Ethiopia

(scorched by the sun, black — from two Greek words: aitho, “I burn,” and ops, “face, countenance”) (Acts 8:27). The Hebrew word Cush, which in this citation and in other places of Holy Scripture is translated “Ethiopia,” appears to have been applied to at least three different countries. It was used very often among the Hebrews, just as the word “India” is used among the English at the present day. Where the prophet Zephaniah (3:10) speaks of the return of the Jews from captivity, the word “Ethiopia” probably denotes the country lying east of the river Tigris, the so-called land of Cuthah (2 Kings 17:24; Ps. 68:31 [67:32]; Isa. 31 [as given]).

Further on, this same land is called Ethiopia, or Cush, from which the present-day region of Khuzistan took its name. In the book of Numbers (12:1) the word “Ethiopian” or “Ethiopian woman” refers to the country of southern Arabia, lying along the Red Sea, everywhere called in Hebrew by the word Cush. “I saw the tents of Ethiopia in affliction,” exclaims the prophet Habakkuk (3:7). In many other places of the Bible (Isa. 14:14 [as given]; Jer. 13:23; Ezek. 19:10 [as given]; Acts 8:27), by this word must be understood specifically Syria, lying south of Egypt, comprising the two kingdoms of Nubia and Abyssinia.

This was a mountainous and well-watered country (Isa. 18:2; Zeph. 3:10). Its northern part was called by the Hebrews Sheba (Isa. 43:3), after Seba, the eldest son of Cush (Gen. 10:7), and by the Romans, Meroë. The inhabitants of Ethiopia, as appears from the book of the prophet Isaiah (45:14), were people of tall stature, which is confirmed by the testimony of the well-known Greek historian Herodotus, who says that they were the tallest of all peoples. The Ethiopian queen Candace (a general title of the kings and queens of that country) reigned at Sheba.

The keeper of all her treasure, an Ethiopian eunuch, received baptism from Philip (Acts 8:27–39). A translation of Holy Scripture into the Ethiopian language exists. The Ethiopian Church, planted in the fourth century by Frumentius, despite the heresies of Arianism, Monophysitism, and Jacobitism that spread there afterward, still preserves to this day traces of the Orthodox Greek confession.