The Hyperlinked Bible
Intertextuality Pair
Quotation
Later text
Acts 8:32-35BSB
The eunuch was reading this passage of Scripture: "He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before the shearer is silent, so He did not open His mouth. In His humiliation He was deprived of justice. Who can recount His descendants? For His life was removed from the earth." "Tell me," said the eunuch, "who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?" Then Philip began with this very Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.
Earlier text
He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so He did not open His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away, and who can recount His descendants? For He was cut off from the land of the living; He was stricken for the transgression of My people.
Luke reproduces Isaiah 53:7b-8a verbatim from the LXX — the longest direct quotation of the fourth Servant Song anywhere in the NT. The text-form matters: where the MT reads "by oppression and judgment He was taken away," the LXX (followed exactly in Acts 8:33, "In His humiliation He was deprived of justice") shifts the line toward the Servant's unjust trial — fitting Jesus before the Sanhedrin and Pilate with uncanny precision. The quoted portion is the song's center of gravity: the silent lamb led to slaughter and the life cut off from the earth. The eunuch's question — "who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?" (8:34) — is the hermeneutical hinge of the narrative, and Philip's answer is Luke's model of apostolic exegesis: he "began with this very Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus" (8:35). Luke records no argument that Isaiah 53 might apply to Jesus; the identification is presented as the natural reading once the Servant's career is set beside the passion. This is the locus classicus of the apostolic Christological reading of the Servant Song — the NT's clearest narrative demonstration that the text is already about Christ and the preacher begins where the prophet has pointed (cf. Luke 22:37; 24:27). The setting compounds the point: a foreign eunuch returning from worship hears that the Servant cut off without descendants ("who can recount His descendants?") has won a posterity that includes him — the adjacent promise to the eunuch and foreigner in Isaiah 56:3-8 begins its fulfillment in this baptism.