This is exactly the question with which chapter 53 opens. This being the prophetic report; who believes it? And further; who recognizes that the suffering Servant and the glorious Arm of Jehovah are one and the same Person? We must underline in our minds the last word of verse 1, for we should never have discerned it had not a revelation been made. A parallel thought occurs in Matthew 16:17, where Peter’s recognition and confession of Christ as “the Son of the living God”, was declared by our Lord to be the fruit of revelation from the Father. That revelation— whether we express it as given in Isaiah or in Matthew— has come, we trust, to every one of our readers, and a thrilling revelation it is. The chapter proceeds to show that the rejection and death of the humbled Servant does not in any way contradict the predictions of His coming glory as the Arm of the Lord, but is rather the great foundation on which it is securely based.
Verse 2 presents Him to us in two ways. First, as He was in the eyes of God. Mankind in general, and Israel in particular, had proved themselves to be “dry ground”, quite unproductive of anything that was good; yet out of this there sprang up this “tender plant”, which drew its life and nourishment from elsewhere. The Lord Jesus truly sprang out of Israel, through the Virgin Mary His mother, but the excellence of His holy Manhood was due not to her but to the action of the Holy Spirit of God.
But second, He is presented as He was in the eyes of men. He had “no form nor lordliness” (New Trans.), nor the kind of beauty that men admire and desire. Some haughty, imperious man of imposing appearance would have caught the popular fancy; but instead of this He was “a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”, as verse 3 says. Being who He was, such a One as He could not be otherwise, as He entered and walked through a ruined creation with all its degradation and woe. This men did not understand, since they were insensible to their own degradation, and consequently they despised and rejected Him, as the prophet here predicts.
How do we Christians go through the world today? Let to challenge our hearts. The world today is in principle what it was then. Here and there more polish may be seen or the surface, but on the other hand the population of the earth has increased enormously, and so its miseries have multiplied. Hence, as the Apostle has told us, “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now” (Rom. 8:22), and we who have the firstfruits of the Spirit are involved in it and groan within ourselves, Now groans are the expression of sorrow. He who today most largely enters into heaven’s joys will most keenly feel earth’s sorrows.
The language here is remarkable. The prophet is led to predict the rejection of Christ in words that will express the feelings of a godly remnant of Israel in the last days, when Zechariah 12:10-14 is fulfilled. Then they will say, “we hid as it were our faces from Him... we esteemed Him not.” Identifying themselves with the sin of their forefathers, they will confess, not that the forefathers did it, but that we did it. This will be a genuine repentance.
Moreover their eyes will be opened to see the real meaning of His death, as verses 4 and 5 show. In the days of His flesh men observed His sorrows and His grief, and deduced from them that He was disapproved of God and therefore afflicted by Him. Now the real truth of it all bursts upon their hearts. They will discover what has been revealed to us, as recorded in the Gospel: He exerted His miraculous power with such sympathetic effect in the healing of men’s bodies, “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses” (Matt. 8:17).
But if verse 4 is their confession of the truth concerning His wonderful life of sympathetic and sorrowful service, verse 5 gives the confession they will make as the true meaning of His death dawns upon them. They discover that He died as a Substitute, and it was even for themselves. This discovery we all make today as we believe the Gospel. The word substitution does not occur in this verse, but the truth that word expresses does occur four times in this one verse, and it occurs ten times in this one chapter.
Now here is a remarkable fact: as printed in our English Bibles, verse 5 is the central verse of this chapter, which really begins with verse 13 of chapter 52. It is therefore the central verse of the central chapter of the central section of this latter part of Isaiah. And without a doubt it predicts truth which is absolutely central to our soul’s salvation and in our soul’s experience. The transgressions, the iniquities were mine, each of us has to say, but the wounding, the bruising were not mine but His. The peace, the healing are mine, but the chastisement, the stripes that procured them, were not mine but His. In all this He was my Substitute.
This thought is again emphasized in verse 6, and it is made plain that His substitutionary work was the fruit of an act of Jehovah, for He it was who laid our sins upon Him. In these verses, we must remember, the “we” and the “us” are those who believe, whether ourselves today or the godly remnant of Israel presently. And those who believe are those who have first confessed their sinnership; all going astray like lost sheep, though the way we took may have differed in each case. Sin is lawlessness; the doing of our own will, regardless of God’s will, and the going of our own way independently of Him.
In verses 7-9, we have a series of remarkable prophecies, all of which were fulfilled on the very day of our Lord’s death. Indeed it has rightly been pointed out that at least 24 Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled in the 24 hours that comprised that day of all days, when the Son of God bowed His head in death.
Verse 7 emphasizes His silence before His accusers. When men are oppressed and afflicted unjustly, to protest is natural and most usual, so His silence was contrary to all experience, and it is noted in the Gospels Matthew 27:11-14; Mark 15:3-4; Luke 23:9; John 19:9. Truly a sheep is dumb before the shearers, as anyone may observe today if they stand and watch the shearers at work, but He was not like a sheep being sheared but rather like a lamb led to the slaughter. He was indeed “the Lamb of God”, as John the Baptist proclaimed, yet no word of protest escaped His lips.
Then further, “He was taken from prison [oppression] and from judgment”, for it is still what men did to Him that is before us in these verses. If we turn to Acts 8:26-40, we find that the Ethiopian had in his reading of Isaiah reached exactly this point when Philip intercepted him in his chariot. He was doubtless reading from the Septuagint version in Greek, which renders it “in His humiliation His judgment was taken away”. It was so indeed, for the trial of our Lord, resulting in His condemnation and crucifixion, was the most atrocious miscarriage of justice the world has ever seen. A legal expert has surveyed the evidence of the Gospels, and stated that every step taken by His accusers and judges, whether Jews or Gentiles, was irregular and unjust.
And the prophetic declaration of the result is “He was cut off out of the land of the living”, or as the Ethiopian read it, “His life is taken from the earth”. Hence the prophet says, “Who shall declare His generation?” and to this question men would unanimously reply that, His life being taken, no generation was possible. When we reach verse 10 of our chapter we shall find the answer which Jehovah gives to this question, and it is a very different one, inasmuch as He was cut off and stricken not for Himself but for the transgression of those whom Jehovah calls “My people”. We have left the verses which give confessions which godly Israelites, and ourselves also, have to make, for oracular statements made by the prophet in the name of Jehovah.
So also in verse 9 we hear the voice of the Lord, declaring how He would overrule the circumstances connected with His burial: — “Men appointed His grave with the wicked, but He was with the rich in His death” (New Trans.). And so it came to pass. He was crucified between two wicked men, though one of them was gloriously saved before he died; and if men had had their way they would have flung His sacred body with those of the thieves in a common grave, but by the intervention of Joseph of Arimathea this was prevented, and His body lay in the new tomb belonging to Joseph. God always has the needed man for His work. Joseph was born into the world to fulfill that one line of Scripture! That one act covers all that we know of Joseph. In doing it He served the will of God.
In the margin of our reference Bibles we are told that in the Hebrew the word “death” is really in the plural— “DEATHS”. It is what has been called the plural of majesty. Though crucified between two thieves, His death was MAJESTIC— ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands of deaths rolled into one.
By Joseph’s act the prophecy of Psalm 16:10 was also fulfilled. The Holy One of God was not suffered to see corruption. He had done no violence nor was there deceit, or guile, in His mouth. Violence and corruption are the two great forms of evil in the earth. Both were totally absent in Him. Without corruption in His Person and life, there was no touch of it in His death or His burial. Thus far we have seen how God overruled the purposes of wicked men. In the remaining verses we are to see what God Himself achieved in His death and the mighty results that are to follow for Him— and blessed be God! —also for us, who believe in His name.
Chapters 53:10-55:13
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