Isaiah 53: 1 – 12
No Greater Love
1 Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? 2 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. 3 He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. 4 Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. 8 He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken. 9 And they made His grave with the wicked—But with the rich at His death, because He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth. 10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You 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. 11 He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities. 12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because He poured out His soul unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
There are many things that amaze me for examples how can a medical doctor who knows the intricate design of the human body. How it remains the same and is not evolving. How can one not understand or accept the fact that human beings are not just a bi-product of evolution but had Someone who created us. For this matter how can anyone look around at the earth and sky and not realize that there Is A Creator.
In todays study anyone with half a brain would know that it is speaking about our Lord Jesus Christ. No One else has ever undergone this type of treatment or for this matter ever will. How can they not accept the fact that He Is The Messiah, The Servant of Yahweh, Father God. I have come down with the conclusion that these people do know that this is true but they refuse to accept Him as The Supreme Ruler of all.
Have you ever seen the movie ‘The Passion’? Some have responded to me that they have seen this movie many times. Having viewed this movie, one showing was enough for me. Oh don’t mistake me for what I am like. I have seen numerous dead people, shot up, ran over, body parts all over the place, but to see my Precious Holy Lord and Savior and somewhat see the brutal treatment He received because of my sins, I have a hard time dealing with it.
This chapter overflows with examples of all the extremes of suffering and condemnation that could be poured out on someone. Commentators regularly try to select one aspect or another as being the overriding factor, but by doing so fail to recognize the point that The Holy Spirit Is making, which is that He suffered all that could possibly be laid on or experienced by someone of all the ills of the world. He piles word upon word in order to ensure that we recognize that here was One Who took on Himself the totality of all men’s miseries, namely, the miseries which accrued to all because of sin. To put it simply and profoundly in the words of Paul, ‘He was made sin for us’, and thus bore in Himself the consequences of that sin.
This is neatly brought out in the description of His burial. He would be buried both with the wicked, the criminal, the outcast, and with the rich man, the equally wicked but outwardly respected. In Him was summed up man’s total sinfulness. While we may certainly consider the meaning of the parts, we fail to understand our Wonderful Holy Ghost’s purpose if we do not recognize that the suffering and consequences described are the lot of all men as summed up on only One. Such a unique situation could only apply to Someone Who was totally unique.
1 Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
The blank astonishment of Isaiah, Israel and the world is here clearly expressed. To attribute what will happen to this One, by the arm of Yahweh, seems beyond belief. It will go against all that men had expected of the Davidic king and Servant. But note carefully this reference to the ‘arm of Yahweh’. The arm of Yahweh usually refers to Yahweh acting in power to bring about His purposes. Men expected thunder, and lightning, and extraordinary happenings, not this trail of humiliation and death. And yet was ever greater power revealed than this? For this One Who comes Is The Arm of Yahweh being expressed in all His power. None who stood before the cross could even have faintly conceived what was being accomplished there. It has been studied for over two thousand years, and yet we only have a faint conception of it. What happened there was so immense that no one can grasp it. You want to talk about a man’s Man look to Jesus Christ.
2 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him.
In His growing up this supreme Servant will not be the kind of king expected. He will not follow man’s pattern. He will be like a plant growing out of dry land, wispy, struggling, fighting for life, a tender plant indeed, not growing in surroundings of wealth and opulence, but in surroundings where everything has to be worked for and struggled for, in times when life is hard. In the words of chapter 7 verses 14-16, He will eat butter and wild honey, the diet of the poor.
Can this Holy One be the promised king that all have waited for? Can this long awaited Wonderful Holy King of David’s seed be brought down to this? Yes, comes the reply, for the ‘sons of David’ had proved unfaithful, unbelieving. Yet although the ground was dry, the root grew, for God was there.
This Holy One will arrive on the scene and hardly anyone will take notice. There will be nothing of the ‘beauty’ of a king about Him. No splendid physique, no well trimmed comeliness, no splendid clothing, no gorgeous apparel. No one will watch Him go by with admiration for His outward appearance. He will be a son of toil, complete with blisters and hardened hands. Surely this cannot be the Arm of Yahweh? Can any good thing come out of tiny Nazareth? Can a prophet come from despised Galilee? This verse says, ‘yes, He can’. Is not this the carpenter’s son? The reply comes, yes, He Is.
3 He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
He will be despised and rejected. When He reveals Himself men will laugh and deride Him. They will dismiss His words and His claims. He will be written off by ‘those who know’ as a charlatan. He will not be up to standard in men’s eyes.
He will walk sorrowfully and in grief. For He bears in Himself the knowledge that men are rejecting His Father, and the means of their own salvation. He will grieve at the hardness of men’s hearts. The reference is not to a gloomy person by nature, but to One Who faces a world of gloom. It is intended to be in contrast with the idea of royalty as pleasure seekers. Not so this One, for He has come to deal with the needs of the world and He sees them as they are, and bears their burden on His shoulders.
Men will be ashamed to be aligned with Him, they will keep away from His company for fear of what the world might say. Thus was He despised and not given the esteem that was His due because He did not fit the expected pattern.
So He will come from a poor background, He will not be striking to look at, He will not wear clothes of majesty, He will not be highly esteemed, He will not be a pleasure seeker but serious minded, He will not fit into men’s preconceptions. All this is a condemnation of how men think, and illustrates their false sense of values. For those who knew Him and gave Him a fair hearing recognized His worth, and listened, and humbled themselves before Him. And that was how God saw Him. Man looks at the outward appearance.
You know I find it quite amazing how people take shots at my sweet and precious Holy King. They add their stupid comments and do not even know anything about Him. They say the Bible is just a book of fairy tales yet they have never opened and read it. When judgment comes all their reasons and excuses will not hold up to the ultimate test.
4 Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.
There are always two ways of looking at things. Men will esteem Him as stricken, smitten by God and afflicted, considering that it must be because He was paying for His own sins. But God will see Him as bearing our grief and carrying our sorrows, as wounded for our transgressions, our overt outward behavior, and bruised for our iniquities, our deepest inward sins.
It was part of the king’s acknowledged responsibility to bear the burden of his people. But he did not do it as personally and realistically as this. For this One will bear the sufferings and grief of His people on His own shoulders. And as the thought expands we are made to recognize that He bears what we deserve to bear. He shoulders it Himself. And that is why our own suffering is not as devastating as it might have been.
The word for ‘grief’ might also be rendered ‘sicknesses’ as it regularly is. Bearing someone’s sicknesses means bearing the guilt of their sin, this resulted in the sicknesses. As the idea of this comes in the following verses, perhaps ‘grief’ is the better translation.
Suffering is in the end a consequence of sin, not individually but in total. And He had come to shoulder that suffering and sorrow, so that He might alleviate it and help others to bear it. We do not know what the world’s suffering would have been if He had not come, but it would have been multiplied compared with what it is. He stood between the world and God’s own natural antipathy against sin, giving the world chance to repent.
Now here is a tough verse to digest - ‘Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.’ The general view would be that the Servant was suffering because He was especially sinful. They would consider that He had reaped the consequences of His false claims, and they would therefore have little sympathy. ‘Stricken’ was often applied to men afflicted with severe skin disease, but here refers to all the most dreadful things that come on men, seen as coming from the hand of God.
It is shocking to read that He Is ‘Smitten of God’. God Himself has taken note of this man’s evil and blasphemy and has smitten him. ‘Afflicted’ refers to the man’s experience of the smiting. He finds himself suffering the blows of God. So this is how men would account of the Servant’s sufferings. But God would see otherwise.
Way back in chapter 1 verse 5 we read that Israel was depicted in her sinfulness as being like a dreadfully sick person, ‘stricken’, with the head ‘sick’ and the heart faint, with no soundness from head to foot, covered in wounds and ‘bruises’ (ie. ‘stripes’) and festering sores. She was bearing her sin. And now this One Who in Himself is ‘Israel’, He too is ‘stricken’, He is bearing their ‘sickness’ and carrying their diseases. He is bearing their sin and its penalty. The depicting of the Servant as a sick man is precise because He Is standing in for sinful Israel. By His ‘bruises’ they will be healed of their ‘bruises’.
Now take a look at how He has thought about us also. ‘But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was on Him, and with His stripes we are healed.’ Note the piling up of verbs to cover the suffering He faced. Wounded, bruised, chastised, scourged. It is the ultimate in punishment. And here there is a moving on from sorrow and suffering to its cause, sin and transgression. This is the root of the matter. Here was total representation, the One suffering for the many, and total substitution, by the One in place of the many, with a complete satisfaction thus being made possible. His wounds were for our transgressions, His being bruised was for our iniquities, all that militated against our deepest wellbeing was put on Him, and by the scourging He bore, ‘being made whole’ was made available to us.
Have we transgressed? He bore the wounds of it. Do we sin deeply in our inner hearts? He was bruised because of it. Do we lack peace and well being because of our sin? He was chastised that we might be restored to peace with God and a sense of wellbeing in His presence. It involves the removal of ‘wickedness’, for there really is no peace to the wicked, they cannot know peace which chapter 48 verse 22 has taught us. Do we need to be healed, restored, delivered, made whole? Then because He was scourged and wounded we can be. It is the One in contrast to the many, and the One has taken all and suffered all for the many. It is a picture of One Who was abused in every possible way.
I wish the whole world would hear and understand this. This was our Holy Master’s Wisdom on giving us another chance to live again.
While any one of these statements might metaphorically have been applied to a prophet or to the faithful in Israel, as some have tried to teach, the gathering together of them all to depict the total and deepest need of mankind, borne and paid for, goes far beyond that. No prophet or group of faithful men could bear this load, or be thought of as doing so. Even Isaiah could only look on and wonder. It could only be done by One Who was the Arm of Yahweh, and He could only do it because He was unique and like no other man, because He was the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, and had no sins of His own to suffer for.
As we read these words it becomes crystal clear that One would come into the world Who would uniquely bear the sins of the world and, as we learn later, make full atonement for all and meet the deepest needs of mankind. As we meditate on it, it should truly fill us with awe.
But, here is the crucial point - it is all only potential as far as man is concerned. The benefit to man is not automatic. If we are to really benefit we must come and receive it. We must look to Him and trust Him for it. And then it will be ours.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
Here we have stress laid on each individual. It is not just the group that has failed; it is the entire group including each individual. And they are described in total as ‘we’, thus including Isaiah, Israel and all men in contra-position to the One. The picture is of sheep-headedness, wandering aimlessly, heedless of instruction, everyone going their own way without thought of what they should do, except to do what they wanted to do. Thus have they left the control of the shepherd, they have turned away from God. He might well have put it as Paul did in his letter to the Romans chapter 3 verse 23, ‘all have sinned and come short of the glory of God’.
‘Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all.’ The verb ‘laid on’ means ‘caused to arrive on, made to meet on’. Paul understood this when he wrote in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 21 ‘He was made sin for us, He Who knew no sin’. And it is Yahweh – Father God - Who has done it. He has as it were gathered the sins and iniquities of ‘us all’ and placed them inexorably on Him.
7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. 8 He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.
A fuller explanation is now given of how the Servant would suffer. Not only would He face the woes of this world, He would face oppression from the authorities. The word ‘oppression’ has behind it the sense of taskmasters and of pressure. He will be treated roughly by the authorities. Yet He would ‘humble’ Himself, He would allow Himself to be afflicted. And He would make no complaint. He would humbly allow them to lead Him off to the slaughter like a lamb, without complaint. That is, whatever He was to face, He would submit to it without argument or protest. He would knowingly submit to the will of Yahweh.
Here was an essential part of the atonement. This was why no animal sacrifice could finally avail for sin. For such sacrifice was involuntary on the part of the victim. The poor innocent lamb did not know that it would be slaughtered.
This once for all time sacrifice was to be a voluntary sacrifice, made by One Who knew what was coming and voluntarily went forward to His death.
The purpose of His oppressors was that ‘He might be cut off out of the land of the living’. No more vivid description of death could be given. He would yield His life to death.
The idea behind ‘By (or ‘from’) oppression and judgment He was taken away.’ is forcible enclosure and restraint. It means to hold back, hinder and therefore detain, imprison, retain, shut up, forcibly restrain. Combined with ‘judgment’, which probably has in mind the place of judgment, or those who judge, or the due process of law, it clearly indicates forcible legal restraint of one form or another with a view to trial. So we see the Passion of our Lord played out for us ahead of time for the Servant will run afoul of the authorities sufficient for them to decide to sentence Him to death.
These words have significant meaning - ‘And as for His generation, who among them considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living. For the transgression of my people was He stricken.’ ‘His generation’ here is probably to be taken in the sense of His contemporaries. To the majority of them His death would not be looked on as important. They would move on to another day. Injustice was not uncommon, and it did not directly affect them. But says Isaiah, it did affect them because He was stricken because of the transgressions of these very people (literally ‘because of the transgressions of my people the plague to him.’) The word ‘stricken’ is read in. But to be stricken with something plague-like outwardly suggests God’s anger against the subject. Here the point is that God’s antipathy to sin was averted from His people by being directed at the Servant.
9 And they made His grave with the wicked—But with the rich at His death, because He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth.
The wicked and the rich are often looked at synonymously. The rich tended to behave wickedly and especially dishonestly and deceitfully. That is regularly how they became and stayed rich. Thus the idea here is that although He would be non-violent and without deceit He would be treated as though He was guilty of both violence and deceit by being placed in His grave alongside wicked people. Thus He would be identified with both the most outwardly and openly sinful of men and with the most deceitful and blameworthy, the rich, in His death, and He Who had been characterized by poverty, such an idea containing some idea of virtue, would find Himself placed in His death with ‘a rich man’, because even that amount of virtue was denied Him. The rich man would be honored by his fellows but hated by the majority. So this added to His shame. That God actually arranged that He was laid in a godly rich man’s grave was one of those unexpected extra fulfillments of prophecy that so often occur.
10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You 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.
We now see that all that has happened to the Servant has happened in the will of God. It was not just allowed to happen, it happened at His pleasure. He chose to crush Him. He chose to put Him to suffering. Not because He was angry at Him or because the Servant deserved it, or because He did not love Him, but because He was making His soul a guilt offering, ‘an offering for sin’. Note the stress here on the fact that suffering was necessary. Once again this sacrifice outclasses the ancient sacrifices. The victim was voluntary, and the victim truly suffered.
The guilt offering was a substitutionary offering. Above all it was a voluntary offering. A man chose of his own free will to offer his guilt offering. The stress here then is on the removal of guilt for sins committed in an offering made by voluntary choice. Its purpose was to make atonement, to ‘cover’ sins, to remove guilt and includes where appropriate restitution. It thus makes total satisfaction for sin. The result was forgiveness and total reconciliation with God and man. The offerer has ‘borne his iniquity’, because the offering has borne it in his stead. It results in his guilt before God being removed.
So here the Servant is being offered as a guilt offering, which He makes freely, which covers all men. In that sense it is more like the sin offering which was offered for the whole of Israel, but with the added aspect that it meets the particular sin and need of each one. The reason for using the guilt offering is in fact to stress that each person must take advantage of it individually for his own guilt. For the guilt offering was very individual. This was no blanket atonement but one offered on behalf of each one whom himself must come in order to benefit by it. It was personal to his own sin. Each must therefore appropriate this guilt offering to themselves.
And the result will be that He will have ‘seed’, His days will be ‘prolonged’, which can only mean that He will be resurrected, and He will personally carry out the will of Yahweh which will prosper in His hand. The implication is that His offering will result in ‘children’ made guiltless through His blood, that He will have endless life and that He will carry out in His resurrected state the work that God has for Him to do. ‘In His hand’ stresses His direct part in it. But the promises are put in such a way as to tie in with the longings of godly men. Having children and length of days and doing the will and pleasure of Yahweh, indicated all that the godly sought and anticipated. Thus this is demonstrating God’s satisfaction with what has been done. The Servant too will, after His suffering, enjoy these in abundant measure, evidence of God’s delight in Him.
11 He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities.
He will be in great travail, but from that travail He will see success (or fruit) as described and will be satisfied. And this will result because through His humiliation God’s righteous Servant will make many to be accounted righteous. Here ‘many’ unquestionably means the ‘saved’. And they will be accounted righteous before God because He has borne their iniquities. Here then at last is the means by which the faithful in Israel, and world believers, can get right with God and be provided with sufficient righteousness before a holy God. It is what all has been leading up to. He has undergone His suffering so that this might be possible.
What will He see from the midst of His sufferings? - A satisfactory conclusion resulting from His sufferings’. He will have accomplished what He came to do. His work will have been completely successful, and with deep satisfaction He will see what He has accomplished and rejoice in it.
12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because He poured out His soul unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
Because of what He has achieved He will come alive again and be given the spoils of victory. The intention here is in order to stress that He will now no longer be the humiliated teacher, but the Mighty God receiving His ‘portion’, His inheritance.
He will be exalted and lifted high, calling the strong to Him that He might divide the spoil with them. And this will be because He was willing ‘to pour out His soul to death’ and be numbered among the transgressors, that is, among those who have transgressed against God, as He offered Himself for them. It was by being numbered among them that He was able to bear their sin. Had He not humbled Himself to death, He could not have achieved His object. This stresses the representative nature of His death. He dies on behalf of all, from the highest to the lowest. This found a special significance in that He was crucified between the two thieves, stressing His oneness with even the worst of humanity.
Note the emphasis again on the voluntary nature of the sacrifice. ‘He poured out His soul to death.’ That is, He laid down His life of Himself. No one took it from Him. It was of His free choice.
‘Yet He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.’ With these words the chapter comes to an end. The Servant has borne the sin of many and makes intercession for those whose sins He has borne. To intercede is to stand between as a Mediator. This is not so much praying for them, as accomplishing the work of the mediator, bringing about the reconciliation. But it does include a kind of prayer. He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him because He makes intercession for them. So the Servant acts as the Mediator between God and man on the basis of His saving work. The way to salvation is open for all through what the Servant has done.
This chapter is only 12 verses long yet it contains the redemption plans of our Jehovah Elyon – The Lord Most High. In all truth this chapter’s study should be given out a much as possible to all who will listen.
