Around a.d. 34, severe persecution pushed crowds out of Jerusalem into the rocky hills of Samaria. Men and women were dragged from houses and locked in prisons. Philip traveled north along the ridge to preach in Samaria, then walked south toward the desert road leading to Gaza. Midday heat beat down on the limestone gravel as an Ethiopian royal treasurer rode along the route in a heavy wooden chariot. The traveler read aloud from an imported leather scroll of Isaiah, a document worth more than six months of a laborer's wages.
In Samaria, a local magician named Simon offered bags of silver equal to years of ordinary wages to buy the power of the Holy Spirit. Peter rejected the cash immediately. Influence over God could not be bought in a market. Further south on the Gaza road, Philip ran alongside the moving chariot of the Ethiopian. The eunuch managed the treasury for the Kandake, the dynastic queen mother of Meroë. He invited Philip to sit beside him and explain the scripture. They reached a roadside pool of water in the arid scrubland. The treasurer ordered the chariot to stop for baptism.
A royal chariot was a heavy machine of iron, oak, and leather that required teams of oxen or strong horses to pull through desert sand. It served as a moving fortress and a visible bank vault for high officials traveling across trade routes. Wealthy men carried scrolls to display status, but reading while absorbing the violent shocks of an unsprung wooden axle required intense concentration. True understanding rarely happens in comfort. The physical labor of travel broke down social barriers between the Samaritan, the Jew, and the Gentile.
Money can buy a horse or a chariot, but it cannot purchase an understanding mind or a clean conscience.
The chariot continued south toward the Nile Valley, leaving two narrow wheel ruts in the gravel of the Gaza road. Those tracks washed away in the winter rains, but the new faith traveled along the northern trade routes all the way into the highlands of East Africa.