NOTES for Act 8:26-40
It would hardly have occurred to Philip to go preach on an empty road, but the Angel of the Lord directly intervenes in the ministry of preaching and sends him there at the very moment when the Ethiopian official is about to pass along it. This encounter cannot be called ordinary, and not only because it happened through a direct angelic prompting. The encounter itself became the embodiment of the prophecy of Isaiah, the book the Ethiopian was reading.
That the foreigner was a Jew by faith is not surprising: by that time faith in the God of Israel had already gone beyond the boundaries of the Jewish people, so it is no wonder that the Ethiopian was reading the book of the prophet Isaiah. What is striking is the court official's humility, his readiness to listen to an interpretation from an ordinary-looking person he met on the road.
Immediately after Philip revealed to the Ethiopian eunuch, whose name remains unknown to us, the meaning of the prophecy, he wanted to be baptized. He did not need a long catechumenate, and not only because he himself was already ready for it.
After parting from Philip, the Ethiopian must have continued reading Isaiah, and a few turns of the scroll later he was going to read the prophecy that the Lord would accept even eunuchs, to whom He would give "an everlasting name that shall not be cut off" (Isa 56:5), and foreigners, "for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples" (Isa 56:7).