53:1-12

    The suffering servant's song

    Wounded for our transgressions; with his stripes we are healed.

  2. Matthew 8:17

    Himself took our infirmities

  3. Luke 22:37

    The Lord claims the verse at the table

    And he was reckoned among the transgressors: for the things concerning me have an end.

  4. Acts 8:32-35 you are here

    The Ethiopian's question answered

    Philip began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus.

  5. 1 Peter 2:24-25

    By whose stripes ye were healed

The world behind this chapter

Acts 8
When
The scattering after Stephen's death · c. AD 33–36
Where
Samaria's cities, and the desert road running southwest from Jerusalem toward Gaza.
Who first heard it
Theophilus and Gentile readers, watching the gospel cross its first two great barriers.

The history

Samaritans and Jews had been enemies for centuries. Samaritans kept the five books of Moses, worshiped on Mount Gerizim rather than in Jerusalem, and had seen their temple there destroyed by a Jewish ruler about 128 BC. Preaching to them was a deliberate step across a hard border.

Simon is described as a practitioner of magic, and the ancient world was full of them — men who sold spells, charms, and healings for a fee. His offer to buy the power to give the Spirit is a business proposition, and it is exactly how his trade worked. The word "simony" for buying church office comes from this scene.

The Ethiopian was a court official of the Kingdom of Kush, south of Egypt, whose capital was at Meroë; "Candace" was a royal title for the queen mother rather than a personal name. He controlled the treasury, travelled by chariot with a driver, and owned a scroll of Isaiah — an object worth a great deal of money.

He was reading it aloud, which is why Philip could hear him from the road. Silent reading was unusual in antiquity; texts were normally sounded out.

What it meant to them

The first readers were being shown that persecution did not stop the mission — it spread it. The believers scattered out of Jerusalem and preached wherever they landed, and Jesus's own outline (Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria) was being fulfilled step by step.

The eunuch's baptism carried a particular sting of grace. The Law had barred a man like him from the assembly, yet Isaiah had promised such men a name better than sons and daughters — and the very scroll in his hands was the passage about the lamb led to slaughter.

Sources cited

Every work MannaFest builds on →

The text of this chapter

This site records the readings below for this chapter. Spelling and word-order differences that change no meaning are passed over.

  • Acts 8:37

    The Ethiopian's confession, "If thou believest with all thine heart"

    The eunuch's confession of faith before baptism is missing from the earliest Greek manuscripts, though it was already known and quoted in the second century, most likely as a line from the church's baptism service that found its way into the text.

    What the manuscripts read here →

Connections from this chapter

v. 30 · Named here

Ethiopian eunuch reads the prophet Isaiah

person/isaiah→

MannaFest topical index

v. 32 · An early manuscript quotes it

Isaiah 53 read by the Ethiopian eunuch, with the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa, ~125 BC) as a witness ~1000 years older than the MT; caption pairs stability with the textual-plurality datum

Isaiah 53:5→

But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.

Commons File:Great_Isaiah_Scroll.jpg (PD-Art)

v. 32 · Prophecy and fulfillment · The Greek Old Testament reads it this way · Quoted here · A person who pictures Christ

The Ethiopian official is reading Isaiah 53:7 aloud (“he was led as a sheep to the slaughter”) and asks Philip, “of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man?” Philip answers by preaching Jesus from that verse (Acts 8:32–35). The question of the Servant's identity is put in the text itself, and answered there.

The Greek Old Testament reads it this way: Luke quotes the LXX verbatim including 'in his humiliation his judgment was taken away' (en te tapeinosei he krisis autou erthe): a distinctly LXX rendering of the Servant (LXX Isa 53:7-8 (Swete, PD); Act 8:32-33)

Isaiah 53:7→

He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so He did not open His mouth.

quoted explicitly in the New Testament

This page draws on Albert Barnes, Notes on the Book of Isaiah; Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Isaiah; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.

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