Around the time of the apostles, a high official from Ethiopia was riding home from Jerusalem in his chariot, reading the prophet Isaiah out loud. He came to a passage he could not understand, and when Philip ran up beside him, the man asked the question every reader of Isaiah 53 has to answer. “Please tell me, of whom does the prophet say this? Of himself or of someone else?” (Acts 8:34). Luke tells us what happened next. “Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this Scripture he preached Jesus to him” (Acts 8:35).
Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12 is fifteen verses long. It was written centuries before Jesus was born, and it describes His rejection, His suffering, His silence before His accusers, His death among criminals, His burial in a rich man’s tomb, His resurrection and His reign. More than that, it tells us why He died. On the road to Emmaus, Jesus asked His disciples, “Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?” (Luke 24:26). That question is Isaiah 53 in one sentence. If you want to understand the cross, this chapter is one of the first places to go.
Who wrote it and when
Isaiah the son of Amoz prophesied in Judah during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah (Isaiah 1:1), roughly seven hundred years before Christ. Many scholars today say the second half of the book was written later by someone else. But John quotes Isaiah 53:1 and Isaiah 6:10 side by side and says of both, “Isaiah said” (John 12:38-41). I will take the word of the apostle.
Even someone who rejects that cannot get around one fact. In 1947 a complete scroll of Isaiah was found in a cave at Qumran near the Dead Sea. The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, which holds it, dates it to more than a century before Jesus was born. So Isaiah 53 was written down and copied by Jewish scribes long before the events it describes.
Who is the servant?
The passage begins, “Behold, My servant” (Isaiah 52:13). This is the last and fullest of four passages in Isaiah about the Servant of the LORD (Isaiah 42:1-9, 49:1-13, 50:4-11, and this one).
I want to be fair to those who read it differently. Many Jewish teachers since the Middle Ages have said the servant is the nation of Israel, suffering among the nations. Their strongest verse is in the second Servant Song, where God says, “You are My Servant, Israel, In Whom I will show My glory” (Isaiah 49:3). That verse is real, and it has to be answered from the text.
But read on two verses. The same servant called “Israel” is sent by God “To bring Jacob back to Him, so that Israel might be gathered to Him” (Isaiah 49:5). The servant brings Israel back, so he cannot simply be the nation he is sent to restore. He is Israel in the sense that he is the true Israel, the one faithful Son who does everything the nation failed to do. The nation was called God’s son and went into idolatry. This servant obeys perfectly. That is why Matthew takes the words God spoke about the nation, “OUT OF EGYPT I CALLED MY SON” (Hosea 11:1), and applies them to Jesus (Matthew 2:15). Jesus did everything Israel was meant to do.
Isaiah 53 itself rules out the nation in three ways. First, the servant is innocent. “He had done no violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth” (Isaiah 53:9). Isaiah opens his book by calling Israel a “sinful nation, People weighed down with iniquity” (Isaiah 1:4). Second, the servant suffers for someone else. “He was cut off out of the land of the living For the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due” (Isaiah 53:8). Isaiah’s people were Israel. If the servant dies for Israel’s sin, he cannot be Israel. Third, he suffers willingly and in silence (Isaiah 53:7), and Israel’s own prophets record no such thing about the nation.
Older Jewish readers did not always apply this passage to the nation. The Aramaic Targum of Isaiah, an ancient Jewish paraphrase, renders 52:13 as “Behold, My servant the Messiah shall prosper.” The Targum then shifts the suffering away from the Messiah, but it saw who the servant was.
The New Testament settles the question. Philip preached Jesus from this passage (Acts 8:35). Jesus Himself quoted verse 12 the night He was arrested and said, “this which is written must be fulfilled in Me, ‘AND HE WAS NUMBERED WITH TRANSGRESSORS’” (Luke 22:37). Matthew, John, Paul, Peter and the writer of Hebrews all quote this chapter about Him. The early church even prayed using Isaiah’s word for Him: “Your holy servant Jesus” (Acts 4:27).
The passage has five stanzas of three verses each, and each one moves the story forward.
The servant exalted (Isaiah 52:13-15)
“Behold, My servant will prosper, He will be high and lifted up and greatly exalted” (Isaiah 52:13).
God starts with the end of the story. Before we see one bruise, God tells us how it finishes: His servant will succeed, and He will be lifted higher than anyone. In Hebrew, the words for “high” and “lifted up” here are the same two words Isaiah used in chapter 6 when he saw the LORD “sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted” (Isaiah 6:1). Our English Bibles translate them differently, but Isaiah wrote the same words both times, and he used them again of “the high and exalted One Who lives forever, whose name is Holy” (Isaiah 57:15). That is language Isaiah keeps for God Himself. And John tells us whose glory Isaiah saw in chapter 6. “These things Isaiah said because he saw His glory, and he spoke of Him” (John 12:41). The servant who suffers in Isaiah 53 is the LORD of Isaiah 6. That is why Paul could write, “God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name” (Philippians 2:9).
Then the picture turns dark. “His appearance was marred more than any man And His form more than the sons of men” (Isaiah 52:14). Before the cross, Jesus was beaten. Men “spat in His face and beat Him with their fists; and others slapped Him” (Matthew 26:67). Pilate had Him scourged (Matthew 27:26), and soldiers pressed thorns into His head and struck Him with a reed (Matthew 27:29-30). By the time they nailed Him up, people could hardly recognise the face they knew.
“Thus He will sprinkle many nations, Kings will shut their mouths on account of Him; For what had not been told them they will see, And what they had not heard they will understand” (Isaiah 52:15). Sprinkling was the work of a priest. Blood was sprinkled to cleanse what was unclean (Leviticus 16:14). This servant is a priest, and His cleansing reaches “many nations,” far beyond Israel. Believers are those who have been “sprinkled with His blood” (1 Peter 1:2), and the blood of Christ will “cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Hebrews 9:14). Kings who once ignored Him will stand speechless before Him. Paul quoted the end of this verse to explain why he took the gospel to places where Christ had never been named (Romans 15:21). That includes us. Whether you are reading this in India, USA, Kenya, Brazil or Canada, your nation is among the “many nations” Isaiah was talking about.
The servant despised (Isaiah 53:1-3)
“Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?” (Isaiah 53:1).
The arm of the LORD is His power to save. Isaiah is amazed that God’s own saving power stood in front of people and they did not see it. John quotes this verse about the crowds who watched Jesus do miracle after miracle and still did not believe (John 12:37-38). Then John says something that humbles proud people: “For this reason they could not believe” (John 12:39). Seeing the arm of the LORD is a gift. Unless God reveals it, nobody believes. Jesus said, “no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him” (Matthew 11:27). So if you believe in Christ today, you cannot take the credit. The arm of the LORD was revealed to you.
“For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty That we should look upon Him, Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him” (Isaiah 53:2). Isaiah had already said the Messiah would be “a shoot” from “the stem of Jesse” (Isaiah 11:1), growing out of the stump of a fallen royal family. He was born in a stable and laid in a feeding trough (Luke 2:7), and He grew up in a village people mocked: “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46). Nothing about His looks drew a crowd. People came to Him for what He did and what He said, and most of them still went away. But He grew up “before Him.” The Father watched His Son through every one of those hidden years, and at the Jordan He spoke from heaven over His beloved Son and declared His delight in Him (Matthew 3:17).
“He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him” (Isaiah 53:3). “He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him” (John 1:11). His own brothers did not believe in Him (John 7:5), His hometown tried to throw Him off a cliff (Luke 4:29), His friends ran away when He was arrested, and the crowd chose a murderer over Him. He wept at a friend’s grave (John 11:35) and over a city that would reject Him (Luke 19:41). He lived with sorrow His whole life.
If you are suffering, do not miss this. The Saviour who calls you knows what grief feels like from the inside. “We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Every rejection you have known, He knew first and knew more deeply.
Notice also who is speaking in these verses. Isaiah writes “we” and “our”: “we did not esteem Him.” Verses 1 to 6 are a confession. Someone is looking back at the servant they once despised and admitting they were wrong about Him. Zechariah saw the same day coming for Israel: “they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son” (Zechariah 12:10). This is what true repentance sounds like. A sinner sees Christ for who He is and says, “I despised Him, and He was wounded for me.”
The servant pierced for us (Isaiah 53:4-6)
This is the centre of the passage, and every line in it says the same thing. He suffered for us, in our place.
“Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted” (Isaiah 53:4). Matthew says the first half was fulfilled when Jesus healed the sick during His ministry (Matthew 8:16-17). His healings were a sign of the deeper work He came to do at the cross, where He dealt with the sin behind all sickness and death.
Look at the second half. When people watched Him hang there, they thought He was getting what He deserved. They thought God was punishing Him for His own sins. “He trusts in God; let God rescue Him now, if He delights in Him” (Matthew 27:43). The awful thing is that they were half right. He really was “smitten of God.” But they were wrong about whose sin He was being punished for.
“But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our wellbeing fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). Read that carefully. The one who was pierced is “He,” and the transgressions are “ours.” The punishment that should have fallen on us fell on Him, and the peace that should have been His came to us. The Bible calls this substitution. Christ stood in the place of sinners and took the penalty of their sin.
“Pierced” points us to the cross. A soldier drove a spear into His side, and John says this fulfilled the Scripture, “THEY SHALL LOOK ON HIM WHOM THEY PIERCED” (John 19:37). “Crushed” is the same word that comes back in verse 10, where we learn who did the crushing. The Hebrew word behind “wellbeing” is shalom, peace, and that is what the cross gives: “having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). And Peter tells us what healing Isaiah means: “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed” (1 Peter 2:24).
“All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him” (Isaiah 53:6). The verse begins with “all” and ends with “all,” and in between it tells the truth about every one of us. Sheep do not wander off because someone drags them away. They follow their own noses until they are lost. “Each of us has turned to his own way.” At its root, sin is a person going his own way and turning his back on God. Nobody in this verse is a victim of bad surroundings. We all chose to go our own way. “There is none who seeks for God” (Romans 3:11).
Then comes the most amazing sentence in the passage. “The LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.” The LORD is the one who acts here. On the Day of Atonement, the high priest laid both hands on the head of a goat and confessed over it all the sins of Israel, and “the goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a solitary land” (Leviticus 16:21-22). At the cross God did for real what that goat could only picture. He took the guilt of His people and laid it on His Son. “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13).
What fell on Christ was the wrath of God against sin. The Bible’s word for this is propitiation, a sacrifice that turns away God’s wrath by bearing it. Christ is the one “whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith” (Romans 3:25). John says this is the love of God: “not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). God did not pretend our sin away or lower His standard. His wrath was poured out in full, on His Son. That is why everyone who is in Christ is safe from it: “having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him” (Romans 5:9).
Some people today call this cruel. They say a Father punishing His Son for others is unjust, and some have even called it child abuse. I understand the objection, but it misreads what happened. The Son did not go to the cross against His will. Jesus said of His life, “No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative” (John 10:18). He went “for the joy set before Him” (Hebrews 12:2). The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit planned it together before the world was made. At the cross God paid the price of His own justice to save people He loves. Nothing else in the Bible explains how a holy God can forgive guilty sinners and still be just. Paul says He did it “so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26).
Why the servant had to be both God and man
Isaiah shows us a servant who is the LORD of Isaiah 6, and a servant who grows up, is beaten, bleeds and dies. Both are true, and the cross needed both.
He had to be a man, because a man had sinned and a man had to pay. Animals could never do it: “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Hebrews 10:4). So the Son took our flesh. “Since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). “He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17).
He had to be God, because no mere man could bear the wrath of God for a multitude of sinners and come out the other side. The sins of His people from every nation and every century were laid on one Man in a few hours on the cross. Only an infinite Person could carry that weight. Paul tells the elders at Ephesus to shepherd “the church of God which He purchased with His own blood” (Acts 20:28). The blood shed at Calvary was the blood of a Man who is God.
The servant silent and slain (Isaiah 53:7-9)
“He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth” (Isaiah 53:7). This was the very verse the Ethiopian was reading (Acts 8:32). At His trial, “Jesus kept silent” (Matthew 26:63). Before Pilate, “He did not answer him with regard to even a single charge, so the governor was quite amazed” (Matthew 27:14). He could have called more than twelve legions of angels (Matthew 26:53), and He said nothing to defend Himself. “While being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously” (1 Peter 2:23).
He stayed silent because He had come to be the sacrifice, and He was not going to plead His way out of it. John the Baptist saw Him coming and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Every lamb slain at Passover and every lamb laid on the temple altar was pointing to this moment.
“By oppression and judgment He was taken away; And as for His generation, who considered That He was cut off out of the land of the living For the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due?” (Isaiah 53:8). His trials were a mockery, with false witnesses, a hearing at night and a verdict decided before it began. And nobody in His generation stopped to think about what was really happening. Daniel had said “the Messiah will be cut off” (Daniel 9:26), and He was. Look at the last phrase. The stroke “was due” to us. The blow was ours to take, and it landed on Him.
“His grave was assigned with wicked men, Yet He was with a rich man in His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth” (Isaiah 53:9). The men who crucified Him meant for Him to die and be thrown away like the criminals beside Him. “They crucified two robbers with Him, one on His right and one on His left” (Mark 15:27). But God had already written where He would lie. “There came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph” (Matthew 27:57), who took the body and laid it “in his own new tomb” (Matthew 27:60). Seven hundred years earlier, God had said a rich man would be part of His death.
And God tells us why He was honoured in His burial: “He had done no violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.” Peter quotes this word for word (1 Peter 2:22). The sacrifice had to be spotless, because a sinner cannot die for another sinner’s sin. He would owe his own. We were redeemed “with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:19). If Jesus had sinned even once, the cross would have saved nobody.
The servant who lives and reigns (Isaiah 53:10-12)
“But the LORD was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as 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” (Isaiah 53:10).
This verse should silence every one of us. The men who nailed Him up were not in control. Herod, Pilate, the soldiers and the crowd were guilty, every one of them, and still they did only “whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur” (Acts 4:28). Peter preached it at Pentecost: “this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death” (Acts 2:23). The worst crime ever committed was planned by God, and the men who did it were fully guilty for it. Both are true, and the Bible will not let us drop either one.
“The LORD was pleased.” God did not enjoy the pain of His Son. He was pleased with what the suffering would accomplish. Christ “gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma” (Ephesians 5:2). The Son the Father delighted in at the Jordan is the same Son He was pleased to crush at Calvary, because through that crushing a people would be saved, and His justice and His love would both be shown in full.
If God was sovereign over the suffering of His own Son and used it for the greatest good there has ever been, then He is sovereign over yours. Every hour of His Son’s suffering accomplished exactly what God intended. The suffering He sends His children has a purpose too, because “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).
“A guilt offering” is a specific sacrifice in the law. It was offered when someone had wronged God or a neighbour, and it came with restitution: the guilty person had to repay what he owed and add a fifth part more (Leviticus 5:16). Christ is our guilt offering. He took away our punishment, and He also paid back in full everything we owed to the honour of God.
Now look at what happens after the crushing. “He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days.” A man who has been “cut off out of the land of the living” (53:8) cannot see anything or prolong his days unless he comes back from the dead. This verse is the resurrection. “Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him” (Romans 6:9). His offspring are the people saved by His death, the children of whom He says, “BEHOLD, I AND THE CHILDREN WHOM GOD HAS GIVEN ME” (Hebrews 2:13). The plan of God did not fail. “The good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.”
“As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, As He will bear their iniquities” (Isaiah 53:11). His suffering went beyond the nails and the thorns into “the anguish of His soul,” when He cried out, “MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?” (Matthew 27:46). And when He looks at what His suffering bought, He is satisfied. He does not look back on the cross with regret, as if He paid too much or got too little. When He said “It is finished!” (John 19:30), the work was done.
“By His knowledge” can be read two ways, and good men take both. It may mean the knowledge of Him that sinners receive by faith, since “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3). Or it may mean His own knowledge of the Father’s will as the Righteous One who carried it out. Either way the result is the same. He “will justify the many.”
To justify means to declare righteous. The Righteous One makes guilty people right with God, and He does it by trading places with them. He bears their iniquities, and His righteousness is counted to them. “Through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19). “He who was delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification” (Romans 4:25).
The word “many” raises a question every Christian should face. For whom did He bear iniquities? Isaiah links the two together. The many He justifies are the same many whose iniquities He bears. Some brothers read “many” as simply meaning everyone, and I take the point that “many” can describe a great number. But follow the logic of the verse. If Christ bore a person’s iniquities, that person’s debt is paid, and God will not demand payment twice. “Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died” (Romans 8:33-34). Jesus used the same word. He came “to give His life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28), and His blood was “poured out for many for forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28). He said, “I lay down My life for the sheep” (John 10:15). His death did more than make salvation possible. It saves everyone for whom He died. And those people come from everywhere, because He “purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9).
“Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, And He will divide the booty with the strong; Because He poured out Himself to death, And was numbered with the transgressors; Yet He Himself bore the sin of many, And interceded for the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:12). The passage ends the way it began, with victory. He is the conqueror who divides the spoil. At the cross “He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him” (Colossians 2:15).
Notice the word “because.” He reigns because He “poured out Himself to death.” He “emptied Himself” and “humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7-8). He was “numbered with the transgressors,” and He told His disciples that this verse was about Him (Luke 22:37).
“He Himself bore the sin of many.” The writer of Hebrews takes these exact words and tells us the sacrifice will never be repeated, and that the One who offered it is coming back. “Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him” (Hebrews 9:28). He came the first time to deal with sin. He will come the second time to bring His people home.
The last line is about His prayers. He “interceded for the transgressors.” While they drove the nails, He prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). And He has not stopped praying. “He is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25). The night before the cross He prayed for His own: “I ask on their behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given Me; for they are Yours” (John 17:9). The One who bore their sins now stands before the Father on their behalf, and no prayer of His goes unanswered.
What Isaiah 53 says to you
If you think you are a good person, this chapter has already answered you. “All of us like sheep have gone astray.” Your religion, your good works and your good intentions cannot cover one sin, because “all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment” (Isaiah 64:6). If you could have saved yourself, the Father would never have crushed His Son. And if you refuse the Son, there is only one thing left for you: “he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (John 3:36).
If you feel too far gone, look at who He prayed for. He “interceded for the transgressors,” and He prayed it for the men who were killing Him. The thief who hung beside Him went from a cross to paradise the same day (Luke 23:43). So do not tell yourself you are beyond His reach.
If you are a Christian who is suffering, look at the Man of sorrows. Your Saviour knows grief from the inside, and the God who was pleased to crush Him for your good is the same God who holds your suffering now.
And if you have never believed, Isaiah’s question is for you: “Who has believed our message?” (Isaiah 53:1). Make the confession of verses 4 to 6 your own. Say to God that you went your own way, that you despised His Son, and that He was pierced for transgressions like yours. “Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away” (Acts 3:19). The Ethiopian heard this chapter explained in his chariot, and before that road ended he was baptised and “went on his way rejoicing” (Acts 8:39). The same Christ is offered to you now, and He has promised, “the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37).
“To Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His blood... to Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen” (Revelation 1:5-6).
Sources
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, “The Great Isaiah Scroll,” The Digital Dead Sea Scrolls (dss.collections.imj.org.il).
J. F. Stenning, The Targum of Isaiah (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949), on Isaiah 52:13.
He, who has ears to hear, let him hear.
