Deeper Commentary

Isaiah 53:1 Who has believed our message? To whom has the arm of Yahweh been revealed?-

This may follow on from the end of Is. 52, where we have the converted nations astounded at what the suffering servant had achieved. The idea may be: "Who would have believed our report! Were we to hear from others what we see, it would be unbelievable". We could argue that 53:1-6 are the thoughts of the repentant nations- they are the "we" and "our". The kings and nations who are "the many" of Is. 52:14,15 are the same "many" of Is. 53:10-12. They are converted by the sufferings of the servant and His work- the work of the Lord Jesus. And thus they come to Zion, as often spoken of in later Isaiah. Yet we must give full weight to the usage of these words in Jn. 12:37,38 and Rom. 10:16, which apply them to specifically Jewish disbelief in their crucified and suffering servant / Messiah. Or as has been observed, "Those [the Gentile kings] understand what they formerly did not hear; Israel, on the contrary, does not believe that which they have heard".

To make bare the arm meant to reveal power and to show intention to use it, just as men may roll up their sleeves and begin a fight. Just as the arm of Yahweh is said to awaken in Is. 51:9. In the suffering of the servant, the Lord Jesus, God showed He meant business to His maximum extent in dealing with the problem of human sin and the apparently impossible task of human salvation. Just as earlier in Isaiah He has been likened to a woman in labour, giving her maximum mental and physical focus to the task in hand- of bringing forth a child. "The arm of the Lord" is now revealed as a person, the suffering servant. The context of this arm of Yahweh is found in Is. 52:10 "Yahweh has made bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God". The past tense was used because this outcome was so certain- but it still depended upon the repentance and faith of the exiles. Had they returned, supported with the same kind of miraculous manifestations as seen at the exodus, then "the nations" amongst whom they were scattered, the 127 provinces of Persia, would have seen God's arm revealed; the revelation (s.w.) of His salvation (Is. 56:1). The ends of the eretz were specifically those areas on the borders of the eretz promised to Abraham, which is where they had been taken into captivity. But this didn't happen. The message of these things was not generally believed by the exiles, despite all the appeals to them to believe it (e.g. Is. 43:10 s.w.). And so the arm of Yahweh which brings salvation is revealed now to the nations through the work of the Lord Jesus.

Note the pronouns in Is. 53. The “we” who preach the Gospel of the cross are the “we” who rejected and condemned the Saviour, and the “we” whose sins are forgiven and who are reconciled to God. These are the reasons why we preach the crucified Christ in zeal and humility (Is. 53:1,2,3,5,6). Grace is the motive power for witness; we preach the word of His grace as it has been to us. We aren't  little sinners. It was our race who crucified the Lord of glory, and we have some part in their behaviour.

Isaiah 53:2 For he grew up before Him as a tender plant- Isaiah 53 is prefaced in chapter 52 by the command to return from Babylon and to proclaim the good news of the Messianic Kingdom which Cyrus’ decree could have brought in; as if it could have come true then. He shall “grow up” as a root from a dry land (Is. 53:2) uses the word frequently used about the ‘going up’ from Babylon to Jerusalem.

 When Zedekiah was taken into captivity (Ez. 17:20), it was prophesied that “a tender one” (Messiah- Is. 11:1; 53:2) would be planted “upon an high mountain”, and grow into a tree in whose shadows all animals would live (Ez. 17:21,22). This is clearly the Messianic Kingdom (Lk. 13:19). This young twig at the time of the captivity was surely Zerubabbel, and the “high mountain” upon which his Kingdom could have been established is surely the “high mountain” of Ez. 40:2 where the temple could have been built. Yet the prophecy had to suffer a massive deferment until its fulfilment in Christ. See on Is. 51:18. 

And as a root out of dry ground. He has no good looks or majesty; when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him-

The double figure of both a root and a tender shoot suggest connection with the prophecies of Messiah as "the root of Jesse" (Is. 11:10) and also the branch (Jer. 23:5; 33:15; Zech. 3:8; 6:12). We could read this as meaning that He grew spiritually without any good environment- a challenge to all who think better environment would make them more spiritual. However we could also read this as meaning that the Lord was like a stunted shrub struggling for existence in an arid soil. Which is why He "has no good looks". This is possibly a window onto the question of whether the Lord was handsome, or otherwise. But the essential point is that He grew up tender and sensitive in a hard environment. We cannot therefore blame our dry, unspiritual environments for our lack of spirituality. The Lord arose from such dry ground, green and tender, ultimately sensitive in an insensitive world. The thirsty land surrounding Him represented spiritually barren Israel (Ps. 42:1-3); but the Lord Jesus so took His people upon Him, into His very soul, that His soul became a thirsty land (Ps. 143:6); He felt as spiritually barren as they were, so close was His representation of us, so close was He to sinful man, so fully did He enter into the feelings of the sinner. In the same way as the Lord really did feel forsaken as Israel were because of their sins, so He suffered thirst, both literally and spiritually, which was a punishment for Israel's sins.

Is. 53:2 speaks of Messiah, in a restoration context beginning in Is. 52, as ‘growing up’, the same word used to describe the ‘coming up’ from the dry ground of Babylon. This potential Messiah could have been Zerubbabel, but when he failed to fulfill the prophecies, there was the possibility that another man could have fulfilled his role. Nehemiah ‘came up’ from Babylon, and was “the servant” who ‘prospered’ Yahweh’s work (Neh. 1:11; 2:20), just as the servant prophecies required (Is. 53:10; 48:15); and he was thereby the redeemer of his brethren (Neh. 5:8). He encouraged the singing of praise on the walls of Zion (Neh. 9:5; 12:46), surely in a conscious effort to fulfill the words of Is. 60:18- that Zion’s gates in Messiah’s Kingdom would be praise. He was “despised” as Messiah would be (Neh. 2:19; Is. 53:3 s.w.). He entered Jerusalem on a donkey, as Messiah would (Neh. 2:12 cp. Zech. 9:9); and Neh. 2:16 sounds very much like “of the people there was none with me” (Is. 63:3). The Gentiles round about came to sit at Nehemiah’s table to eat and drink (Neh. 5:17), just as Isaiah had prophesied could happen on a grander scale at the restoration of the Kingdom. One wonders if the potential fulfilment of the Messianic prophecies was transferred to  him? And yet Nehemiah returned to Babylon at least once, and there is no record that on his second visit he stayed on, but rather, the implication seems to be, he returned again to the service of Babylon. The total lack of Biblical information about his later life may reflect this disappointing decision. This train of thought enables us to appreciate the joy and pleasure which the Father had when finally His beloved Son lived up to all that He sought and expected.

The fourth servant song has a way of using two words of similar reference, and then repeating them reversed. In Is. 52:14 we have the first of seven cases of this in the song. "Appearance... form" in Is. 52:14 are the same words translated "good looks [s.w. "form"... beauty [s.w. "appearance"]" in Is. 53:2, but the order is reversed. The amazement of people at the disfigured form and appearance of the servant in Is. 52:14 clearly refers to His appearance in His time of dying, i.e. the Lord Jesus on the cross. We would therefore tend to think that Is. 53:2 refers to the same. Or we could understand all this to mean that in fact, throughout His life He was essentially as He was on the cross. His supreme spirituality shown in His death was but a reflection of how He had always lived and 'grown up'.

Here are the other examples of this usage of two words and reversing them:

"Man... sons of men" (52:14) = sons of men... men (53:3 Heb.)

"Suffering... disease" (53:3) = "Diseases... suffering" (53:4)

"Bear... carry" (53:4) = "Bear... carry" (53:11)

"Stricken... afflicted" (53:4) = "Stricken... afflicted" (53:7,8)

"Crushed... wounded" (53:5) = "Wounded... crushed" (53:5 Heb.)

"Our transgressions... our iniquities" (53:5) = "Our iniquities... our transgressions" (53:11,12).

 

 

Isaiah 53:3 He was despised- The same word occurs in Dan. 4:17, concerning how Yahweh will exalt the basest, the least esteemed, to be King over the kingdoms of this world. That made-basest man was a reference to the Lord Jesus. He humbled Himself on the cross, that He might be exalted. Peter had his eye on this fact when he asks us to humble ourselves, after the pattern of the Lord, that we might be exalted in due time (1 Pet. 5:6). He desired greatness in the Kingdom, and so can we;  for the brighter stars only reflect more glory of the Sun (1 Cor. 15:41). This very thought alone should lift us up on the eagle wings of Spirit above whatever monotony or grief we now endure.

And rejected by men; a man of suffering, and acquainted with disease. He was despised as one from whom men hide their face-

The AV brings out the connections more clearly: "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief... Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows" (:4). His experience of sorrow and grief was intimately tied up with our sorrow and grief. He was so intensely our representative; and we respond to this by baptism into Him and living life in Him.

The translations vary, "we hid as it were our faces from him" or “As one that hids his face from us”. The latter would be yet another allusion to leprosy. LXX "for his face is turned from us" would connect with how Hezekiah turned his face to the wall during his illness (Is. 38:2). His whole life was a being acquainted with grief (Is. 53:3 AV); and yet we read in this same context that He was put to grief in His death (:10). The grief of His death was an extension of the grief of His life. “Who hath believed our report?" (Is. 53:1) was fulfilled by the Jewish rejection of Him in His life, as well as in His death (Jn. 12:38)."He bore the sin of many" (Is. 53:12) is applied by Jn. 1:29 to how during His ministry, the Lord Jesus bore the sin of the world.

Isaiah laments that despite the wonder of the atonement God would work out on the cross, scarcely any would believe it, and men would turn away their faces from the crucified Christ (Is. 53:1,3). And so it happened. Men and women went out that Friday afternoon to behold it, they saw it for a few moments, beat their breasts and returned to their homes (Lk. 23:48). My sense is that most of that crowd still died in unbelief, untouched by what they saw that day. And so it is with us. We break bread, and we rise up and go on our way, we return to the pettiness of our lives, to a spirituality which often amounts (at its best) to little more than a scratching about on the surface of our natures. But let's not look away, and change the subject; let's see the love of Christ, behold it, and by this very act be changed into that same image, from glory unto glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Cor. 3:18).

And we didn’t respect him- We are programmed to shy away from the ultimate realities, in the same way as men hid their faces from the terror and dastardly horror of the crucifixion of God's Son (Is. 53:3), and as "none considereth in his heart, neither is there knowledge nor understanding" to realize the idiocy of worshipping a piece of wood as an idol (Is. 44:19).

There are copious connections between Job and the suffering servant:
Is. 49:7 – The servant is abhorred = Job 19:19 s.w.
Is. 50:4 – The servant has the tongue of a teacher and sustains the weary = Job 4:3, 29:21 – Job instructed many,
strengthened the weak, and counselled others.
Is. 50:6 – The servant gave the cheek to those who would pull out his beard = Job 16:10 – Job’s tormentors struck him on the cheek (s.w.)
Is. 50:6 – The servant did not hide his face from insult and spitting- Job 30:10 – Job is abhorred and spat upon (s.w.) Is. 50:8,9 – The servant has a vindicator to vouch for him, and he is confident he will be justified- Job 19:25; 13:18 Job has a redeemer to help him, and he is confident he will be vindicated.
Is. 52:14 – Many were appalled at the servant, whose appearance was distorted- Job 17:8 (cf. 21:5); 2:12 – The upright were appalled at (s.w.) Job’s circumstances, and his appearance was almost unrecognizable to his friends.
Is. 53:3 – The servant was despised by men- Job 19:18 Job was despised even by children.
Is. 53:3 – The servant was rejected by men- Job 19:14 – Job was rejected (s.w.) by his loved ones.
Is. 53:3 – The servant was a man of suffering- Job 2:13 – Job’s suffering (s.w.) was very great.
Is. 53:3,4 – The servant bore the diseases of the people- Job 2:7; 7:5 – Job was afflicted with disease.
Is. 53:4 – The people accounted the servant touched by God- Job 19:21 – Job said that the hand of God had
touched (s.w.) him.
Is. 53:4 – The people accounted the servant struck by God- Job 16:10 – Job was struck (s.w.) on the cheek
Is. 53:6 – God afflicted the servant- Job 7:20 – Job felt he was the target of God’s affliction (s.w.)
Is. 53:9 – The servant was not guilty of violence- Job 16:17 – Job claims there was no violence (s.w.) in his hands.
Is. 53:9 – There was no deceit in the mouth of the servant- Job 27:4; 31:5 – Job declares that his tongue will not utter deceit (s.w.), and his foot has not hurried to deceit (s.w.).
Is. 53:9 – The servant is innocent of wrongdoing- Job 1:8 Job is blameless.
Is. 53:10 – It was God’s will to crush the servant- Job 6:9 Job’s desire is that God would be willing to crush (s.w.) him. Is. 53:10 – After God crushed him, the servant would see his offspring and prolong his days- Job 42:13,16 After his suffering came to an end, Job had more children and lived to see four generations of his descendants.
Is. 53:12 – God reinstated the servant- Job 42:10 God restored Job’s fortunes, giving him twice the riches he had before.
Is. 53:12 – The servant made intercession for transgressors- Job 42:8, 10 Job made intercession for his friends.

Isaiah 53:4 Surely he has borne our sickness, and carried our suffering- God speaks of being burdened by Israel's sins (Is. 43:24)- and yet this is a prelude to the passages which speak of the Lord Jesus bearing our sins on the cross (Is. 53:4,11,12). We even read of God being wearied by Israel's sins (Is. 7:13; Jer. 15:6; Ez. 24:12; Mal. 2:17). Even though God does not "grow weary" (Is. 40:28) by nature, it seems to me that in His full entering into His people's situation, He does allow Himself to grow weary with the sins of those with whom He is in covenant relationship. It was this kind of capacity which God has which was supremely revealed in His 'sharing in' the crucifixion of His Son.

The Lord Jesus during His ministry fulfilled the prophecy of Is. 53:4 that on the cross He would ‘take our infirmities’ (Mt. 8:17). These “infirmities” according to Is. 53:4 were our sins, but sin’s effect is manifested through sickness. The moral dimension to these “infirmities” is established by Paul in Romans, for in Rom. 5:6 he uses the word to describe how “when we were yet weak [s.w. ‘infirm’], Christ died for the ungodly; and he explains his sense here as being that “when we were yet sinners” (Rom. 5:8). Jesus as the Lord the Spirit engages with our infirmities, on the plane of the spirit, the deep human mind and psyche. What He did on the cross in engaging with our moral infirmity He did in His life, and He continues to do for us in essence.

Yet we considered him plagued, struck by God, and afflicted- "We esteemed him [as He hung on the cross] smitten of God" (Is. 53:4 AV). It was in a sense God who "clave the rock" so that the waters gushed out (Ps. 78:15; Is. 48:21). "Clave" or "struck" / "smitten" implies that the rock was literally broken open; and in this we see a dim foreshadowing of the gaping hole in the Lord's side after the spear thrust, as well as a more figurative image of how His life and mind were broken apart in His final sacrifice. See on Is. 48:21.

The "affliction" of the servant in His sufferings is noted again in :7. This is the word used for how the Babylonians and others had afflicted God's people (Is. 60:14 "Them that afflicted you"; Lam. 3:33; 5:11; Zeph. 3:19). The servant took upon himself all the experiences of Israel in their condemnation and consequence of sin. Just as on the cross, the Lord took upon Himself all our experiences and results of sin. Truly He was our representative. The word for "affliction" is several times translated 'humbled', 'brought down', and is alluded to in Phil. 2, speaking of the progressive humbling of the Lord Jesus, coming to a pinnacle in His dying "even the death of the cross". 

Isaiah 53:5 But he was pierced for our transgressions- This verse is at the very centre of the Song, seeing it begins in Is. 52:13. We are to reconstruct in our own minds the process of the crucifixion. As the nails pierced His skin and flood flowed... this was for my transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities- AV "bruised". Note that the Lord was beaten up at least three times: by the Jewish guards, by Herod's men and by the Roman soldiers. In a literal sense He was bruised for our iniquities, and chastised for us to obtain the peace of sin forgiven (Is. 53:5). The Father surely foresaw all this back in Gen. 3:15, where the promised seed was to be bruised. He was bruised "and by his bruises we are healed" (LXX). The Lord Jesus was “wounded in the heel” through his death. Is. 53:4,5 describes Him as being ‘bruised’ by God through his death on the cross. This plainly alludes to the prophecy of Gen. 3:15 that the serpent would bruise Christ. However, ultimately God worked through the evil which Christ faced, He is described here as doing the bruising (Is. 53:10), through controlling the forces of evil which bruised His Son. And so God also works through the evil experiences of each of His children.

 

The punishment that brought our peace was on him; and by his wounds we are healed-

The idea seems to be: "The penalty we should have paid was upon him". This is the language of financial transaction. This connects directly with the great theme of redemption in Isaiah. As discussed on Is. 40:2, Israel had sold themselves into slavery to pay the debt of their sins. But Yahweh as their go'el redeemer had offered to pay the debt [to Himself] and thus free them from their debt slavery, to cut short the period of slavery in Babylon. Now we have explained the price He paid. God's people were redeemed "without money" in the sense they didn't need to pay it. But God did- and it was through the suffering and death of His Servant, ultimately the Lord Jesus.

 Many have pointed out the connections between the promises to David in 2 Sam. 7 about Jesus, and the later commentary upon them in Psalm 89 and Isaiah 53, with reference to the crucifixion:

If he [Jesus] commit iniquity = If his children [us] forsake my law… = The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all

I will chasten him with the rod of men = Then will I visit their transgression with the rod = For the transgression of my people was he stricken

And with the stripes of the children of men = And their iniquity with stripes = With his stripes we are healed.

The point of all this is to show how our sins were somehow carried by the Lord Jesus, to the extent that He suffered for them. But how was this actually achieved? It is one thing to say it, but we must put meaning into the words. I suggest it was in that the Lord  so identified with us, His heart so bled for us, that He felt a sinner even though He of course never sinned. The final cry “My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” clearly refers back to all the many passages which speak of God forsaking the wicked, but never forsaking the righteous. The Lord, it seems to me, felt a sinner, although He was not one, and thus entered into this sense of crisis and fear He had sinned. He so identified with us. In the bearing of His cross, we likewise must identify with others, with their needs and with the desperation of their human condition… and this is what will convert them, as the Lord’s identification with us saved us.

The Lord was chastened with the rod of men "and with the stripes of the children of men", i.e. Israel (Is. 53:5; 1 Pet. 2:24; Mic. 5:1), in His death on the cross. But punishment with rod and stripes was to be given if Messiah sinned (2 Sam. 7:14). Yet the Lord Jesus received this punishment; because God counted Him as if He were a sinner. His sharing in our condemnation was no harmless piece of theology. He really did feel, deep inside Him, that He was a sinner, forsaken by God. Instead of lifting up His face to Heaven, with the freedom of Sinlessness, He fell on His face before the Father in Gethsemane (Mt. 26:39), bearing the guilt of human sin.

 

Isaiah 53:6 All we like sheep have gone astray; each one has turned to his own way- This verse is at the centre of the fourth servant song. This is the essence of it all. The sheep have gone astray, but the servant as one of them, a sheep or baby sheep led to shearing and slaughter, would save them. By representation. The Bible is in one sense a very long history book, recording human behaviour over time from God’s perspective. One thing at least is clear from that history- the majority are usually wrong. People go astray “like sheep”, in that they follow each other into sin. Time and again we see that the minority position was the right and Godly one, and the majority position was wrong. We each sin in our own unique and personal ways; but we do so because we follow the flock. And the context of Isaiah 53 is that the crucifixion of the Lord was necessary exactly because of this. He was the ultimate strong man psychologically, who ultimately went the Father’s way when no other human ever did.

In the short term, the sheep were scattered by the wolf, even though the Lord died so this wouldn't happen. And He knew in advance that this would happen (Is. 53:6; Mk. 14:27; Jn. 16:32). The Lord faced His final agony with the knowledge that in the short term, what He was dying in order to stop (i.e. the scattering of the sheep) wouldn't work. The sheep would still be scattered, and He knew that throughout the history of His church they would still keep wandering off and getting lost (according to Lk. 15:3-6). Yet He died for us from the motive of ultimately saving us from the effect of doing this. He had clearly thought through the sheep / shepherd symbolism. Unity and holding on to the faith were therefore what He died to achieve (cp. Jn. 17:21-23); our disunity and apostasy, each turning to his own, is a denial of the Lord's sufferings. And this is why it causes Him such pain.

And Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all- see on Lk. 15:4-6. That piece of wood that was laid upon the Lord by the Father, however the Lord physically took it up, represented our sins, which were laid upon Him; your laziness to do your readings early this morning, my snap at the woman in the bus, his hatred of his mother in law... that piece of wood was the symbol of our sins, every one of them. This is what we brought upon Him. It was our laziness, our enmity, our foolishness, our weak will... that necessitated the death of Jesus in this terrible way. It was Yahweh who laid on the Lord the iniquity of us all, as if He was present there when the soldiers laid the cross upon the Lord's shoulders (Is. 53:6).

The LXX here has "The Lord handed him over (paradidômi) for our sin" and this is surely alluded to in the language of "the Son of Man will be handed over (paradidomi) to be crucified" (Mt. 26:2). The handing over or betrayal of the Lord by Judas in fact had God's hand behind it.  In Mt. 26:16 Judas was looking for a convenient time to hand Him over, again paradidomi.

Isaiah 53:7 He was oppressed- Before the cross, we are convicted of our sinfulness. And yet we are assured there of our ultimate salvation. Isaiah 53 predicted that there, “He was oppressed”- Heb. ‘exaction was made’ (s.w. Is. 58:3). He bore our punishment / condemnation on the cross. We each ought to be crucified to death- this is the exaction for sin. And yet, Jesus died for us. The exaction was made from Him. The rejected will have to bear their own sin, and therefore their feelings will be akin to His in the time of crucifixion. Yet we are to bear the cross with Him. We must either crucify ourselves now, or go through it in rejection. This is a gripping logic.

"Oppressed" is the word for "taskmaster" and has been used by Isaiah of Judah's dominators and abusers (Is. 9:4; 14:2,4). The Lord Jesus was "oppressed" as Israel's representative and thus became the basis for righteousness to be imputed to all who had been oppressed and had oppressed others. See on Is. 60:17.

Yet when he was afflicted he didn’t open his mouth. As a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is mute, so he didn’t open his mouth- John the Baptist looked at Jesus walking towards him and commented that here was the “Lamb of God”, a phrase the Jews would’ve understood as referring to the lamb which was about to be sacrificed on Passover (Jn. 1:29). John presumably was referencing the description of the crucified Jesus in Is. 53:7; for John, he foresaw it all, it was as if he saw Jesus as already being led out to die, even though that event was over three years distant. And so he could appeal to his audience to face judgment day as if they were standing there already. We need to have the same perspective.

Is. 53:7 speaks of the Lord at this time as being uncannily silent: "as a sheep before her shearers is silent" . The LXX has: “Because of his affliction he opens not his mouth", as if the silence was from pure fear as well as a reflection of an internal pain that was unspeakable. Job’s experience had foretold that the cross would be what the Lord had always “greatly feared". The Passover Lamb, so evidently typical of the Lord as He approached death, was to be male. And yet Is. 53:7 conspicuously speaks of a female sheep. Why such an obvious contradiction? Was it not because the prophet foresaw that in the extraordinary breadth of experience the Lord was passing through, He was made to empathize with both men and women? He felt then, as He as the seed of the woman stood silent before those abusive men, as a woman would feel. This is not the only place where both the Father and Son are described in feminine terms. It doesn't mean, of course, that the Father is a woman; what it means is that He has the ability to appreciate and manifest feelings which a male would not normally be able to. Through His experience and zeal for our redemption, the Lord Jesus came to the same ability as His Father in these areas. Those who have suffered most are the most able to empathize. And yet somehow the Lord exceeded this principle; it was true of Him, but such were His sufferings and such His final empathy that this isn't a fully adequate explanation as to how He got to that point of supreme empathy and identity with us that He did. Exactly how He did it must surely remain a mystery; for God was in Him, reconciling the world unto Himself by that fully and totally representative sacrifice.

Literally, the Hebrew is "like a sheep before the faces of its shearers". This connects with how He was "as one from whom men hide their faces" (Is. 53:7). Those men are described as behaving just as we imagine them- having to face the Lord, seeing they were His "shearers", and yet seeking to avert their gaze, hiding their faces from Him. They hid their faces from Him; but He didn't “hide his face from shame and spitting” (Is. 50:6). This is the clash between those of bad conscience with Him with the ultimate clean conscience. This is all so psychologically credible, and an example of where Old Testament prophecy fills in far more details than the simple historical descriptions of the Lord's sufferings which we have in the New Testament.

The female element in Old Testament sacrifice pointed forward to the Lord’s sacrifice, as a sheep before her shearers. His identity with both male and female, as the ultimate representative of all humanity, meant that He took upon Himself things that were perceived as specifically feminine. The mother was the story teller of the family; when people heard the Lord tell parables and teach wisdom, it would have struck them that He was doing the work of the matriarch of a family (V.C. Matthews and D.C. Benjamin, The Social World Of Ancient Israel (Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson, 1993) pp. 28-29).  “Typical female behaviour included taking the last place at the table, serving others, forgiving wrongs, having compassion, and attempting to heal wounds", strife and arguments (B. J. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights From Cultural Anthropology (Louisville: Westminster / John Knox Press, 1993) p. 54). All this was done by the Lord Jesus- especially in His time of dying and the lead up to it. He was in many ways the idealized mother / matriarch. His sacrifice for us was very much seen as woman’s work. And this is why the example of his mother Mary would have been a particular inspiration for Him in going through the final process of self-surrender and sacrifice for others, to bring about forgiveness and healing of strife between God and men. In a fascinating study, Diane Jacobs-Malina develops the thesis that a psychological analysis of the Gospels shows that the Lord Jesus played his roles like “the wife of the absent husband" (Diane Jacobs-Malina, Beyond Patriarchy: The Images Of Family In Jesus (New York: Paulist, 1993) p.2. ). And assuming that Joseph disappeared from the scene early in life, His own mother would have been His role model here- for she was indeed the wife of an absent husband. You’d have to read Jacobs-Malina’s study to be able to judge whether or not you think it’s all valid. But if she’s right, then it would be yet another tribute to the abiding influence of Mary upon the character of the Son of God.

This idiom of being a lamb dumb and not knowing the outcome of events is used about Jeremiah to describe his willful naivety about Israel's desire to slay him: "I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter; and I knew not that they had devised devices against me" (Jer. 11:19). In this Jeremiah was indeed a type of Christ. Likewise we note that being cut off out of the land of the living (:8) is also the language of Jeremiah (Jer. 11:19). Perhaps the connections are to teach us that the Lord died with Jeremiah on His mind. On one hand, the Lord Jesus knew from the beginning who should betray Him; and yet He went through the pain, shock and surprise of realizing that Judas, his own familiar friend in whom He trusted, had done this to Him (Ps. 41:9; Jn. 6:64; 13:11). He knew, and yet He chose to limit that foreknowledge from love. This is in fact what all human beings are capable of, seeing we are made in the image of God. Thus Samson surely knew Delilah would betray him, and yet his love for her made him trust her. And we as observers see women marrying alcoholic men, wincing as we do at the way their love makes them limit their foreknowledge. There is an element of this in God, as there was in His Son as He faced the cross.

The Greek for “delivered Him” (Rom. 8:32) is three times used in Is. 53 LXX about the handing over to Jesus to His death [NEV "that is led"]. The moment of the Lord being delivered over by Pilate is so emphasized. There are few details in the record which are recorded verbatim by all the writers (Mt. 27:26; Mk. 15:15; Lk. 23:25; Jn. 19:16). The Lord had prophesied this moment of handing over, as if this was something which He dreaded (Mk. 9:31; 10:33); that point when He was outside the legal process, and must now face His destruction. The Angels reminded the disciples: "Remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men" (Lk. 24:6,7). The emphasis is on "How", with what passion and emphasis. Rom. 4:25 makes this moment of handing over equivalent to His actual death: "Who was delivered (s.w.) for our offences, and raised again for our justification". So much stress is put on this moment of being delivered over to crucifixion. The Gospel records stress that Pilate delivered Him up; but in fact God did (Rom. 8:32); indeed, the Lord delivered Himself up (Gal. 2:20; Eph. 5:2,25). Always the same word is used. Notice how Acts 8:32 changes the quotation from Is. 53 to say that Christ was led (this isn't in the Hebrew text). His passivity is another indication that He was giving His life of His own volition, it wasn't being taken from Him.

We are in Christ, connected every moment with the life and living out of His cross. We are dying with Him, our old man is crucified with Him because His death is an ongoing one. “It is Christ that died... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?... As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter" (Rom 8:34-36). According to Isaiah 53, He on the cross was the sheep for the slaughter; but all in Him are all day long counted as sharing His death, as we live out the same self-control, the same spirit of love and self-giving for others, regardless of their response...

 

Isaiah 53:8 He was taken away-

"Taken away" in Is. 53:8 is the word used just prior to the commencement of this fourth servant song: "what do I do here, says Yahweh, seeing that My people are taken away for nothing... oppressed without cause?" (Is. 52:5). They were taken away because of their sins. But Yahweh identified Himself with the exiles as if with them in exile (reflected by the visions of the cherubim glory seen by the rivers of Babylon). And He wonders why He and His people are in exile, seeing the people had been "taken away for nothing". Somehow the reason for their exile had been removed. And Is. 53:8 explains how this could have happened- the suffering servant "was taken away" and had been "stricken for the disobedience of My people". The debt had been paid, the sin removed, so Yahweh and His people were now in exile for no reason. Sin has been made an end of, according to Dan. 9. Tragically, most of them chose to remain in that exile rather than accept this amazing offer and truth. Which has therefore been extended to all men.

But GNB may have the sense right: "He was arrested and sentenced and led off to die, and no one cared about his fate". But what man didn't then care about was to become the most crucial act in human history, for which all true men would be eternally grateful.

Much study has been done of the crisis many males go through around the age of 30, the desire to stop experimenting and settle down, to cease being cared for and instead seeking to build up something permanent, the sense that life is passing by...it has all been very well summed up by Daniel Levinson in his study of the "age thirty transition". All this energy was released by the Lord into His three year ministry which changed human destiny, so intense and far reaching and successful was it. "I go to prepare a place for you...." is surely an allusion to the Palestinian tradition that the wife came to live with the new husband after a year and a day, whilst He 'prepared the place' for her. The cross was His purchase of us as His bride. The bridegroom was “taken away” from the wedding guests (Mk. 2:20)- the same word used in the LXX of Is. 53:8 for the ‘taking away’ of the Lord Jesus in His crucifixion death. But the groom is ‘taken away’ from the guests- because he is going off to marry his bride. The cross, in all its tears, blood and pain, was the Lord’s wedding to us.

By oppression and judgement- LXX "In his humiliation his judgment was taken away". But if as the MT, in what sense did the oppression and lack of justice take away His life? The Lord poured out His soul unto death; "he was taken away by distress" (Is. 53:12,8 AVmg.) suggests that it was the mental crisis in the brain of Christ on the cross which resulted in His death. This is why Pilate marvelled that He died so quickly. It is evident from this that the physical process of crucifixion did not kill Christ, but rather the heart burst (both figurative and literal) which it brought upon Him. Do we not sense that striving in our minds as we fellowship His sufferings? Surely we do, but from a great distance. Yet we should sense it more and more, it should make us get out of this sense of drifting which we all too often have, day by day drifting along with very little stirring up our minds.

And as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living- “Cut off" is Heb. ‘excluded’, "from the land of the living” (s.w. ‘the congregation’- of Israel). And this was for the transgression of His people. This is undoubtedly reference to the self-sacrificial exclusion of Moses from the land, that Israel might enter. The Lord died the death of a sinner, He chose like Moses to suffer affliction with us, that we might be saved. The allusion is also to how the scapegoat was sent into a "cut off land" with the sins of Israel. However the Hebrew is intentionally ambiguous here. The idea can be 'Who can talk of his children? Nobody, because he has none, he died childless'. The Ethiopian eunuch clearly found this reading attractive. But equally: 'Who can talk of / describe his children? Nobody, for they are so many, more than a man could number!'. Likewise He was cut off / taken away from the land of the living could refer to His death, as well as to His ascension in glory. Just as He was "lifted up" on the cross in both shame [to the human eye] or in glory, in God's eyes. Jn. 12:38 thus quotes Is. 6 and Is. 53 together about the exaltation of the Lord Jesus, arguing that both prophecies were when "Isaiah saw his glory and spoke of him".

And stricken for the disobedience of My people?- see on Ex. 32:32. The darkness that came down at the crucifixion would have recalled Jer. 33:19-21- when day and night no longer follow their normal sequence, God is breaking His covenant. Israel’s condemnation would be that “even at midday you will grope like a blind man in the dark" (Dt. 28:29). And yet the Lord would have known that He was suffering for Israel, treated as an apostate Israel, and thus He was the more inspired to pray for their ultimate forgiveness and salvation, seeing He had borne their condemnation. The Lord suffered “for the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due" (Is. 53:8 RVmg.). There are therefore elements of the crucifixion sufferings of Jesus in every suffering of natural Israel.

"Stricken" as in :4 "we accounted him stricken" is the word for disease or leprosy in Lev. 13:5 etc. The paradox is thus created of an apparently blemished sacrifice atoning for sin. This apparent contradiction would have been immediately apparent to any Jewish reader or hearer of these words. As discussed on Is. 52:14, we again have the powerful message of representation. The Lord was unblemished, but so identified with the blemished that He was counted as blemished. And this was the basis of the efficacy of His work. Had He died as a substitute, the point would be laboured that the unblemished died for the blemished. But in fact the unblemished was identified with the blemished to the point of being counted as blemished, and this was what uniquely empowered His sacrifice. Although sacrificial language is used, and there is indeed allusion to the rituals of sacrifice, this sacrifice was altogether of a different nature. The Lord bore the sins of the many like the scapegoat, which was a "purification offering" (Lev. 16:5)- because He was identified with the impure.

Isaiah 53:9 They made his grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in his death; although he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth- see on Dt. 34:6. Sin is likened to violence in Is. 53:9 cp. 1 Pet. 2:22. There is a clear fulfilment in the Lord's burial in the graveyard belonging to the rich man Joseph of Arimathea. But this obvious fulfilment of prophecy isn't noted in the New Testament. A hallmark of God's Hand in the record is that what to us are the most obvious OT prophecies are not quoted; e.g. Is. 53:7: "He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth". A human author would have made great capital from such detailed fulfillments. But not so the Almighty. Hebrew, along with all the Semitic languages, has no superlatives. God doesn’t need them. And the record of the cross is a classic example. The record of the resurrection reflects a similar culture. The actual resurrection isn’t ever described [in marked contrast to how it is in the uninspired ‘gospels’]. Instead we read of the impact of His resurrection upon His disciples.

"Death" is literally "deaths". This could be an intensive plural- His was the hardest of all human deaths, the greatest death, of the most significance. Or the plural may be another hint at His representative death- He died the death of all who die in and with Him. We are baptized into His death, and so His death became and becomes the deaths of every one in Him. And His resurrection glory likewise.

In the ancient world, how you died and were buried was important. Several times we read of having no burial or a shameful burial; being buried the wrong way was the ultimate shame. The suffering servant was buried honorably, but died shamefully, "with the wicked". He experienced both shame and glory at the same time, just as being "lifted up" is used in John's Gospel of the cross. It was both shame and glory. The NAB renders "A grave was assigned him among the wicked, and a burial place with evildoers" as if in fact the entire death and burial was shameful. If this reading is correct, we can assume that His burial place was "assigned him", in Gehenna, but Joseph of Arimathea overrode that by giving Him an honourable burial. Shame and glory are likewise juxtaposed in our Christian experience. But death, the ultimate shame, turns into the ultimate glory. Thus Is. 40 began this section by saying that the Gospel, the good news, is that all flesh is as grass, but the word of the Lord, the word of eternal restoration of the dead, lasts for ever.

Isaiah 53:10 Yet it was Yahweh’s will to bruise him- It was God who 'bruised' the Lord on the cross. Gen. 3:15 says it was the seed of the serpent who bruised Him. Conclusion: God worked through the seed of the serpent, God was [and is] totally in control. The serpent is therefore not a symbol of radical, free flying evil which is somehow outside of God's control, and which 'bruised' God's Son whilst God was powerless to stop His Son being bruised. Not at all. God was in control, even of the seed of the serpent. However we finally wish to interpret "the seed of the serpent", the simple fact is that God was in powerful control of it / him. The same word for "will" is found in Isaiah's opening criticism of Israel: "I have no pleasure / will in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats” (Is. 1:11 NIV). Yet God's pleasure or "will" was in the bruising and sacrifice of the servant. Is. 1:11 may be saying that God had no pleasure in the sacrifices His people were offering Him at that point, because they were offered with the wrong spirit. If indeed animal sacrifice was not His "will", we naturally wonder why He asked for it in the first place. We recall the language of offerings having a sweet smell to God- when properly offered. But the offering of His Son was supremely His will / pleasure: "By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ" (Heb. 10:10).

 

He has caused him to suffer. When You make his soul an offering for sin-

His soul making restitution is again the idea of the debt of Judah's sin being cleared by God through the suffering of the servant. Is. 53:10 NIV describes the Lord's death as a "guilt offering". Ignorance is no atonement for sin, as the Law taught. "Forgive them for they know not what they do" sounds as if the Lord felt that He was the offering for ignorance, which was required for both rulers and ordinary Israelites (cp. how Peter and Paul describe both the rulers and ordinary people as "ignorant", implying they had a need for the ignorance offering of Christ, Acts 3:17; 13:27). And significantly, Heb. 5:2 describes Christ as a good priest who can have compassion on those (i.e. us) who have sinned through ignorance and want reconciliation. As we come, progressively, to realize our sinfulness, we need to make a guilt offering. But that guilt offering has already been made, with the plea "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do". All our sin, false guilt and real guilt, has been dealt with. We perhaps cannot ultimately decide, at least not by any intellectual process, what parts of our sense of "guilt" are false guilt, and which are legitimate and needful guilt. Whatever, the Lord's guilt offering has removed all this. And yet the phrase for "guilt offering" could as well be translated ‘restitution’ or ‘reparation offering’, as its use in Numbers makes plain (Num. 5:7,8 "He shall confess his sin which he has done, and he shall make restitution for his guilt in full, and add to it the fifth part of it, and give it to him in respect of whom he has been guilty. But if the man has no kinsman to whom restitution may be made for the guilt, the restitution for guilt which is made to Yahweh shall be the priest’s"). Restored relationships with God and man are possible through this offering. The guilt offering made reparation or restitution (e.g., Lev. 5:15,16). It removed guilt and liability for punishment; as the Lord's offering removed from us the fear of condemnation. The idea of restoration of course connects with the exiles and Kingdom of God being restored at their time. The offering of the servant could have been made then, in some form. It wasn't, and the silver lining of that failure was that it was far more powerfully made and achieved through the Lord Jesus.

The Lord’s soul was sorrowful unto death in Gethsemane, as if the stress alone nearly killed Him (Mk. 14:34). "My soul is full of troubles, and my life (therefore) draweth nigh unto the grave" (Ps. 88:3). Is. 53:10-12 speaks of the fact that the Lord's soul suffered as being the basis of our redemption; the mind contained within that spat upon head, as it hung on that tortured body; this was where our salvation was won. Death is the ultimately intense experience, and living a life dedicated to death would have had an intensifying effect upon the Lord's character and personality.

The LXX is very relevant to Hezekiah: "The Lord also is pleased to purge him from his stroke. If ye can give an offering for sin, your soul shall see a long-lived seed".

 

He shall see his seed- It seems to me that in some sense the Lord Jesus had a vision of us in the Kingdom just before his death (Is. 53:10; Heb. 12:2; Ps. 22:17,20 cp. Eph. 5:30). "When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed... he shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied" (Is. 53:10,11 AV). "When" would suggest that the Lord had some kind of vision of those He was offering Himself for, especially in their future, forgiven state.

Another take is that when God made His soul sin on the cross [AV “offering for sin" is not in the Hebrew text- it’s an interpretation], then He saw [Heb. to perceive / discern] His seed (Is. 53:10). This all seems to mean that it was through this feeling as a sinner deep within His very soul, that the Lord Jesus came to ‘see’, to closely identify with, to perceive truly, us His sinful seed / children. And He did this right at the very end of His hours of suffering, as if this was the climax of His sufferings- they led Him to a full and total identity with sinful men and women. And once He reached that point, He died. The total identity of the Lord with our sinfulness is brought out in passages like Rom. 8:3, describing Jesus as being “in the likeness of sinful flesh" when He was made a sin offering; and 1 Pet. 2:24, which speaks of how He “his own self…in his own body" bore our sins “upon the tree". Note that it was at the time of His death that He was especially like this. I believe that these passages speak more of the Lord’s moral association with sinners, which reached a climax in His death, than they do of His ‘nature’.

He shall prolong his days- The victory of the Lord Jesus is described as Him 'prolonging his days', in allusion back to the way Dt. 17:20 teaches that the King of Israel must study the word all the days of his life, with the result that he would "prolong his days". The almost unbelievable victory of the man Christ Jesus against every aspect of the flesh was due to His saturation with the spirit of God's word. 

And the will of Yahweh shall prosper in his hand- The pleasure or will of our loving Father is that we should share His Kingdom (Lk. 12:32), and that pleasure / will prospered through the cross of Jesus (Is. 53:10). God isn’t indifferent. He wants us to be there. That’s why He gave His Son to die. It’s as simple as that. The deepest longings we feel in our earthly lives, as parents, as lovers, are mere flickers of the hungering desire God feels for us. It is a desire that cost Him His very own crucified son. He willed (not "pleased", as AV) this bruising, and this putting to grief (Is. 53:10). The parallel here between the bruising, beating and putting to grief may suggest that the beatings up ('bruisings') really grieved the Lord. And note that the final sacrifice of which Is. 53 speaks was not only achieved by the hours spent hanging on the cross. This earlier beating and abusing was just as much a part of His final passion, as, in essence, His whole life was a living out of the principles of the cross.

 

Isaiah 53:11 After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light and be satisfied- I prefer AV "He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied". He will and does now see in us the [result of] the travail of His soul. We note that His travail was so much internal, "of his soul". The term "travail / suffering of [the] soul" effectively means 'His life's work' (Ecc. 2:24; 4:8; 6:7 s.w.). As we die, one by one, and He knows that for sure He will resurrect and save us at the last day... this verse comes true, time and again. He sees the result of His life's work and His final death... and is "satisfied".

 

My righteous servant will justify many by the knowledge of himself- “Raised for our justification’ (Rom. 4:25) is an allusion to the LXX of Is. 53:11, which speaks of “the righteous servant” (Jesus) “justifying the righteous”. The repetition of the word “righteous” suggests that on account of the Lord’s death, and resurrection, His righteousness becomes ours, through this process of justification. But how and why, exactly, does Christ’s death and resurrection enable our justification? Paul has explained that faith in God brings justification before Him. Now Paul is explaining how and why this process operates. Jesus died and rose again to eternal life as our representative. If we believe into Him (which Romans 6 defines as involving our identification with His death and resurrection by baptism), then we too will live for ever as He does, as we will participate in His resurrection to eternal life. Our final justification, being declared in the right, will be at the day of judgment. We will be resurrected, judged, and declared righteous- and given eternal life, never again to sin and die. This is the end result of the status of ‘justified’ which we have now, as we stand in the dock facing God’s judgment.

Through the cross, the Lord Jesus would "justify the many". Yet this phrase is picked up in Dan. 12:3 and applied to those who preach the Gospel- and thereby become "those who justify the many". The implication is plain enough. Through preaching, we live out the Lord's death for others in practice, we placard Him crucified before the world's eyes. We are not simply "Him" to them; we are Him crucified to them. The honour of this is surpassing.

The language is very similar to that of Dan. 9, about "Messiah the prince" being "cut off", making an end of sin, and bringing in eternal righteousness, i.e. justification, for "the many".

We naturally wonder how the offering of one righteous servant could "justify the many" when they are presented as sinners. For Ex. 23:7 is clear: “I will not justify the wicked”. A good man cannot get a bad man out of his death sentence. Judaism, and all forms of 'religion', wriggle and struggle with this. They have no realistic, credible path towards the salvation of sinners. Short of making God turn a blind eye and renege on His own clearly stated ethics and principles. God's justice and rightful refusal to justify the wicked... appears as too large a roadblock, intellectually, morally, ethically, practically, in the path to human salvation. There are allusions to Mosaic sacrifices throughout the song of this suffering servant. But none of them are exact; and there is no priest, nor sanctified place of offering mentioned. Nor do Mosaic sacrifices resurrect and bring forth eternally saved children. But the God who would not justify the wicked under the old covenant has found a way to achieve all this, through His servant who is the personification of His ideal "Israel". All who identified in Him, as we do through baptism, can have this amazing experience. He is Israel and he restores Israel. Isaiah's words have been clear enough, that Jacob is and was Yahweh's servant: "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified" (Is. 49:3 and often, e.g. Is. 41:8-10; 44:1-3,21; 45:4; 48:21).  "You, Israel My servant, Jacob whom I have chosen...  you whom I have taken hold of from the ends of the earth and called from its corners and said to you, ‘You are My servant, I have chosen you" (Is. 41:8,9). Judaism is not wrong on this point. The mission and sufferings of the servant are indeed full of connection with passages about Israel; e.g. a sheep led to slaughter (Is. 53:7 = Ps. 44:22). But the servant Israel are declared blind, lame and useless. "Israel" are also not the servant- "Who among you [Israel] fears the Lord? Who obeys the voice of His Servant?" (Is. 50:1). And it is the servant figure who brings good news to Israel and who is sent to bring Israel back to Yahweh (Is. 49:5). This difference between the servant and Israel becomes clearest and most acute here in Is. 53, where Israel fail to acknowledge the servant; and finally "For the transgressions of My people [Israel] He [the Servant] was stricken" (Is. 53:8). So in this fourth servant song, the singular servant arises to be Israel in one man. To save not only Israel, but all in Him: "Now says Yahweh who formed me from the womb to be His servant, to bring Jacob again to Him, and that Israel be gathered to Him... yes, He says, It is too light a thing that you should be My servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give you for a light to the nations, that you may be My salvation to the end of the earth" (Is. 49:5,6). This was indeed "what the law could not do" (Rom. 8:3); "And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses" (Acts 13:39). And so you understand why indeed I would crawl, on my hands and knees if necessary, from one side of London to the other, from one side of England to the other, from one side of Europe to the other, from one side of this world to the other, to baptize just one man "into Christ". For all the grief, the cost, the angst, the drama... I would do it again and again, to the end. And you understand now why I urge each of you likewise, to bring men into Christ.

And he will bear their iniquities- “Bearing sin” in other Old Testament passages (Lev. 19:17; 20:2; Num. 9:13; Lam, 5:7) refers to a person bearing the consequences of his or her own sin. He was a sin bearer; and the idea of sin bearing was almost an idiom for being personally guilty and sinful (Num. 14:34; Ex. 28:43). The Lord was our sin bearer and yet personally guiltless. This is the paradox which even He struggled with; no wonder we do, on a far more abstract level. As He bore away our iniquities (Is. 53:11), so “we then that are strong ought to bear the iniquities of the weak” (Rom. 15:1). The Lord Jesus didn’t sin Himself but He took upon Himself our sins- to the extent that He felt a sinner, even though He wasn’t. Our response to this utter and saving grace is to likewise take upon ourselves the infirmities and sins of our brethren. If one is offended, we burn too; if one is weak, we are weak; we bear the infirmities of the weak (Rom. 15:1). But in the context of that passage, Paul is quoting from Is. 53:11, about how the Lord Jesus bore our sins on the cross. We live out the spirit of His cross, not in just bearing with our difficulties in isolation, but in feeling for our weak brethren. The description of the believer as a “living sacrifice” (Rom. 12:1) alludes to the scapegoat, the only living sacrifice, which was a type of the risen Lord (Lev. 16:10 LXX = Acts 1:3). As the Lord ran free in His resurrection, bearing away the sins of men, so we who are in Him and preach that salvation can do the same. As He bore away our iniquities (Is. 53:11), so “we then that are strong ought to bear the iniquities of the weak” (Rom. 15:1). We live out the spirit of His cross, not in just bearing with our difficulties in isolation, but in feeling for our weak brethren. Bearing sin was clearly a reference to the scapegoat, and being cut off from the land of the living (:8) alludes to the scapegoat being sent to a land "cut off". We note there is no mention in Is. 53 of a priest officiating- the absent priest in the ritual points to God Himself officiating, after the pattern of Abraham offering Isaac.

Isaiah 53:12 Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong- Graciously dividing the spoil with those who didn't fight for it evokes the behaviour of Abraham (Gen. 14:22-24) and David (1 Sam. 30:24-26). Clearly we are to get that this servant is the promised seed of Abraham and David. The idea of the Lord binding Satan (the "strong man"), stealing his goods and sharing them with His followers is a picture of His victory on the cross. It is full of allusion to Is. 53:12, which says that on account of the fact that the Christ would pour out His soul unto death and bear our sins, "he shall divide the spoil with the strong (Heb. 'those that are bound')". This dividing of the spoils to us by the victorious Lord (Lk. 11:22; Is. 53:12) recalls how the Lord divided all His goods between His servants (Mt. 25:14), the dividing of all the Father's goods between the sons (representing the good and bad believers, Lk. 15:12). We have elsewhere shown that these goods refer to the various aspects of the supreme righteousness of Christ which are divided between the body of Christ. The spoils divided to us by the Lord are the various aspects of righteousness which He took for Himself from Satan. The picture of a bound strong man having his house ransacked before his eyes carries with it the idea of suspense, of daring, of doing something absolutely impossible. And so the idea of Christ really taking the righteousness which the Satan of our very natures denies us, and giving these things to us, is almost too much to believe.

Because he poured out his soul to death, and was numbered with the transgressors-

The Lord clearly understood this about Himself in Lk.  22:37 (also Mk. 15:28): "For I say unto you, That this that is written must yet be accomplished me, And he was reckoned among the transgressors: for the things concerning me have an end", i.e. a completion, a fulfillment. And the Lord surely had these words in mind when in Mt. 26:28 He spoke of "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for
the forgiveness of sins". The New Testament quotes or alludes to the fourth servant song more than any other section of the Old Testament.

There would have been a loss of lymph and body fluid to the point that the Lord felt as if He had been "poured out like water" (Ps. 22:14); He "poured out his soul to death", as if His sense of dehydration was an act He consciously performed; He felt that the loss of moisture was because He was pouring it out Himself. This loss of moisture was therefore due to the mental processes within the Lord Jesus, it was a result of His act of the will in so mentally and emotionally giving Himself for us, rather than just the physical result of crucifixion.

In the Lord's death we see the heart that bleeds, bared before our eyes in the cross. It is written of Him in His time of dying that He "poured out his soul unto death" (Is. 53:12). The Hebrew translated "poured out" means to make naked- it is rendered as "make thyself naked" in Lam. 4:21 (see too Lev. 20:18,19; Is. 3:17). The Lord' sensitivity was what led Him to His death- He made His soul naked, bare and sensitive, until the stress almost killed Him quite apart from the physical torture. To be sensitive to others makes us open and at risk ourselves. A heart that bleeds really bleeds and hurts within itself. And this was the essence of the cross.

The Lord poured out His soul unto death as a conscious act performed to enable our redemption (Is. 53:12). Materially, this may refer to the way in which every respiration of the Lord would have scraped His sensitive skin against the rough wood, so that there would have been constant blood flow from His back. This was sometimes a cause of death through crucifixion: blood loss through repeated agitation of the wounds by lifting up the body to breathe and exhale. In this sense He poured out His soul unto death. Muscle cramps would have tended to fix the muscles and make respiration difficult without a willful yanking of the body weight upwards on the wounded nerves.

The Lord Jesus Christ “made himself of no reputation”, or “emptied himself” (Phil. 2:7 R.V.), alluding to the prophecy of his crucifixion in Is. 53:12: “He poured out his soul unto death”. He “took upon himself the form (demeanour) of a servant” by his servant-like attitude to his followers (Jn. 13:14), demonstrated supremely by his death on the cross (Mt. 20:28). Is. 52:14 prophesied concerning Christ’s sufferings that on the cross “his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men”. This progressive humbling of himself “unto death, even the death of the cross” was something which occurred during his life and death, not at his birth. The context of Phil. 2 relates to the mind of Jesus, the humility of which is being held up to us as an example to copy. These verses must therefore speak of Jesus’ life on earth, in our human nature, and how he humbled himself, despite having a mind totally in tune with God, to consider our needs.

Phil. 2 is a hymn or poem, stressing the seven stages of the Lord's humiliation, culminating in "death, even the death of the cross", followed by seven stages of exaltation. There are multiple allusions to Is. 53 throughout the poem. The 'V' shaped image of Phil. 2 is actually a conceptual reflection of what we have in this fourth servant song. The same Hebrew words are used of the Lord's humiliation as they are of His exaltation. Thus:

He "lifted up" our sicknesses and sins (53:4,12) but was "lifted up" in exaltation (Is. 52:13)

He "knew" sickness (53:3) but by His knowledge He justified many (53:11)

"The many" were astonished at His humiliation (52:14) but "the many" receive a share in the spoils of His victory (53:11,12)

He opened not His mouth in His humiliation (53:7) but kings would not open their mouths as they stood before the realization of what He had achieved (52:15)

Yahweh "purposed" to bruise Him, but Yahweh's purpose prospered in His hand (53:10)

 

Yet he bore the sin of many- "Bear" is the word used at the start of the song, "he shall be lifted up" (Is. 52:13). It was as if the sin of "the many" was publically displayed in Him, lifted up, but in glory. The Lord knew from Isaiah 53 that He was to bear Israel's sins, that the judgments for their sins were to fall upon Him. Israel ‘bore their iniquities’ by being condemned for them (Num. 14:34,35; Lev. 5:17; 20:17); to be a sin bearer was therefore to be one condemned. To die in punishment for your sin was to bear you sin. There is a difference between sin, and sin being laid upon a person. Num. 12:11 brings this out: “Lay not the sin upon us… wherein we have sinned”. The idea of sin being laid upon a person therefore refers to condemnation for sin. Our sin being laid upon Jesus therefore means that He was treated as if He were a condemned sinner. He briefly endured within Him the torment of soul which the condemned will feel.

And made intercession for the transgressors- On the cross, the Lord prayed for men to be forgiven. This was a fulfilment of this prophecy that He would "justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities", be wounded for our transgressions, be bruised for our iniquities, make a sin offering for His seed, heal us through His stripes, achieve our peace with God through His chastisement, bear the sin of many, be numbered with the transgressors, be stricken "for the transgression of my people", and make "intercession for the transgressors". These are all broadly parallel statements. "The transgressors" are primarily "my people", Israel, who despised and rejected him. And yet they also refer to us, insofar as we become identified with Israel in order to be saved. The prophesy that Christ would make "intercession for the transgressors" in His time of dying was surely fulfilled when He prayed "Father forgive them".

The risen and exalted Lord is spoken of as being shamed, being crucified afresh, as agonizing in prayer for us just as He did on the cross (Rom. 8:24 cp. Heb. 5:7-9). On the cross, He made intercession for us; but now He ever lives to make such intercession (Heb. 7:25). There He bore our sins; and yet now He still bears our sins (Is. 53:4-6,11). Somehow, the cross is still there. The blood of Jesus cleanses us, in the present tense, from all our sins; the Lord Jesus loves us and frees us from our sins by His blood (1 Jn. 1:7; Rev. 1:5). We are cleansed by an ever 'freshly slain' sacrifice (Heb. 10:20 Gk.).

LXX "and was delivered because of their iniquities" is alluded to in Rom. 4:25: “Handed over because of our trespasses”. The Gospel accounts of the crucifixion give special emphasis to the moment of the Lord being handed over to those who would crucify Him. Paul is going on to show the mechanics, as it were, of how God has chosen to operate. His scheme of justifying us isn’t merely a case of Him saying ‘So you are declared right by Me’. He can do as He wishes, but He prefers to work through some kind of mechanism. We are declared right by God although we are sinners; which raises the obvious question: So what becomes of our sins? And so Paul explains that by talking about the crucial role of the death of Christ. Because He was of our nature, He is our representative. Although He never sinned, He died, yet He rose again to eternal life. Through connection with Him, we therefore can be counted as in Him, and thereby be given that eternal life through resurrection, regardless of our sins. In this sense, Jesus had to die and resurrect because of our sins.