And the angel of the Lord... — Better, an angel. The tense of the verbs in the preceding verse, in the better MSS., implies that the events that follow synchronised with the journey of Peter and John through Samaria. The journey which Philip was commanded to take led him by a quicker route across country into the main road from Jerusalem to Gaza. The history of the city so named (appearing at times in the English version — Deuteronomy 2:23; 1 Kings 4:24; Jeremiah 25:20 — as Azzah) goes even as far back as that of Damascus, in the early records of Israel. It was the southernmost or border-city of the early Canaanites (Genesis 10:19), and was occupied first by the Avim, and then by the Caphtorim (Deuteronomy 2:23). Joshua was unable to conquer it (Joshua 10:41; Joshua 11:22). The tribe of Judah held it for a short time (Judges 1:18), but it soon fell into the hands of the Philistines (Judges 3:3; Judges 13:1), and though attacked by Samson, was held by them during the times of Samuel, Saul, and David (1 Samuel 6:17; 1 Samuel 14:52; 2 Samuel 21:15). Solomon (1 Kings 4:24), and later on Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:8), attacked it. It resisted Alexander the Great during a siege of five months, and was an important military position, the very key of the country, during the struggles between the Ptolemies and the Seleucidæ, and in the wars of the Maccabees (1Ma. 11:61). Its name, it may be noted, meant the “strong.”
Which is desert. — Literally, as in a separate sentence, This (or It) is desert. There is nothing to show whether this was intended to appear as part of the angel’s bidding, or as a parenthetical note added by St. Luke, nor whether the pronoun refers to the “way” or to the “city.” If we assume the latter, we may think of it as written after the city had been laid waste during the Jewish war (A.D. 65). On the former hypothesis, it points to a less frequented route than that from Jerusalem through Ramleh to Gaza, which led through Hebron and then through the Southern or Negeb country. On the whole, the latter seems most to commend itself, and on this view we may see in it part of the instruction which Philip reported as coming, whether in dream or vision or voice we are not told, from the angel of the Lord. He was to go in faith to the less frequented, less promising route from Jerusalem to Gaza, apparently without passing himself through the Holy City, and so to intercept the traveller whose history was to become so memorable.