Acts 7:27

27. Went Dr. Thomson thinks that Philip intercepted the eunuch somewhere southwest of Latron.

Behold The desert is just now not wholly desert, for the chariot of a princely negro is rolling by, giving it a rare life.

Ethiopia Is a country south of Egypt, including the modern Abyssinia. The word Ethiopia is derived from the Greek αιθω , burn, and ωψ , face, and alludes, of course, to the negro colour.

Eunuch The word etymologically signifies a couch-keeper or chamberlain, and designates a class of mutilated men who are in the East employed to guard the harems. But as in the palaces of princes such persons often gained the personal confidence of the despot, and became his chief adviser, so the very word eunuch was often used of officers of state who belonged not to this injured class. Yet the Greek for of great authority, δυναστης , a dynast or potentate, seems to express the official power, and leaves the term eunuch to its natural meaning.

Candace A name, like Pharaoh, designating not a single individual, but each one of the line of queens by which the country was ruled. Candace was queen of Meroe, (near the modern Sennaar,) an island, or rather peninsula, termed by two arms of the river, a thousand miles up the Nile from Alexandria; to which city the eunuch is on his way to take his upward-sailing Nile-boat, made perhaps of papyrus and acacia. The name of Candace (spelled Kandakatis) is still found on her palace walls in Meroe, as in the cut, in hieroglyphical characters. Her buildings are in Egyptian style, varied with modern, perhaps Roman, elements.

Come to Jerusalem Most probably to the feast of Tabernacles, the festival most visited by far distant residents.

Come to worship He was probably a pagan proselyte, converted from the worship of the ram-headed Ammon by the influence of some of the many Jews residing in Meroe.