Rejection of the Servant and Realization
of Who He Is. Isaiah 53:1-6
As we have seen, this passage is really about the exaltation of the
servant. It is not about the suffering; that is secondary. The exaltation is
because He is suffering. But if we look at these verses and read through them
all the one that relate to the suffering and all of the verbs that are used in
relation to suffering are past tense verbs, whereas the verbs related to His
future glorification and exaltation are future tense. So whoever it is speaking
and giving this report they are looking back on what has happened with a view
to what it is going to eventuate in, the exaltation of the servant. When we
look at Isaiah 52:13 where God is speaking and saying, "Behold, My servant will prosper"--
"successfully" would be the best translation, not "prudently" as in the NKJV or in some
cases "wisely." It is the result of acting wisely, i.e. in bringing about
success in His mission, and then that "He will be high and lifted up and
greatly exalted." There is a piling up of verbs there related to His
glorification because human language reaches a certain limit where you can't
say anything more. You just don't have the words to describe the ultimate
exaltation of the servant here. Two of these verbs "be exalted" and "very high"
are verbs are also words that are used to describe the throne of God. So there
is this implied statement here of the deity of the servant because these verbs
do not apply to human beings. They are restricted in the Scriptures to God and
to the throne of God. So this whole passage is really related to the exaltation
of the Messiah, the servant, and because of what He does in His obedience to
the Lord.
We come to the core section, 53:1-9, and it is really broken down to
three sections: 1-3, 4-6, and 5-9. It begins with someone asking two rhetorical
questions: "Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been
revealed? 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.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." So this section focuses on a sort of introduction to who the
servant is and His background--who He is in terms of His relationship with God
and His relationship with this group of people, the "we," the "our," whoever is
speaking, and that they failed to recognise Him, to
see who He was.
There are those who give this passage a
non-messianic interpretation, and that is exactly the problem with those who
are speaking here in the first section. They are saying, "Who has believed our
report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?" In other words, these
rhetorical questions are bringing up the fact that there is
only a limited number of people who have responded to their report and who have
understood how God has revealed Himself with the servant. So there is this
limited response to the message. The reason why is because they didn't identify
who He was, they rejected His appearance. This is exactly what happened in the
first century when Jesus appeared. He was rejected because He didn't fit the
expectation of the religious leaders in Israel. They expected a Messiah who
would come who would be a glorified Messiah, a Messiah who would bring them
victory over the empire of Rome. They were looking for a political figure, a
military figure; they were not looking for one who would come who would suffer.
This is still a problem, especially in the Jewish community, but with many
people who reject the gospel because they don't want to accept this view of the
Messiah; they have another agenda.
What exactly is being said in this passage? First, a
non-messianic view, the idea that the individual here
is identified either as a prophet or as the nation itself. It looks at
the fact that this servant does suffer but their view is that no matter whether
it is Isaiah, another prophet or the people, they think that the servant is
suffering with the people, rather than for the people in the sense of a
substitution. So the servant is just one among them who suffers along with the
rest of the Jewish people.
But this contradicts the broad context of
Isaiah 53. We have to remember that from Isaiah chapter forty to the end of
chapter sixty-six there is a huge shift that takes place in the theme of
Isaiah. This is why there are those, usually of a liberal persuasion in terms
of their view of the authority and origin of the text, who believe that this second
half of Isaiah was written by somebody else. In the first 39 chapters of
Isaiah, Isaiah is prohesying and warning of the
future judgments on
In chapters 49-52 the focus is on a future salvation for Israel: that
God is going to provide a future deliverer. God has not forgotten Israel. God
is going to be true to His promise and there will be an ultimate redemption for
the people and the promises of the kingdom will eventually be fulfilled. That
is the thrust of Isaiah 40-66.
In chapters 49 through 52 the focus is on a future deliverer. Then if we look
at the chapters following chapter 53 God is then inviting Israel to participate
in this salvation. So there is a promise in the first chapters (49-52) that
there will be a future salvation, and then after chapter 53 God is inviting
them to participate in the salvation; but in Isaiah 53 we see a hinge chapter
because it is this chapter that tells us what that salvation is, how it is
accomplished for Israel. So chapter 53 is the link between
the two and the transition from the announcement about a future deliverer and
the next chapters which view that as having already been accomplished.
The second aspect to this and which is foundational to this whole
section, and just destroys any of the other arguments for a corporate Messiah,
Israel, or being a prophet, is that the chapter clearly focuses on the fact
that the servant, whoever He is, is righteous and pays the penalty for sin--not
temporal punishment but the eternal punishment for sin. We read in verse 5, "But
He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our
iniquities; The chastening for our well-being {fell}
upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed." The focus is that there is going
to be a payment for sin and that there is going to be a complete healing or
deliverance from this sin. Then down in verse 11, "By His knowledge the Righteous
One, My Servant, will justify the many, As He will bear their iniquities." Again, terminology that is related to an eternal deliverance or
salvation. Those verses alone and those ideas alone just wipe out the
idea that the servant is another prophet, or the servant is the corporate body
of Israel.
Is 53:4 "Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we
ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted." This begins
with the word "Surely," some say "However." It is a contrast, and so the
contrast is between the attitude of rejection by the
people, whoever the "we" are in the first three verses, to work that is done by
the servant in bearing of grief, bearing our sorrow, things of that nature.
Those terms, "Surely He has born our griefs and
carried our sorrows," come right out of the context of Leviticus chapter 16
which is dealing with the day of atonement. So this is
clearly language that is based on an understanding of the whole ritual of the day of atonement as well as other sacrifice-offering
passages in Leviticus. It begins with these two rhetorical questions to call
our attention to the fact that there is a group of people speaking who are
delivering a message, but that message is not getting a receptive response.
So they ask: "Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of
the LORD been revealed?" They are using the pronoun "our" which is a first
persona plural pronoun. When we look at the first verse, the last line of verse
2, "He has no {stately} form or majesty That we should look upon Him, Nor
appearance that we should be attracted to Him... or 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. 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," who do these plural pronouns
describe here.
There are options that have been set
forth. One is that it refers to the Gentile kings mentioned in the last verse
of chapter 52: "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." But there is a shift in the context when
we go to 53:1, "Who has believed our message?" and it is not talking about
those kings. The other suggestion is that this is the prophet. The third view
that is put forth is that this is the nation of Israel as a whole, and as part
of that would be a future believing remnant of Israel which, we think, is the
answer. The only thing that fits is that this is a retrospective look now from
some future generation that looks back on what happened to the servant. They
have realised who the servant is and what happened in
their rejection of the servant, and so there is an element of confession in
this passage that they had failed completely to recognise
the servant based on prophetic passages and had treated Him with no respect,
rejected and despised Him. Then they come to realise
who He is and what He did, v. 4.
So the "we" and the "our" refers to a future generation, a Jewish
remnant, which has come to realise the identity of
the Messiah and what they had done in rejecting Him in the past. Paul quotes
from Isaiah 53:1 in Romans 10:16 NASB "However, they did not all heed
the good news; for Isaiah says, "LORD,
WHO HAS BELIEVED OUR REPORT?" Remember
that Romans 9-11 are focusing on the question: has God completely rejected the
Jews? This is Paul's explanation of God's plan for Israel. They rejected the
Messiah but God did not reject them. The promises and the covenants
still belong to Israel, and there is a small remnant of Jews that have accepted
the Messiah but most of them have not. They have not all obeyed the gospel and
Paul sees this as a fulfillment of this line in Isaiah
53:1, "Who has believed our report."
Is 53:8 "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?}" God is
speaking there--"my people." That verse indicates that "my people" is a
different group than the servant, distinct from the servant: in fact,
One commentator says: "What is going on here, so to speak, is that we
seem to hear two disciples standing on the street corner in
The first question is, "Who has believed our message?" As they have come
to understand that they have reported on it. They have a message. Who has
believed our message now? That is what they are asking. The second question
expands on that a little bit and they say, "And to whom has the arm of the LORD been
revealed?" The phrase "arm of the Lord" is the one that is ultimately
associated with His power, His omnipotence, and almost always focusing on His
power and ability to deliver people from calamities, especially deliverance
from sin. The question here is, "And to whom has the arm of the LORD been
revealed?" So the revelation of the gospel message has been really revealed to
only a few in the sense that they have responded to it. They had rejected it.
So the emphasis in these two questions is that the message has gone out to the Jewish
people but there has not been much of a response. They have mostly rejected it.
Even thousands upon thousands became Christians during the first century
ultimately the gospel was rejected by the political and religious leaders and
by the majority of the Jewish people. So the first question emphasises
this rejection that has taken place.
Then in verse 2 there is going to be an
explanation. Whenever we see a
passage begin with "For" it is usually going to be a sort of explanation or
sometimes it is developing the cause for something. Here it is going to be
further explanation and expansion on the reason for the rejection. In the first
part of this verse the emphasis is on the servant's relationship to God, and
the second part is His rejection by man. In the first part it is how God loved
the servant and took care of, nourished and nurtured the servant, and the
second part focuses on how in contrast the Jews rejected Him, and overall,
mankind rejected Him.
"For He grew up before Him ..." We
have two uses of the third person singular pronoun. Who is the first He? In
context it describes the servant. As God is speaking back in 52:13, "Behold, my
servant shall prosper, He ... will be exalted." So He in terms of the
nominative case here generally referred back to the servant.
Verse 3, "For He grew up before Him..." This implies that the servant is
going to grow physically. There is going to be a process of maturation, He is
not going to show up already mature. He will grow up "before Him," so this use
of "Him' indicates this is a different person than the "He," and the "Him"
would be the speaker in 52:12-15 identified as Yahweh (God the Father). "... like a
tender shoot..." This is where is starts tying some imagery together from
various other passages in the Old Testament related to the Messiah.
The phrase "tender shoot" is from a Hebrew word which means a suckling,
a tender plant, a tender shoot, a young plant. It is a horticultural term, it is not talking about a nursing child but a shoot
coming up out of dry ground. Dry ground is barren soil, something that is not
expected to produce growth is going to develop and strengthen. So the image is
of the trunk of a tree or something like that which fits with other images of
this idea of a root. In Isaiah 11:1 "Then a shoot will spring from the stem of
Jesse, And a branch from his roots will bear fruit."
The picture of the trunk of a tree and the tree has been cut down. The root is
Jesse, the father of David the king of Israel. The Davidic line was viewed as
having been cut down when the
That same imagery is found in Ezekiel 17:22 NASB " Thus says
the Lord GOD, "I will also take {a sprig} from the lofty top of the cedar [Israel]
and set {it} out; I will pluck from the topmost of its young twigs a tender one
and I will plant {it} on a high and lofty mountain." So the imagery there is
taking one that is out of what has already existed (David). Putting it on a
high mountain indicated elevation and power. This is the same imagery here
related to the Messiah, that God is the one who would establish and bring about
His growth.
We are told that He will grow up as a tender plant, and this language indicates
a messianic connection. "And like a
root out of parched ground ..." Then there is a shift, so we see God working to
nourish and bring about the Messiah to restore the lineage of David, and then
there is a contrast. The contrast is going to focus on the fact that the
Messiah doesn't look like they expected Him to look like. He didn't fit their
model, their expectation, because when they focused on the fact that the
Messiah was a son of David who would reestablish the monarchy they are thinking
in terms of all of the cultural trappings that went with a king, all of the
glories that went with a kingÑthe power, the army, defeating the enemies of
Israel. They focused on all of those aspects rather than the negative aspects.
Think about David. When David was initially anointed by Samuel in 1
Samuel 17 he is just a young teenager. He goes out and fights Goliath and after
that Saul becomes very jealous of him because of all the victories and God's
blessings for him. For the next ten or fifteen years David is having to run from Saul because Saul is persecuting him.
David has already been anointed king and people know that he has been anointed
king, but he went through a period of rejection when he was running from Saul
before God eventually elevated him to the position of the kingship. And that is
a picture of the future Messiah, the son of David. He would go through a period
of rejection even though He was already identified as the King of the Jews. He
would go through a period of rejection, a period of persecution--the church the
body of Christ is in that period like David and his mighty men during the
period when they were hiding out in the wilderness. Then ultimately David was
raised to the kingship when Saul took his life at the end of 1 Samuel. We see
that same pattern with Jesus: suffering and then glorification. But by the
first century in Israel they had forgotten about the suffering aspect of the
Messiah, which is very clear here, and they were just focusing on the glory, so
when Jesus came He wasn't recognised. He came from a
very small
So what we have in Isaiah 53 isn't a
statement that Jesus was unattractive but it is clearly a statement that He did
not have the kind of physical presence one would expect of a saviour of the world from a human viewpoint perspective. He
looked just like an average Jewish male. "He has no {stately} form" just
indicated His external appearance, and this did not
fit what they expected. The other word, translated "comeliness" in the KJV, is one of
several words in the Hebrew used to express the beauty of God, the glory of
God, the splendour of God, and that is how it is
often translated in the Psalms when it relates to God. It is used 29 times in
the Old Testament, 16 times in the Psalms. So it would be "He had no form or splendour." They were looking for a king who was magnificent
and there was nothing like that about Jesus. "Nor appearance that we should be
attracted to Him"Ñ the Hebrew word used here and translated "see" in the KJV indicates
appearance or sight. It is translated "visage" in 52:14; it is His appearance.
Sometimes it is translated as "beauty." The idea here is that there was nothing
about Jesus physically that set Him apart as a glorious Messiah. It would not
be possible to look at Him and discern by appearance who He is and that he is
the one who fulfils this prophecy. There is this rejection and verse 2 is a
confession of their rejection of the servant. Then verse 3 continues to express
this and says, "He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and
acquainted with grief ..." We frequently sing the hymn Man of Sorrows, and this
is what that is based on, a meditation on Isaiah 53. The verb that is
translated "despise" is used here in a passive sense, He is despised. It also
means to reject, to show disdain or contempt for someone. Interestingly this is
the same word used to describe Esau's rejection of his birthright. He showed
contempt for his birthright, he rejected it, he had
disdain for it. It is also the word used to describe what Goliath thought about
the little pip-squeak David who came out to him. He had contempt for him, no
respect whatsoever. The writers here describe their reaction to the
servant. "... And like one from
whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him."
Isaiah 49:7 NASB "Thus says the
LORD, the Redeemer of Israel {and} its Holy One, To
the despised One, To the One abhorred by the nation ..." So how could the
servant be the nation? It doesn't fit. The servant is the one who is despised
and rejected by the nation.
He is called "A man of sorrows." The word
for sorrows is the word which means pain or anguish, and in the participial
form here it has the idea of one who suffers. So these two phrases, "a man of
sorrows" and "acquainted with grief," describe the suffering of the Messiah on
the cross. This is not a description of His life, He
was not a sad man. The word "sorrows" has the idea of sadness that comes across
for us but it really has the idea in the Hebrew of someone who is going through
a tremendous amount of physical suffering and pain and anguish, which is what Jesus went through on the cross.
Then it says He was "acquainted with
grief." This is a word that is often translated "sickness" or "disease" or
"illness."
However in a number of passages it is used to describe situations that are calamitous.
It describes the act of a judgment by God on someone. It is used that way in
Ecclesiastes 6:2. This describes what He was going through upon the cross. Then
again they say "He was despised," and that is the same word which indicated He
was treated with contempt and total rejection. Then, "we did not esteem Him."
The word used to translate esteem there is a word that means to account, and
has the idea of counting something as valuable, something as worthwhile. They
did not count anything about Him to be of value. So they completely
misidentified who the servant is. That is what the prophecy says. He is going
to show up but He is not going to be identified.
Now there is going to be a contrast.
Notice how the next verse begins.
Isaiah 53:4 NASB "Surely our griefs
He Himself bore." So there is this shift from the fact that He is totally
rejected and despised to a positive affirmation of what He has done. In the
next three verses notice the pronouns. This shows that some sort of substitutionary payment is at the very core of this
section. He bore our griefs; He carried our sorrows.
Then notice the contrast between the third person and the first person
pronouns: "Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken."
Isaiah 53:5 NASB "But He was
pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being {fell} upon Him, And by
His scourging we are healed." Then at the end of verse 6, "But the LORD has caused
the iniquity of us all To fall on Him." The word "all"
is a generic term that includes not only Jews but everybody in the human race.
There is a sharp contrast that shifts from the fact that we rejected Him,
despised Him, we had no reason to accept Him, but in spite of our rejection He
has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. This is
in synonymous parallelism, so griefs and sorrows are
parallel to one another. And these terms are used not specifically of sin but
as the consequences of sin. It is very clear from verse 6 that the penalty that
is being paid here is a penalty related to sin.
But we need to focus on these verbs. "He
has borne our griefs," is a poetic way to translate
this. It is the Hebrew word nasa which indicates lifting, carrying, or taking something
somewhere; but it is specifically used in the day of atonement passages related
to the payment for sin for the people and bringing about forgiveness. Remember
that on the day of atonement the high priest would
come out and they would bring two goats to him. He would put his hands on the
goats and recite the sins of the nation for the previous year. They would take
one goat that would be sacrificed, and that pictured the payment for the sin.
Scripture says, Without the shedding of blood there is
no forgiveness of sin. It wasn't that the animal could pay for the sin but it
is picturing the fact that eventually there has to be a death that would be
able to pay for all sin. Then the other goat, called the scapegoat, is taken by
a trusted friend of the high priest far away and out into the desert so that he
could never find its way (because our sins don't come back on us) and is
released, indicating that our sins are paid for and removed from us, "as far as
the east is from the west." So there is the complete removal of sin. Lev
The second word here is the word "carried" (our sorrows). It is from the Hebrew word which indicates bearing a load for someone else. The very verb itself has the connotation of substitution. So He carries for someone else sorrows. So starting from verse 4 we see this emphasis on a substitutionary payment. Then starting in verse 5 we will see that it brings in the idea of a penalty. It is not just a substitutionary payment but by the time we get to the second half of verse 5 the chastisement or the punishment related to our peace (with God) was upon Him. So the punishment becomes a penal, substitutionary death. Another way this has been spoken of (not so much today) is that it is a vicarious penalty.