The Covenant Extended to All Who Obey

⁵⁶Thus says the ^Lord:   Maintain justice, and do what is right,for soon my salvation will come,   and my deliverance be revealed. ² Happy is the mortal who does this,   the one who holds it fast,who keeps the sabbath, not profaning it,   and refrains from doing any evil. ³ Do not let the foreigner joined to the ^Lord say,   ‘The ^Lord will surely separate me from his people’;and do not let the eunuch say,   ‘I am just a dry tree.’⁴ For thus says the ^Lord:To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths,   who choose the things that please me   and hold fast my covenant,⁵ I will give, in my house and within my walls,   a monument and a name   better than sons and daughters;I will give them an everlasting name   that shall not be cut off. ⁶ And the foreigners who join themselves to the ^Lord,   to minister to him, to love the name of the ^Lord,   and to be his servants,all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it,   and hold fast my covenant—⁷ these I will bring to my holy mountain,   and make them joyful in my house of prayer;their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices   will be accepted on my altar;for my house shall be called a house of prayer   for all peoples.⁸ Thus says the Lord ^God,   who gathers the outcasts of Israel,I will gather others to them   besides those already gathered.

Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch

²⁶ Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up and go towards the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ (This is a wilderness road.)²⁷So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship²⁸and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah.²⁹Then the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over to this chariot and join it.’³⁰So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’³¹He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him.³²Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this:‘Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,   and like a lamb silent before its shearer,     so he does not open his mouth.³³ In his humiliation justice was denied him.   Who can describe his generation?     For his life is taken away from the earth.’³⁴The eunuch asked Philip, ‘About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?’³⁵Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.³⁶As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’ ³⁸He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him.³⁹When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing.