Lives of Scripture

Candace never appears directly in the narrative, but she frames one of Acts' most significant conversion accounts. "Candace" was not a personal name but the dynastic title of the ruling queens of the African kingdom of Kush (Meroe, in modern Sudan) -- much as "Pharaoh" named Egypt's kings -- and ancient writers such as Strabo and Pliny confirm queens bearing this title governed Kush for generations. Her unnamed court official, a eunuch "in charge of all her treasure," had traveled roughly 500 miles north to Jerusalem to worship, evidence of Kush's ties to Judaism, and was returning home reading the prophet Isaiah when the Holy Spirit sent Philip to meet his chariot on the desert road to Gaza (Acts 8:26-28). Philip explained that the suffering servant in Isaiah 53 was Jesus, and the eunuch believed and was baptized on the spot (8:35-38). Candace's court, though she herself is only mentioned in passing, is where the gospel reached one of its earliest recorded footholds on the African continent, fulfilling Isaiah's picture of foreigners and eunuchs welcomed into God's people (Isaiah 56:3-5).