Isaiah 53

Today’s Passage: Isaiah 53

We come now to the chapter that stands like a mountain peak above the whole book, the crown of the Servant Songs and, many have said, the most astonishing prophecy of the cross anywhere in the Old Testament. Centuries before a Roman gallows was ever raised outside Jerusalem, Isaiah paints the portrait of a Servant who grows up unremarkable, with no beauty to draw the eye, a man despised and rejected, well acquainted with grief. But the heart of the chapter is one great and holy truth told again and again from every angle: this Servant suffers not for His own sins but for ours. He is pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, and the LORD lays on Him the guilt of us all. Like a lamb led to the slaughter He does not open His mouth; He is cut off from the land of the living for a people’s transgression, buried with the rich, and yet He rises to see His offspring and to justify many by bearing their sin. Read this chapter slowly, with your hat off, for it is a description of the cross written long before the cross, and its only fitting response is worship.

As you read, hold this: The sinless Servant bore in Himself the sin and punishment we deserved, dying in our place, so that by His wounds we are healed and counted righteous before God.

Isaiah 53:1–3 (BSB)

¹ Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? ² He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no stately form or majesty to attract us, no beauty that we should desire Him. ³ He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Like one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.

The song opens with a sigh of wonder and grief: who has believed our message? For the salvation of the world would come in a form so lowly that most would look right past it. Isaiah shows us the Servant growing up before God like a tender green shoot pushing out of dry, cracked ground, unlikely, easy to overlook, nothing about His appearance to make the powerful of the earth turn and stare. He had no royal splendor, no glittering presence to attract a crowd. Instead He was a man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief, the kind of person from whom people instinctively look away, and Isaiah does not spare us the hardest word of all: we esteemed Him not. There is the ache at the center of the gospel. The One through whom all things were made walked among us, and His own did not recognize Him, and we counted Him as nothing. Before ever we reach the wounds, we are made to feel how completely He humbled Himself, and how blind we were to who He was.

Isaiah 53:4–6 (BSB)

⁴ Surely He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows; yet we considered Him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. ⁵ But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. ⁶ We all like sheep have gone astray, each one has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid upon Him the iniquity of us all.

Here we arrive at the beating heart of the chapter, and I would have you read these three verses on your knees. Watch closely the little words our and us, for everything turns on them. The griefs He carried were ours. The sorrows He bore were ours. We had assumed His suffering meant God was punishing Him for some fault of His own, but the truth was the exact reverse: He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities. The blow that fell on Him was the blow our sin had earned, and by taking it in His own body He purchased for us the very thing His wounds cost Him: peace with God, and healing for the soul. This is what the old teachers called substitution, one standing in the place of another, the innocent bearing what the guilty deserved. And verse six tells us why it was needed and how it was accomplished in a single breath. We are the sheep who wandered off, every last one of us turning to go his own way, and rather than let us perish in our straying, the LORD gathered up the guilt of us all and laid it upon Him. He did not merely permit this; He willed it, and He did it out of love. All our iniquity, laid on Him. That is the gospel, foretold seven hundred years before it happened.

Isaiah 53:7–9 (BSB)

⁷ 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. ⁸ 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. ⁹ He was assigned a 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.

Now Isaiah turns to the Servant’s bearing under all this suffering, and it is the silence that undoes us. Oppressed, afflicted, dragged through a mockery of justice, He did not open His mouth. He went like a lamb to the slaughter, quiet as a sheep before its shearers, and here the lamb of the temple and the Lamb of God become one picture. He could have called down heaven; He chose instead to be led. And so He was cut off from the land of the living, taken away by an unjust judgment, stricken, the verse says, for the transgression of My people, for God’s own people, for us. Then Isaiah adds two small details that must have seemed strange to him as he wrote them, for they do not fit together in any ordinary death. This innocent Servant, who had done no violence and spoken no deceit, would be assigned a grave with the wicked, yet He would be with a rich man in His death. Centuries later both came true on a single day, when Jesus was crucified between two criminals and then laid in the new tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy man. The prophet described a burial he could not have arranged, and it happened exactly so.

Isaiah 53:10–12 (BSB)

¹⁰ Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush Him and to cause Him to suffer; and when His soul is made a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand. ¹¹ After the anguish of His soul, He will see the light of life and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant will justify many, and He will bear their iniquities. ¹² Therefore I will allot Him a portion with the great, and He will divide the spoils with the strong, because He has poured out His life unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors. Yet He bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors.

And now the song rises out of the valley of death into light, and we learn the deepest and most staggering thing of all: it was the LORD’s own will to crush Him. This was no accident, no tragedy that slipped past heaven’s watch. Behind the cruelty of men stood the loving purpose of God, who was accomplishing our redemption through the suffering of His righteous Servant. But mark how the darkness gives way to triumph. Having made His soul a guilt offering (אָשָׁם) ʾāšām, pronounced ah-SHAHM. Strong's H817, guilt offering, trespass offering; guilt, blame. This word reaches back into the old sacrificial law, where the asham was the sacrifice a person brought when a wrong had been done and a debt had to be paid, an offering that made amends and set the guilty right again. It was blood given so that a broken account could be settled. Hold that meaning up against verse ten, which says that the LORD made the Servant’s very soul an asham. Do you see the wonder of it? All the lambs and bulls of the temple had only ever pointed forward, pictures of a payment they could not themselves make, for the blood of animals could never truly carry away the sin of a soul. Here at last is the offering they were always straining toward: not an animal on an altar but a willing Servant giving His own life to settle our debt in full. When we read that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, this ancient word is quietly fulfilled. He is our asham, the guilt offering that leaves nothing owing, so that the guilty may go free and forgiven. , the Servant does not stay in the grave. He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, He will see the light of life and be satisfied. Here, spoken long before Easter, is the promise of resurrection and of a countless family born from His sacrifice. By His knowledge, the verse says, My righteous Servant will justify many, and how? By bearing their iniquities. There is the exchange again, stated as plainly as language allows: He takes our sin, and we are counted righteous, declared right with God, not by anything in ourselves but because He carried what we owed. The chapter ends with Him exalted, given a portion with the great, honored precisely because He poured out His life unto death and let Himself be numbered among the transgressors. He bore the sin of many, and even now He lives to make intercession for them. The Servant who was despised is the Servant who saves, and He saves to the uttermost.