What Does Acts 8:39 Mean?

(39) **The Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip.**—Human feeling would have naturally led the teacher to continue his work, and to accompany the convert with a view to further instruction; but an impulse so strong and irresistible that it was felt to be from the Spirit of the Lord led Philip to an abrupt and immediate departure. He was literally snatched away from his companion. So understood, the history presents a striking parallel to the Spirit hindering St. Paul from going in this or that direction in Acts 16:6-7. Many commentators have, however, taken the words in a yet more literal and material sense, as stating that Philip was caught up into the air and carried out of sight, and compare the cases of Elijah (1Kings 18:12; 2Kings 2:11), Ezekiel (Ezekiel 3:12; Ezekiel 3:14), and St. Paul (2Corinthians 12:2; 2Corinthians 12:4). In the last two cases, however, the language of the writer implies a spiritual rather than a bodily transport, and the case of Elijah, in 1Kings 18:12, admits of an explanation like that which has now been offered in the case of Philip. The use of the same verb in 2Corinthians 12:2; 2Corinthians 12:4, suggests the thought that here also there was a suspension of the normal activity of consciousness. As St. Bernard walked by the Lake of Geneva, and knew not that he was near it, so Philip rushed away, as drawn on he knew not whither, as in a state of ecstasy; and so, in informing St. Luke of what passed (it is obvious that the report must, in the first instance, have come from him), could give no other account of his journeying than that he was “found” at Azotus. **Went on his way rejoicing.**—A remarkable various-reading runs: “The Holy Spirit fell on the eunuch, and an angel of the Lord caught away Philip;” but it does not appear to be more than a conjectural emendation. Joy at the new-found truth prevailed, we must believe, over any sorrow at the disappearance of the preacher. Eusebius (*Hist. ii.* 1) speaks of him as returning to his native country, and there preaching “the knowledge of the God of the universe and the life-giving abode of the Saviour with men,” and so fulfilling the words that “Ethiopia should stretch forth her hands unto God” (Psalm 68:31); but it does not appear that he was acquainted with any historical facts. It is, perhaps, not without significance in connection with this history, that the Ethiopian Church has been throughout its history the most strongly Jewish in its worship and tone of thought ‘of all Christian communities (Stanley, *Eastern Church, *p. 12).