Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and preached Christ unto them.
Then Philip - not the apostle of that name (as some of the fathers supposed), for in that case (as Grotius observes) the apostles would have had no need to send some of themselves to lay their hands on the newly-baptized disciples (Acts 8:14-17). It was the deacon of that name, who in the list of the seven stands next to Stephen, likely as being the next most prominent. Probably (as Meyer supposes) the persecution was especially directed against Stephen's colleagues.
Went down to the city of Samaria, х eis (G1519) polin (G4172) Samareias (G4540). Lachmann inserts the article before polin (G4172), the transcribers, doubtless, understanding the capital to be meant, and deeming the article necessary to express this. But the authorities are decisive against it, and Tischendorf properly adheres to the Received Text]. Our translators, by rendering the phrase "the city of Samaria," evidently understood the capital to be meant; and so Erasmus, Calvin, Beza, Grotius, Hackett, etc. take it. But the very same phrase is used in John 4:5 - "a city of Samaria" - where Sychar is expressly named as the city meant. If this be the sense of the phrase here, Samaria means the region or country; and so Lightfoot, Bengel, DeWette, Meyer, Olshausen, Neander, Humphry, Alford, Webster and Wilkinson, and Lechler, understand it. Probably Sychar is meant-a place at this time of growing importance. Both the religious excitement which Simon Magus caused, and the subsequent triumphs of the Gospel in that place accord well with what we read of Sychar in the Gospel of John (John 4:1-54) - as a place over which a great religious change had come some years before-a change whose good effects still remained; whose imperfect character laid them open to the impostures of Simon Magus, in the first instance, but whose reality and strength enabled them to see through the cheat when exposed to the light of the glorious Gospel which Philip brought them. Perhaps we should mark the providence which sent a Grecian, or Hellenistic, Jew to a people who, from national antipathy, might have been less disposed (as Webster and Wilkinson remark) to a native of Judea.