NOTES for Act 8:26-40
Who was the eunuch from Ethiopia? Probably one of those then called “God-fearers”: a former pagan who had turned to the God of Israel without embracing Judaism in its entirety. Such people were not required to observe all Jewish religious rules and prescriptions, but they did participate in the life of the Synagogue. In synagogues, they listened to preaching and prayed together with Jews, although they sat separately. Observing the Sabbath and kashrut was not obligatory for them, so they could not sit at the same table as Jews during ritual meals in the home. Nor could they take part with Jews in sacrifices or sacrificial meals.
A special place was set aside for them in the Temple, called precisely the Court of the Gentiles. The Ethiopian eunuch belonged to these “God-fearers.” He was, incidentally, a high-ranking man: in Ethiopia at that time, and not only there, eunuch was a responsible court office. But something else mattered more to him. He was awaiting the Messiah. It is no accident that the passage from Isaiah he read on his journey was a messianic prophecy. Evidently, this was not the first time he had reread messianic passages in the prophetic books, trying to understand what he and people like him could expect from the Messiah.
The position of the “God-fearers” was somewhat ambiguous. Inwardly, they had distanced themselves from the familiar pagan—or rather secular—world and its way of life; that life no longer interested them. Yet they had not entered Judaism either and remained largely foreign to the Jewish world. In essence, they stayed on its periphery, and one cannot say that the Synagogue encouraged them to move farther in that direction: at the time, Gentile conversion to Judaism was treated cautiously.
The Synagogue's missionary work consisted in arousing Gentiles' interest and drawing them closer, but no more. The “God-fearers” could only hope that the Messiah would come and everything would change, for them as well. But how can He change the world while remaining a nobody within it? This is the question Philip answers for the eunuch as he explains the relevant messianic passages in the prophetic books. The eunuch understands: what he has awaited so long has finally happened. The Messiah has come. There is nothing more to wait for. He does not wait, and soon the Kingdom has one more inhabitant.