Isaiah 53 — The Suffering Servant

What it means

The fourth of Isaiah's Servant Songs unveils a Servant of the LORD who has no stately form to attract us, who is despised and rejected, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. He is pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities; the chastisement that brings us peace falls on Him, and by His wounds we are healed, for the LORD lays on Him the iniquity of us all. He is led like a lamb to the slaughter and does not open His mouth, cut off from the land of the living for the transgression of His people, yet it pleased the LORD to crush Him as a guilt offering, after which He sees the fruit of His anguish, is satisfied, and justifies many. Written roughly seven centuries before Christ, this is the clearest portrait of substitutionary atonement in the Old Testament, where one righteous Servant bears the sin of many so that they may be counted righteous.