The passage describes someone who suffers silently and whose "life is taken from the earth" (Acts 8:33), but it never names him. The eunuch wanted to know who it was. Barnes calls it "a natural inquiry, for there was nothing in the text itself that would determine expressly to whom the reference was." Gill describes him as "being desirous of knowing who was the subject of this famous prophecy." He offers two choices, the prophet himself or someone else, and politely asks Philip to settle it ("I pray thee"). The first question asks who the servant is; the second shows he was already weighing the options.

Philip answered from the passage itself: "Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus" (Acts 8:35). The servant was neither the prophet nor an unknown man, but Jesus. Barnes says Philip "Showed him that Jesus of Nazareth exactly corresponded to the description of the prophet." The answer moved the eunuch to action: when they came to water, he asked to be baptized (Acts 8:36).

"The eunuch answered Philip" does not mean Philip had asked something new. Barnes explains that "answered" here means "addressed," a common Hebrew way of speaking. On the passage itself, Barnes says, "It has been almost universally understood that this place refers to the Messiah." Yet Barnes also suggests that the eunuch probably did not see how such humiliation and condemnation could fit the Messiah people expected (on Acts 8:31). That is why his question was a real one.

This is the central question of the whole encounter: who is the suffering servant? The eunuch's honest question let Philip show him that the Scriptures point to Jesus. Matthew Henry draws the lesson for every reader: "In reading the word of God, we should often pause, to inquire of whom and of what the sacred writers spake; but especially our thoughts should be employed about the Redeemer."

The risen Jesus did the same thing for His disciples on the road to Emmaus, "beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself" (Luke 24:27). God's Word, rightly understood, leads to His Son.