Who hath believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of Jehovah been revealed?
Isaiah 53 opens not with the Servant's wounds but with a question about unbelief. A report has gone out and almost nobody has taken it in — so to whom has God shown His power?
(Where the commentators say "report," the ESV renders the phrase "what he has heard from us.")
This report is a specific one. Isaiah had just spoken of the Servant's coming majesty.
Isaiah says, "Who has believed our report?" His report was of the majesty of Christ: "He shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted." Chapter 53 explains why it was not believed. The lowly way in which He came stumbled that proud nation. But the suffering had to come before the glory.
The "our" and the "we" of this chapter belong to a people who once shared in the refusal and later came to see it.
Here we have the confession and wondering complaint over the unbelief of men — indeed, over their own unbelief. Israel is now broken down under a sense of sin. They admit that it was not only outsiders who paid little attention to the report of the Messiah. They themselves had also been hard and rebellious against Him.
Isaiah had already called out to "the arm of the LORD" in an earlier chapter. One writer sets that cry beside this verse.
The prophet is here quoting his own words in Isaiah 51:9: "Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD... Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over?" Who could think that under the lowly form of the Nazarene was in truth the One who had made the very greatest display of the LORD's might found in the ancient records?
The nation did not refuse the message for lack of evidence. Isaiah had already foreseen that refusal.
Israel was without excuse, for the Son of God had done many miracles, signs that made crystal clear the source of His testimony and who He was... The prophet foresaw, by the Spirit, that the nation would refuse the Lord's testimony, and that only a remnant would accept it. Christ is "The Arm of the Lord." His divine power worked the great signs: opening the eyes of the man born blind, and raising Lazarus from death and decay. Yet no one knew Him, except those whose eyes God in grace had opened.
The same power did not stop at the miracles:
As the Arm of the Lord, the Son of God worked the wondrous works of power recorded by John, and very many more. But by that same power He also entered into death. There He overcame all His foes and won the salvation now announced to the ends of the earth.
One writer draws two things from this verse: how faith begins, and how far God's message travels.
So Isaiah declares in Isaiah 53:1: "Who has believed our report?" So faith comes by this report; that is, the testimony heard — and that by God's word. But were the Gentiles not the object of God's testimony? God's testimony was meant for the Gentiles. It is gone out into all the world.
The verse is a complaint, but it leaves room for the few. One writer points to a woman who did believe what she heard about Jesus.
The report of what the Prophet of Nazareth said and did had spread through Galilee. But it had little effect on most of the people... But this woman had believed the report, for we read that "she had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind Him in the crowd and touched His garment." And having believed the report, the strength of the arm of the LORD for healing was revealed to her and in her.
- Report — The message tells of a Servant high and lifted up. The lowly way He came is what made a proud nation refuse Him.
- Refusal — The nation did not lack signs. Isaiah foresaw the refusal, and only a remnant would receive the testimony.
- Revealed — The "arm of the LORD" once dried up the sea for the redeemed. That same power was hidden in the lowly Nazarene, and later entered death itself to secure salvation.
- Repentance — Those who once shared the unbelief come to confess it as their own. The "we" of this chapter is a broken people, not an accusing prophet.
- Reach — Faith comes by hearing the report. That testimony has gone out into all the world, so the question is still open to every hearer.
For he shall grow up before him as a tender sapling, and as a root out of dry ground he hath no form nor lordliness, and when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
Isaiah 53 opens with a confession. Its second verse sets two views of the same Man side by side: what God saw growing before Him, and what the nation saw and turned away from. Everything that follows in the chapter grows out of that gap.
The picture starts with a royal line cut down to a stump, and one small shoot watched over by God Himself.
"As a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground" (v. 2), He was to grow up before God. The royal tree of David had been brought low. All hope seemed to be gone, but "a tender plant," a small shoot, shows itself. It is destined to bear all the royal glory. It grows up before God. He watches over it; protecting and caring for it. Before Him "it grows." Luke 2 fulfils that prophecy, where we read: "And the child grew and became strong… and the favor of God was upon him… And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature."
A plant that thrives in dry ground must draw its life from somewhere else.
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," producing nothing good. Yet out of this ground sprang up this "tender plant," which drew its life and nourishment from elsewhere. The Lord Jesus did spring out of Israel, through the Virgin Mary His mother. But the excellence of His holy Manhood came not from her; it came from the work of the Holy Spirit of God.
Where He stood, there was nothing to feed Him.
Israel was the dry ground. There was no sustenance for our Lord there. All His support was drawn from above.
The words describe an absence — not of worth, but of the kind of appearance that impresses people.
But second, He is presented as He was in the eyes of men. He had "no form or majesty," nor the kind of beauty that men admire and desire. A proud, commanding man with an impressive look would have caught the public's fancy. Instead He was "a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief," as verse 3 says. Being who He was, He could be nothing else as He entered and walked through a ruined creation, with all its degradation and sorrow.
He entered the ruin at its lowest point, and rose from there with nothing borrowed from the world.
So the Lord took His place in the ruin of the people and of their royal house… Because of the sins of the people, He accepted the lowliest position: Nazareth, under the rule of the last heathen empire. From there He came out, with no advantage of place, power, wealth, or human learning, to glorify His Father by the way He lived… Man despised Him. But how God delighted in Him — His fellow, humbling Himself for His Father's glory from first to last here below, as God said from heaven again and again! In Him was His own best pleasure. How immeasurably above coming in power and pomp!
The verse changes speaker halfway through, and the pronouns are the key to it.
Note the difference between "Him" and "we." "Him" — Jehovah Himself; "we" — the Jewish nation.
The same gap showed up in the men who should have known best.
What must man be to be at such variance with God! Beautiful in the eyes of Jehovah; no beauty in the eyes of men. Jehovah's delight; men's hatred. Surely this might be true of the rabble, you say, but not of the educated and religious! No. It was the very leaders of the nation — their high priests and rulers — who filled the air with their fierce cry, "Crucify Him! crucify Him."
Isaiah puts these words in the mouths of people who later change their minds. What offended them was not His teaching or His works, but His lowliness.
First, they own that in the day of His humiliation they had despised and rejected their Messiah. They see now that under the eye of God He was altogether lovely — a tender plant. Man may wonder at His words of wisdom and His mighty works. But they despised and rejected Him because of His lowly grace. They esteemed Him of no importance, for they say, "Is not this the carpenter's son?"
The same lowliness that repelled the proud drew everyone who knew their need.
What set Him at a moral distance from all the hypocrisy and religion of the natural man was no barrier to anyone who felt their need. Such need always found a tender welcome in Him. The outcast, the wretched and the lost came freely to Him.
The shoot is not left small. Writers trace it forward to the day it is seen for what it is.
What is so striking is that Isaiah 53:2 points us to this One (who shall be seen in His triumph and glory soon), in His lowliness and loveliness here, in His humiliation, "as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground."
- Soil — Israel and mankind had proved to be dry ground, producing nothing good. Whatever grew there had to draw its life from elsewhere.
- Shoot — the fallen royal line put out one tender plant. It grew up under God's own eye and care, fulfilled in the child who grew at Nazareth.
- Sight — "Him" is Jehovah, "we" is the nation; the same Man was God's delight and man's hatred.
- Scorn — what men wanted was imposing appearance and pomp. What offended them was His lowly grace, summed up in "Is not this the carpenter's son?"
- Splendour — lowliness is not the end. That tender plant will bear all the royal glory, and needy people found their welcome in Him long before the world did.
He is despised and left alone of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, and like one from whom [men] hide their faces; -- despised, and we esteemed him not.
This verse sits in the middle of a confession — the words of people who once saw nothing in Christ worth wanting, and who now admit it. It raises two questions: why did men turn away from Him, and why was sorrow the settled mark of a perfect life?
Commentators read this chapter as a confession Israel makes after God delivers them, not during Christ's lifetime. The order matters: they see Him first, then they repent.
The full repentance of Israel comes after their deliverance. That is, their discipline ends first. Then Christ appears in glory as their deliverer, and this produces the deep sense of their sin in having rejected Him... After verse 1 the Spirit speaks by the mouth of the escaped remnant of Israel. They confess their sin in having despised Him... Verse 1 shows that they had rejected the testimony of Christ, which was addressed to faith. They believe when they see Him.
Notice the pronoun. The speakers do not blame the generation that crucified Him.
The prophet is led to predict the rejection of Christ. His words express what a godly remnant of Israel will feel in the last days... They take the sin of their forefathers as their own. They will confess, not that the forefathers did it, but that we did it. This will be a genuine repentance.
Men despised Him because nothing in Him fed their taste. The problem was not in Him but in the ones looking.
He is shown here as men saw Him. He had "no form or majesty," and none of the beauty that men admire and want. A proud, commanding man with an impressive appearance would have caught the popular taste. Instead He was "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief"... Men did not understand this. They could not feel how low they had sunk themselves. So they despised and rejected Him.
One writer traces this sorrow to something most people have tasted at some point.
It was His rejection and reproach that made the blessed Son of God "a Man of sorrows" here. Israel would not have Him. He knew He was not wanted. We have all been, at some time or other in our lives, in places where we knew we were not wanted. And it is one of the keenest of all sorrows. The Lord Jesus felt this sorrow everywhere. In some places people did not even care to take Him in. "Foxes have holes," He said on one occasion, "and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head."... He went about doing good, and never spoke an unkind word.
There is a second source of sorrow, deeper than being unwanted. It comes from what He was in Himself.
He felt the degraded state of man, so He could not be anything other than "a man of sorrows"; yes, the "Grief-Acquainted One." His own perfect holiness made Him feel how terrible sin is, as no fallen man could feel it. But the nation treated Him as someone to avoid, "as one from whom men hide their faces." They despised Him; they esteemed Him not.
One writer reads "grief" here as sickness, and points to what happened when He healed.
The account of His taking the weaknesses and carrying the diseases means more than one thing. The Lord did take these things away from the sufferers. He also took them upon Himself. That is how He became a "man of sorrows and acquainted with grief [sickness]".
The confession does not stop at regret. In the verses that follow, the same speakers see why He suffered.
By faith they now see why He was the Man of sorrows. He was bearing their griefs and carrying their sorrows. And if, on the cross, He was stricken, smitten, and afflicted, it was for their sins that He was wounded and bruised, so that through His atoning sufferings they might have peace and healing.
- Spoken, not merely predicted. The verse is a confession God writes in advance for people who will one day say it themselves — and say "we did it," not "they did it."
- Despised for the wrong reason. Men wanted an impressive figure. His lowliness gave their taste nothing to admire, so they looked away.
- Sorrow from two sides. Nobody wanted Him. And His holiness made Him feel the ruin of sin as no fallen person can.
- Grief He absorbed. He did not only take sickness and sorrow away from people. He took it onto Himself. That is how He became "acquainted" with it.
- The same face, seen again. One day they will look at Him and understand. The sorrows they despised, He was carrying for them.
Surely *he* hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; and we, we did regard him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
Isaiah 53 reads like a confession. A people look back at Someone they once wrote off, and at last see what was happening. Verse 4 sets two things side by side: a burden He truly carried, and a verdict about Him that was wrong.
Two Hebrew words tie this verse back to the "man of sorrows" in verse 3. Matthew shows what they point to.
The "Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" is the same as "surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." The Hebrew words are kho-li (grief) and mak'o-voth (sorrows). Matthew shows us that this applies to His healing their diseases and sicknesses. The Lord that healed them entered, as Man, into all the sorrows of which they had to be healed.
Scripture itself quotes this verse in one place: Matthew 8:17. Commentators say that one use settles the question.
It is well known how good and learned men have worked in vain over Isa. 53:4. They have not paid attention to the Holy Spirit's use of it in Matt. 8:17. There it is applied to the grace with which He used His power to remove infirmities and sicknesses in His ministry among the Jews… If any inspired writer had applied Isa. 53:4 to the atonement anywhere, that would settle it. It is only applied to Christ's ministry or at least miracles. When His dying for our sins is meant, the Spirit in 1 Peter 2:24, Heb. 9:28, refers to Isa. 53:11-12.
The verse says He bore and carried. Commentators ask what those words add to an act of power.
In what sense did Jesus, our Lord, take their infirmities, and bear their sicknesses? I believe it is this. He never used the power that was in Him to deal with sickness or infirmity as a mere act of power. In deep compassionate feeling He entered into the whole reality of the case. He healed, and He bore its burden on His heart before God as truly as He took it away from men.
More was happening in Him than the miracle showed.
He felt their miseries and bondage. In His tender heart He carried their burdens. He was afflicted among them because they were afflicted. Power went out of Him to heal them, and the loads He lifted from them weighed down His spirit. He felt these things in His spirit, for disease could not seize or defile His sinless, holy body.
Some read verse 4 as proof that the atonement covers bodily healing. Commentators reject that.
When He used His power in love and sympathy, Christ never healed an ill without bearing it on His spirit. But this is not atonement… bearing on the heart in sympathy is quite another thing from atonement. To apply the principle of atonement here is simply nonsense. Was Christ sick in our place when He made atonement on the cross? He did suffer wrath and bore our sin so as to come under it. But in these healings He was exercising power.
There is also a simpler reason the theory is unnecessary.
The atonement for sickness that people speak of could not be needed. If sin is atoned for, mercy can come in anywhere to relieve and heal the body: that which meets the cause can of course meet its effects also.
The second half of the verse is the confession of a mistake. They saw His suffering and drew the opposite conclusion from the truth.
The passage in Isaiah clearly does not refer to the atoning and substitutionary sufferings of Christ, as the verses right after it do (Isa. 53:5-6). It refers to the effects of His service among men. The Jews, blinded by unbelief, treated those effects as a visitation from God. So they said, "He is mad"; "this man is not of God"; "He has a demon" — counting Him a Gehazi, a Uzziah, "stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted."
Gehazi and Uzziah were men struck with disease as a judgment from God.
Their mistake was not that God's hand was on Him. It was about why.
They had thought that God's hand was out against Him, as if He Himself were under God's displeasure. But the stroke was upon Him "for the transgression of my people."
The "we" of this verse is a people who once judged Him and now judge themselves. That confession is not theirs alone.
This is the language of the godly remnant when they look on Him whom they pierced, and the believer today believes the same truth… How very plain and how very sure is the word of God, God be praised for it!
- Borne — "griefs" and "sorrows" cover sickness and burdens. Matthew 8:17 is the only inspired use of this verse, and it points to His healing ministry.
- Felt — He never healed by bare power. He carried each case on His heart before God as He lifted it off the sufferer.
- Distinguished — bearing in sympathy (v. 4) is not bearing sin under wrath (v. 5 on). Healing was never atonement.
- Misjudged — they saw His sorrow and concluded God was against Him. They put Him with men struck by God.
- Confessed — the "we" is a people who reverse their own verdict. A believer today makes the same confession.
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed.
Isaiah 53 is a confession, and the speakers keep saying "we" and "our" — and this verse is where they stop guessing about the sufferer and name what His suffering did. The questions it raises are simple and huge: who is saying "we," what wounds are these, and what is the healing?
One writer counts up the verses, then draws out what that means for each of us:
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 Isaiah 52. It is therefore the central verse of the central chapter of the central section of this latter part of Isaiah. And without doubt it predicts truth that is central both to our soul's salvation and to 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 bought them, were not mine but His. In all this He was my Substitute.
The confession belongs first to a people who once judged Him wrongly and later admit the truth:
It is not the Gentiles, the non-Jewish nations, but the Jews who say, "Who would have believed our report? … He carried our pains, while we thought God had struck Him down and punished Him. Yet He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and His wounds brought us healing." It is Israel who speak this way, when they repent and confess their past unbelief. They had thought He was hateful to God, when in truth He was making atonement for their transgressions.
Others can say the same words too, but the writers set one condition:
In these verses, we must remember, the "we" and the "us" are those who believe, whether ourselves today or the godly remnant of Israel in a coming day. And those who believe are those who have first confessed that they are sinners.
The verse before speaks of griefs and sorrows carried. This one speaks of something more, and one writer marks the shift:
In sympathy He bore our griefs: in atonement He bore the punishment due to our sins. Blessed Saviour! "Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace." There was no other way. But thanks be to God, we can now say, "with His wounds we are healed." The wounds were His; the healing is ours.
Wounds, bruises and stripes sound like the work of soldiers and mobs. One writer rules that out:
The wounds, the bruises and the stripes that bring blessing did not come from human hands. They tell us what our sins deserved. They tell us what He bore for us at the hand of a righteous and holy God, when He carried our sins.
Some soften the word translated "chastisement" into suffering without penalty. One writer answers by pressing the word itself:
Some argue that "while it is true that Jesus is our substitute, He is our substitute only in suffering, not in punishment. Sin was not punished on the cross. The cross was a scene of wonderful mercy and love, not of wrath and penalty." Yet Scripture still says, "Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace." One scholar, Delitzsch, says of that word, "We have translated the Hebrew word 'musar' as 'punishment,' and the language had no other word for this idea."
Peace, then, is not something we produce or grow into. It comes from a cause outside ourselves:
If the chastisement that brought us peace was upon Him, then He took our place in drinking that dreadful cup. He was our (believers') representative there. God dealt with Him this way because our sins were laid on Him. That is why peace comes to us. It is not because we became righteous in ourselves. Our peace is the result of His chastisement.
Some read the healing as a promise that our bodies will be cured. The writers disagree, and point to a different healing:
This is not bodily healing. It is healing from the deadly disease of sin. The stripes are the stripes of God's judgment, poured out on Him at the cross.
Another writer answers this more plainly:
Some claim that Christ died for our bodily ills as well, and that the stripes laid on Him were for the healing of our bodies. This is a most dangerous twisting of the truth. Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, but nowhere is it written that He died for our bodily diseases.
- Ours. The transgressions and iniquities in this verse belong to us, not to Him.
- His. The wounding, the bruising, the chastisement and the stripes are all His — the exchange runs one way.
- God's. Those stripes came not from human hands but from a righteous God dealing with sins laid on Him.
- Peace. Our peace is the effect of His chastisement, not the effect of any change in us.
- Healing. The healing is healing from the disease of sin. Only those who first confess they are sinners can claim it.
All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all.
Isaiah 53:6 stands at the centre of the chapter's confession: a scattered flock, each animal on its own path, and one Man carrying what they all deserved. Commentators press three questions here — what our straying was, who the "we" and "us all" are, and whose hand did the laying.
The verse describes our sin twice over, and one writer reads each clause as a separate charge.
What words are like God's words? Here in two short sentences God describes our character and our condemnation. Like sheep we have strayed, and in our straying we have shown the folly of our sin. "We have turned every one to his own way," and by that we have declared the wilfulness, the wickedness of our sin. After we had declared so definitely and deliberately what we are, what could fall on us but the just condemnation of God? But God has undertaken for us, and whether it be the folly or the wilfulness of our sin — all our iniquity He laid on our Surety. It is the saved remnant of Israel that is speaking these wonderful words, but every believer may use them.
One writer defines sin by that phrase, "his own way."
Sin is lawlessness; doing our own will regardless of God's will, and going our own way independently of Him.
The verse includes everyone, yet no two paths are the same.
The mouth is all the more free and full to admit its wicked folly: "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way." There was no exception. All had strayed, yet each in his own evil way. Yet in the face of all these wrongs, and out of His own spontaneous and all-conquering goodness, Jehovah made the iniquity of us all fall on Him.
The pronouns matter. One writer asks who the "we" and the "us" are. His answer decides how far substitution reaches.
In this great verse two things strike us. First, it is "all we" and "us all." Who are the "we" and the "us"? The people of God who confess their sins and believe in the Substitute. Exactly so. The propitiatory work of Christ opens the door in righteousness to whoever will. But its substitutionary effect reaches believers only.
The verb belongs to God, not to us. One writer sets this beside Aaron, who once confessed the people's sins over a goat.
Further, it is the Lord Himself who laid our sins on the Substitute. Aaron no doubt confessed and laid on the head of the goat all that he knew and remembered of the people's transgressions. But how could he confess them all? A well-known hymn may say, "I lay my sins on Jesus," but we may well be thankful that it is not left to us to do it. God Himself has done it by one act, and so done it perfectly.
The verse is repeatedly used as the clearest proof text for one Person standing in the place of another.
Substitution is as certain a truth as Scripture can give us — that is, one person standing in another's place, bearing his sins in His own body on the tree, bruised for them instead of the guilty, who is healed by the other taking the stripes.
The moment matters. Some hold that Christ carried our sins all through His life. One writer answers them from this verse.
If He had been bearing our sins all His life, He must all His life have been abandoned by God. God cannot look on sin with the least allowance. But no: Isaiah 53:6 shows that Jehovah laid our iniquity on His Anointed when He hung on the tree.
If God laid the sins, the believer's peace does not rest on his own grip.
If anything could have made this doubtful, it was our sins. But they were laid — yes, He laid on Christ (Isaiah 53:6) the iniquity of us all. Christ bore our sins in His own body on the tree. Where are they now? When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. Not one sin did God leave on the believer; not one did Christ carry into heaven.
The sheep image runs on into rescue. The flock's danger was not only the enemies outside.
They had inward faults as well as outward foes. They had all gone astray. Everyone had turned to his own way. And on the One then speaking to them Jehovah would lay the iniquities of them all. He is the Shepherd, and the sword of divine judgment would soon strike Him for the sake of the flock. He guarantees salvation to anyone who seeks it from Him.
- Straying — the first clause names our folly, the second our wilfulness. All went astray, yet each chose his own route.
- Confession — the "we" here are people who have admitted they are sinners. The door stands open to whoever will, but Christ bears the sins of believers only.
- Laying — God Himself, not the sinner, placed the iniquity on the Substitute. Aaron could never name every sin, so God did it for us, and did it perfectly.
- Timing — God laid the load on Him at the cross. He did not carry it through His life; the bruising and the forsaking belong to that hour.
- Result — God left no sin on the believer, and Christ carried none into heaven. The stricken Shepherd now guarantees salvation to anyone who comes to Him.