1Who has believed our message?
To whom has Yahweh’s arm been revealed?
2For he grew up before him as a tender plant,
and as a root out of dry ground.
He has no good looks or majesty.
When we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
3He was despised
and rejected by men,
a man of suffering
and acquainted with disease.
He was despised as one from whom men hide their face;
and we didn’t respect him.
4Surely he has borne our sickness
and carried our suffering;
yet we considered him plagued,
struck by God, and afflicted.
5But he was pierced for our transgressions.
He was crushed for our iniquities.
The punishment that brought our peace was on him;
and by his wounds we are healed.
6All we like sheep have gone astray.
Everyone has turned to his own way;
and Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
7He was oppressed,
yet when he was afflicted he didn’t open his mouth.
As a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and as a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he didn’t open his mouth.
8He was taken away by oppression and judgment.
As for his generation,
who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living
and stricken for the disobedience of my people?
9They made his grave with the wicked,
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.
10Yet it pleased Yahweh to bruise him.
He has caused him to suffer.
When you make his soul an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring.
He will prolong his days
and Yahweh’s pleasure will prosper in his hand.
11After the suffering of his soul,
he will see the light and be satisfied.
My righteous servant will justify many by the knowledge of himself;
and he will bear their iniquities.
12Therefore I will give him a portion with the great.
He will divide the plunder with the strong,
because he poured out his soul to death
and was counted with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sins of many
and made intercession for the transgressors.
The story of Philip in chapter 8 provides an interesting parallel in the proclamation of the Gospel about the Messiah Jesus. Earlier in the chapter (Acts 8:1-25), we find Philip in Samaria, in the land of the Samaritans who had limited contact with the Jews that reaches back to the invasion of the Assyrians in the 8th century. He encounters in Samaria a sorcerer, who, upon seeing the miracles done by Philip, his interest was not in the Good News about Jesus but in the acquisition of miraculous ability. He is rebuked by Philip because of the sorcerer's wicked heart.
Our next encounter with Philip is when the angel from God tells him to travel southwest near Gaza. Upon arriving there, he comes on an Ethiopian eunuch who had come to Jerusalem to worship, no doubt at one of the Jewish feasts at the Temple Mount. It is most likely that he was a Jewish proselyte, the Ethiopians having a history of Jewish association, even from the days of Solomon. The eunuch was reading a portion of the book of Isaiah about a person who was described as like a sheep being slaughtered. To a Jew, or Jewish proselyte (often designated as a God-fearer), the idea of a coming Messiah being a sacrifice would be a foreign idea, with a possible exception in the Qumran community near the Dead Sea. However, since he was in a messianic portion of Isaiah, the eunuch was confused as to the person being presented in the text. Philip had been sent by God to clarify the Isaianic text with the Gospel, or Good News, about the Messiah Yeshua. We discover several instances of God-fearers embracing the truth of the Gospel, and this is the first example in the book of Acts, if indeed he was a proselyte (rather than an Ethiopian Jew), with the Roman centurion Cornelius being second.
It was the practice of those embracing the Jewish faith to read the Scripture aloud, and this was what the eunuch was doing when he was approached by Philip, who asked if he understood this text from Isaiah 53. The eunuch responded that he was confused and needed help in understanding who was being spoken about in the text. The response of Philip to the eunuch was to give to him the good news about Jesus, the Messiah, which the eunuch embraced. The practice of baptism was the natural response to accepting Jesus, and Philip baptized him in a pool of water nearby, after which he was caught up by the Spirit to another location, and the eunuch went back to Ethiopia. An interesting sidelight is the statement of the famous second-century church father, Irenaeus (A.D. 130-202), who said the eunuch returned to his native country and became a Christian missionary to the Ethiopians.
For more about the Ethiopian Eunuch, see the article Who Was the Ethiopian Eunuch?