Note 9 — Chapter V · Eleazar Learns of Salathiel’s Renunciation

—page 33. The “Haphtorah” (Isa. liii.) contains the most graphic Old-Testament picture of Jesus as the rejected, suffering atoning Messiah. It was this that the Ethiopian eunuch of Queen Candace was reading when Philip went up to him in his chariot (Acts viii. 29), and by the explanation of which he was converted to the Christian faith. Through its wonderful picture Eleazar seems already to have been led to look upon Jesus as the Messiah; but his hopes, roused by Salathiel’s renunciation of the priesthood, were dashed in finding that the veil was still over the face of the latter, as it was over the many of Israel.