And the passage of the scripture which he read was this He was led as a sheep to slaughter, and as a lamb is dumb in presence of him that shears him, thus he opens not his mouth.
A court official from Ethiopia is riding home through the desert. His long trip to Jerusalem has left him empty. On his knees lies an open scroll of Isaiah, and the words in front of him describe a silent victim led away to die. Two questions sit on the page: who is this sufferer, and why does He not say a word?
The eunuch had reached Isaiah 53:7-8. It describes a trial where everything went wrong and the accused let it happen. One writer points to both halves of that: the injustice done to Him, and His quiet acceptance of it.
These verses emphasise the unjust and twisted judgement passed on the Lord Jesus. They also show how He received everything from God. He did not protest His innocence or argue against the sentence. He quietly accepted the injustice, knowing that a deeper purpose was in view.
The picture goes against everything we expect. A man accused of what he did not do argues back. Everyone does. One writer also marks the difference between the two pictures in the verse: shearing is not slaughter.
Verse 7 emphasises His silence before His accusers. When men are treated harshly and unjustly, they protest. That is natural and normal. So His silence went against all experience, and the Gospels record it — Matthew 27:11-14; Mark 15:3-4; Luke 23:9; John 19:9. A sheep really is silent before the shearers, as anyone can see today by watching shearers at work. But He was not like a sheep being sheared. He was like a lamb led to the slaughter. He was indeed "the Lamb of God," as John the Baptist announced, and yet no word of protest left His lips.
Silence here is not weakness or lack of an answer. He had a complete case and chose not to make it.
He could have thrown back every charge and cleared Himself against each accuser. But self-defence was not His aim. Full and unmistakable self-surrender was the business of His blessed life here on earth.
The man reading was doubly frustrated. He had gone to Jerusalem and come away empty. As a eunuch he had no place in the congregation of the Lord. Then the very page he turned to for comfort gave him a sorrow he could not explain.
He sits in his chariot, on his way back from the city of empty forms and lifeless ceremonies. He turns to the prophets, and most of all to Isaiah, to find comfort. But sorrow met him here too, and a sorrow he could not get to the bottom of — the sorrows of One from whom Israel, it seemed, had turned away, One led as a sheep to the slaughter, silent as a lamb before its shearers. He is reading this aloud as he catches up with Philip on the road. He reads as if to press on himself something that ought to mean much to him, but does not. The cloud hangs over it hopelessly, as it seems to him, without a guide; and he has none.
Who is the prophet speaking about? Isaiah 53 answers by telling one story about one Person, detail by detail.
The first verse foretold the Lord's rejection during His life (John 12:38). The fourth verse predicted His ways in grace and healing (Matthew 8:17). The fifth verse stated His bearing of our sins, and the blessed result of that for us (1 Peter 2:24). The ninth verse declared His spotless innocence (1 Peter 2:22). That same verse announced His burial in Joseph's tomb (Matthew 27:57-60). The last verse sets out God's appreciation of Him.
The passage did more than inform the traveller. It won him.
The meekness and gentleness of the Lord, His humiliation, His suffering and His death won the heart of the eunuch. They bound him with everlasting bonds to our great Saviour. He did not delay. He had to become His disciple at once and be identified with Him in His death.
Notice what the man who was shut out found in the end.
The eunuch finds that he too can have his place in the congregation of the Lord. He finds One who can do for him what Jerusalem and the law could not do.
- Silent — He kept quiet, and not for lack of a defence. Self-surrender, not self-defence, was His purpose.
- Slaughtered — the picture moves past shearing to killing. This is the Lamb of God going to death without one word of protest.
- Sealed — he had the right chapter and still sat under a cloud. Without a guide, Scripture left him asking who the sufferer was.
- Spoken — the answer to his question is a Person. Isaiah 53 tells of rejection, healing, sin-bearing, innocence and burial, all of Jesus.
- Shared — the man the law shut out found a place, and asked at once to be identified with the Lamb in His death.
In his humiliation his judgment has been taken away, and who shall declare his generation? for his life is taken from the earth.
The words the Ethiopian official was reading come from the Greek version of Isaiah 53. They describe a trial, a generation, and a life cut short. Three short clauses raise three questions. Whose trial is this? What does "generation" mean here? And why does a prophet speak of a life taken away?
Read as a unit, the verse moves from a courtroom, to the people who filled it, to the outcome on a cross.
The first clause of verse 33 seems to express how His trial made a mockery of all righteousness. The second expresses the unspeakable wickedness of that generation. The third expresses the violent end of His life on earth, which He bowed to — and that end proves their wickedness.
The Greek wording differs from the Hebrew of Isaiah, and it points to His trial.
He was doubtless reading from the Septuagint version in Greek, which renders it, "In his humiliation justice was denied him." And so it was. The trial of our Lord ended in His condemnation and crucifixion, and it was the most shocking miscarriage of justice the world has ever seen. A legal expert has gone through the evidence of the Gospels. He states that every step taken by His accusers and judges, Jews and Gentiles alike, was irregular and unjust.
A human court was not the last word for Him.
In condemning Him, men violated every principle of right judgment. But He was content to keep silent before His judges and to move His case to the highest Court in the universe. He knew that His vindication in the presence of Jehovah was sure.
Commentators differ over the word "generation." One reading takes it as the people alive then — the crowd that condemned Him.
To understand "posterity" here (even in a spiritual sense) seems to go against normal usage, and against this context too. The meaning is His contemporaries instead. How blind they were to His glory! And how blind to the wonderful work His humiliation was about to achieve by His atoning death on the cross! In their murderous hatred they were only hurrying on the very thing that would take away, in the grace of God, the transgression of His people.
The other reading takes "generation" as posterity. On that view, Jehovah Himself answers the question later in the same chapter of Isaiah.
And the prophetic declaration of the result is, "He was cut off out of the land of the living," or as the Ethiopian read it, "His life is taken from the earth." So the prophet asks, "Who shall declare His generation?" and to this question men would all reply that, His life being taken, no generation was possible. When we reach verse 10 of our chapter we shall find the answer Jehovah gives to this question, and it is a very different one, since He was cut off and stricken not for Himself but for the transgression of those whom Jehovah calls "My people."
Readers have tried to draw doctrines about Christ's eternal existence or His birth out of this line. One writer rules all of it out.
Some old interpreters used this to prove the eternal generation of the Word. They were not justified in it, any more than others who took it of His miraculous Incarnation. But no distortion seems worse than the conclusion that words like these promise Christ's life will last for ever. The whole passage refers only to His humiliation.
Two Old Testament offerings picture two sides of His death. Here the prophet gives one side, and John's Gospel the other.
In the burnt offering it is not a question of sin-bearing, or of enduring the wrath of God. It is wholly one of voluntary devotedness, shown in the death of the cross… "For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again" (John 10:17). Here we have the burnt offering side of the death of Christ. On the other hand, the prophet sees Him as the sin offering and says, "his life is taken away from the earth" (Acts 8:33, which is the Septuagint version of Isaiah 53:8).
The verse was a starting point for the gospel, not the whole of it.
The wording differs from the Old Testament we have because of the Septuagint, the Greek version in common use then… The sense stays much the same. But we should not conclude that Philip kept to this scripture alone. He "began" from it, and that word rather implies — and warrants — that he did not end there, but explained other scriptures too.
- Injustice. The first clause records a trial where men broke every principle of right judgment.
- Silence. He did not defend Himself; He transferred His case to God's court, certain of vindication there.
- Blindness. Commentators differ over "his generation." Some take it as the crowd who condemned Him and missed His glory. Others take it as posterity, and let Isaiah answer two verses on.
- Humiliation only. These clauses hold no hidden promise of glory; the whole passage speaks of His lowliness.
- Beginning. Philip started from this verse and did not stop there; he explained other scriptures too. Humiliation was the door in.
And the eunuch answering Philip said, I pray thee, concerning whom does the prophet say this? of himself or of some other?
An Ethiopian official rides home from Jerusalem, reading Isaiah aloud, when Philip catches up with his chariot. His question — who is the prophet talking about? — is the hinge, because the answer turns out to be a name.
He had already told Philip he could not understand the passage without help. Commentators see in that a confession that no one grasps God's truth alone:
Philip put an important question to the eunuch: "Do you understand what you are reading?" The eunuch's answer was just as solemn: "How can I, unless someone guides me?" He was admitting that he could not understand without a teacher. It was almost a confession of a great fact. Whatever the empty boasting of human learning, the mind of man on its own cannot grasp the truth of God at all.
He was a high official, and Philip was a stranger with nothing to mark his rank. He could have waved him away:
A stranger made bold to speak to that eunuch. It would have been natural for him to brush the man off. Why should this plain man dare to intrude on such a high official? He had no attendants, nothing to mark his rank. … But when the Spirit prepares hearts, they are ready to welcome help. The look of the person, or the strangeness of the meeting, raises no objection in the mind of a real inquirer.
The form of his question matters. He did not ask what the passage meant; he asked whom it described.
When Philip was sent to the eunuch, the question was mainly about the person. "About whom," asked the eunuch (not "about what"), "does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?" And Philip "began at that same scripture and preached to him Jesus."
His two options — the prophet himself, or someone else — open an old dispute. Some have read the suffering figure of Isaiah 53 as the nation of Israel. Commentators answer that the chapter itself separates the Sufferer from the people:
It is true, as we have often noticed in this prophet, that "my servant" sometimes applies to Israel. But the context always gives clear marks that make the decision neither difficult nor doubtful. Chapter 53 makes it plain and certain. There the Individual in question stands out clearly from the people who did not value Him. He bore their griefs and carried their sorrows. He was wounded for their transgressions, and His wounds brought them healing when He was crushed for their iniquities. He suffered from them and for them, and afterwards brings them remarkable blessing. To make this suffering One the same as those people is the grossest confusion.
The part he was reading described suffering only, not glory. That was the hard part for a Jewish reader, and it shaped the name Philip used.
It was not by chance but from God that the passage of Isaiah in front of him set out the holy suffering Messiah. Other parts of this same prophecy, before and after, testify to His exaltation. But here it is sufferings only. That was the main difficulty to a Jew, who thought only of His glorious kingdom. So the name "Jesus" fits Philip's use of the prophecy. It is all the more striking because the Spirit had said that Philip proclaimed "the Christ," the Messiah, to the Samaritans. … The Samaritans needed to hear that the Christ had come. The Ethiopian needed to know that the despised and suffering Jesus was beyond doubt the Messiah. … "Jesus" was the right word for this. It says what He became in manhood, so that rebellious creatures could despise Him. It also tells out His own glory — He who stooped so low for us. He was Jehovah the Saviour.
Philip started from the verses the man was reading. Writers note that he started there but did not stop there.
To the eunuch. He explained Isaiah 53. Philip began at that scripture; it goes on even to the glory, for you get "he shall divide the spoil with the strong."
The answer did more than satisfy his curiosity. It bound him to a Person, and he acted at once.
The meekness and gentleness of the Lord, His humiliation and suffering and death — these won the heart of the eunuch. They bound him with everlasting bonds to our great Saviour. He did not delay; he had to become His disciple at once and be identified with Him in His death. So he said, "See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?"
- Confessed — He admitted he could not understand without a guide. That opened the door to everything that followed.
- Person — He asked "about whom," not "about what." The answer is a Person, not a theme.
- Contested — Some read Isaiah 53 as a picture of the nation. Commentators answer that the chapter keeps the Sufferer apart from the people He suffered for.
- Named — Philip's answer was Jesus: the suffering One, under the name that fits His humiliation.
- Joined — Once he knew whom the passage was about, he asked for baptism at once.
And Philip, opening his mouth and beginning from that scripture, announced the glad tidings of Jesus to him.
The Ethiopian official had just asked Philip who the prophet was writing about. The answer was a name, and how Philip got there from one passage of Isaiah is what commentators explore here.
God brought two men onto the same desert road from opposite directions. The timing was not an accident.
He had come all the way from Ethiopia, a poor hungry man. He went to Jerusalem to find something, for that was where people learned to know the true God. Yet he was going back with an empty heart. Would the Lord let that be? Would He let a man who is seeking Him in that way go back empty? He takes Philip from the middle of the revival at Samaria and sends him into the desert. There He brings Philip and the eunuch together. The eunuch is holding the Bible, open at the very place where He wants Philip to preach from. Out of Isaiah 53, Philip preaches Jesus to him.
The phrase looks like a small detail. It sets a rule for anyone who speaks.
"He opened his mouth." This may seem a small matter, yet I think it has a practical lesson for us... Eloquence is certainly not needed, and neither are finely-polished sentences. But two other passages of Scripture show that the servant has a duty to speak clearly and simply. The truth he teaches may be precious. It still builds no one up if his hearers cannot hear or understand what he says.
Philip needed no time to choose a topic, because he already knew where every page of Scripture points.
He "preached to him Jesus" — not doctrines or theories, but a living, loving, personal Saviour. Philip has no difficulty about his text. He has learned that Christ is the spirit of Scripture. So from the passage the eunuch was reading he preaches Jesus, the theme of the good news of God.
Earlier in the same chapter Philip proclaimed "the Christ" in Samaria. Here the wording changes, and the change fits the passage in front of him.
So the name "Jesus" fits exactly where Philip applies the prophecy (v. 35). It is all the more striking because the Spirit who inspired the record had said in verse 5 that Philip proclaimed "the Christ," the Messiah, to the Samaritans... The Samaritans needed to hear that the Christ had come. The Ethiopian needed to know that the despised and suffering Jesus was beyond doubt the Messiah... Now "Jesus" was the right word for this. On one side, the name says what He became as a man — someone rebellious creatures could treat with contempt. On the other, it tells out the glory that belongs to the One who stooped so low for us.
One word in the verse hints at how much more Philip said.
We are not to conclude that Philip limited himself to this scripture. The word "began" points the other way: he did not end there, but explained other scriptures too.
The passage Philip started from does not stop at the suffering.
Philip began at that scripture, and it goes on even to the glory, for you get "he shall divide the spoil with the strong."
The law had shut this man out of the congregation of the Lord. The meeting on that road changed where he belonged.
The Shepherd's eye was on him, and the Spirit directed Philip to speak to him. Then it became clear that he was one of the sheep for whom the Good Shepherd had given His life. In earlier days the law never let a eunuch enter the congregation of the Lord (Deut. 23:1). Now he could enter the assembly of God and of Christ — and he did.
- Arranged — God moved Philip out of a thriving work in Samaria to reach one man. The Bible lay open at the right page when he arrived.
- Opened — "He opened his mouth" sets the standard for every servant: speak clearly and simply. Truth nobody can follow builds nobody up.
- Jesus — the man asked who the prophet was writing about. The answer was not a doctrine but a living, loving, personal Saviour. Christ is the spirit of Scripture, so Philip's text was already chosen.
- The name — Philip told Samaria that "the Christ" had come. This man needed the name "Jesus." It speaks of the contempt He accepted as a man, and of the glory of the One who stooped that low.
- Began — Philip started at Isaiah 53 and went on to other scriptures. The prophecy runs past the suffering to the glory. A man the old law shut out found his place in the assembly of God.