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.