On the road from Jerusalem to Gaza, an Ethiopian court official rode home reading the prophet Isaiah. A passage stopped him. He could not say who it was about.
Below is what he was reading, with context at the verses his question came from.
Isaiah 53 · King James Version
1Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?
2For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
3He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
5But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
6All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
7He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
8He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.
History
Even the earliest Jewish readers were unsure who “he” was; one ancient answer was the Messiah.
The text calls him only “the servant.” Rabbinic tradition preserves the reading: a measure of the sufferings assigned to the King Messiah, “of whom it is written, he was wounded for our transgressions.” The question can be carried forward; the chapters ahead keep speaking of him.
Source: Alfred Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Appendix IX
Alfred Edersheim
Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Appendix IX
“Ps. ii. 6 is applied to the Messiah in the Midrash on 1 Samuel xvi. 1 (Par. 19, ed. Lemberg, p. 46 a and b), where it is said that of the three measures of sufferings ‘one goes to the King Messiah, of whom it is written (Is. liii.) “He was wounded for our transgressions.”’”
Wordplay
“Who shall declare his generation”: an idiom used before an execution.
A herald went ahead of the condemned, calling for anyone who knew his innocence to come forward and declare it. Here, no one comes. He dies with the cry unanswered.
Source: Adam Clarke, Commentary, 1823
Adam Clarke
Commentary, 1823, on Isaiah 53:8
“Verse 8. And who shall declare his generation — ‘And his manner of life who would declare’] A learned friend has communicated to me the following passages from the Mishna, and the Gemara of Babylon, as leading to a satisfactory explication of this difficult place. It is said in the former, that before any one was punished for a capital crime, proclamation was made before the prisoner by the public crier, in these words: [Hebrew transliteration illegible in scan] ‘Whosoever knows any thing of this man’s innocence, let him come and declare it.’ Tract. Sanhedrin. Surenhus. Part iv. p. 233. On which passage the Gemara of Babylon adds, that ‘before the death of Jesus this proclamation was made for forty days; but no defence could be found.’ On which words Lardner observes: ‘It is truly surprising to see such falsities, contrary to well-known facts.’ Testimonies, Vol. I. p. 198. The report is certainly false; but this false report is founded on the supposition that there was such a custom, and so far confirms the account given from the Mishna.”
9And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.
10Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.
11He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.
12Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
Philip’s answer
The servant had gone unnamed for seven centuries of readers.
But a man named Philip came alongside the chariot, and for him the question had an answer. Jesus of Nazareth had recently been crucified in Jerusalem: oppressed, afflicted, silent before his accusers, cut off out of the land of the living. Luke records what happened next. “Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus.”
The official believed, and was baptized in water beside the road.
Acts says he went on his way rejoicing. It does not say whether he kept reading.
But three chapters past the passage in his hands, the scroll he was carrying speaks. To the foreigner. And, if his title meant what it often meant, to him by name.
Isaiah 56 · King James Version
1Thus saith the LORD, Keep ye judgment, and do justice: for my salvation is near to come, and my righteousness to be revealed.
2Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son of man that layeth hold on it; that keepeth the sabbath from polluting it, and keepeth his hand from doing any evil.
3Neither let the son of the stranger, that hath joined himself to the LORD, speak, saying, The LORD hath utterly separated me from his people: neither let the eunuch say, Behold, I am a dry tree.
Culture
“A dry tree”: the law barred the eunuch from the assembly of the LORD.
Shut out of the assembly, he had no place among the people and no children after him; the lament is that exclusion in his own mouth. The next two verses answer him directly, with a place within God’s house and a name better than sons and daughters.
Source: Geo. B. Eager, ISBE, 1915; Matthew Henry, Commentary, 1708
Geo. B. Eager
ISBE, 1915, “Eunuch”
“The law excluded eunuchs from public worship, partly because self-mutilation was often performed in honor of a heathen god, and partly because a maimed creature of any sort was deemed unfit for the service of Jeh (Lev 21 16 ff; 22 24). That ban, however, was later removed (Isa 56 4.5).”
Matthew Henry
Commentary, 1708, on Isaiah 56
“This was then the more grievous because eunuchs were not admitted to be priests (Lev. xxi. 20), nor to enter into the congregation (Deut. xxiii. 1), and because the promise of a numerous posterity was the particular blessing of Israel and the more valuable because from among them the Messiah was to come. Yet God would not have the eunuchs to make the worst of their case, nor to think that they should be excluded from the gospel church, and from being spiritual priests, because they were shut out from the congregation of Israel and the Levitical priesthood; no, as the taking down of the partition wall, contained in ordinances, admitted the Gentiles, so it let in likewise those that had been kept out by ceremonial pollutions. Yet, by the reply here given to this suggestion, it should seem the chief thing which the eunuch laments in his case is his being written childless.”
4For thus saith the LORD unto the eunuchs that keep my sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant;
5Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off.
6Also the sons of the stranger, that join themselves to the LORD, to serve him, and to love the name of the LORD, to be his servants, every one that keepeth the sabbath from polluting it, and taketh hold of my covenant;
7Even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer: their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar; for mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people.
8The Lord GOD which gathereth the outcasts of Israel saith, Yet will I gather others to him, beside those that are gathered unto him.
A man the law set outside the assembly had asked, beside the road, what hindered him from baptism.
Nothing did.
This context would not have answered his question; the answer came from Philip. It would have met him already holding it.
He was reading the right scroll. He needed someone beside the text.
What sat beside these verses, the marks, the context, the named sources, is Cléverse: a reading environment for Scripture that places context at the verse the reader is on.
Most tools add more to read about the Bible. Cléverse does the opposite: at the verse where a reader would stop, it gives the one piece of context that lets them keep going.
This page carries only the context one reader’s question required. The discipline behind it is constant: context where the text cannot be rightly heard without it, named human scholarship in its own words one tap away, and across much of Scripture, silence.
The reader today holds the same text across a greater distance. The road is the same. The question in the chariot is the same.
The context shown on this page is drawn from named human scholarship, prepared as a sample for illustration. Formal Cléverse entries follow a stricter editorial standard.