Acts 8:39

‘And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, and the eunuch saw him no more, for he went on his way rejoicing.’

The baptism completed it is made clear here that Philip was seen as having fully accomplished his mission. He was ‘snatched away’ by the Spirit. This need not mean on the instant of leaving the water, but certainly soon afterwards. The verb is used in the New Testament to signify ‘take by force’, ‘snatch away’, sometimes ‘take up’ (into heaven) It certainly forcibly indicates that Philip’s work was complete. He was no longer needed. The eunuch must now be left in God’s hands. Many therefore read it as a miraculous removal. But it need not necessarily signify a miracle, and thus others see it as signifying a forcible impression of the Spirit that made him go on his way immediately. But either way a life had been transformed and the eunuch went on his way rejoicing. Note again the connection of the work of the Spirit with rejoicing. Here was the evidence of the genuineness of his experience.

‘When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip.’ This may well be intended deliberately to imply that the Spirit was first present with them in the water. The suggestion may be that the Spirit had come on them both in the water, and that once they reached dry land the Spirit then constrained Philip to be immediately on his way, his task completed, (or it may even possibly mean ‘snatched him away’ as He had once with Ezekiel), while He sent the eunuch on his way rejoicing. That the snatching away follows the pattern of Ezekiel might be seen as supported by the unusual phrase ‘Spirit of the Lord’ with its Old Testament connotations, rather than ‘Holy Spirit’. (One ancient manuscript, A, reads, ‘the Holy Spirit fell on the eunuch, but the angel of the Lord caught away Philip’, but that is probably rather an interpretation. It does, however, demonstrate how the passage was early interpreted).

‘Went on his way rejoicing.’ Rejoicing is constantly an evidence of the work of the Spirit and this was intended to demonstrate that the Ethiopian Minister of Finance was truly converted and full of the Spirit. He had, of course, a solid background of knowing God’s Law, he had his copy of Isaiah, and may well also have had more Old Testament scrolls, and he had been given a thorough grounding in how those applied to Jesus the Messiah. And equally importantly he had the Holy Spirit with him, and would almost certainly find in Nubia other believers who had been converted on trips to Jerusalem. We are undoubtedly intended to gather that he would go back to his synagogue and his people with the new message, and the word would spread in Nubia.