Isaiah 53
The full text of Isaiah 53 in the Trinity Bible Version — clear modern English, translated from the original Hebrew. Free to read.
1 Who has believed what he heard from us?
And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
2 For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised,
and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people?
9 And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him;
he has put him to grief.
When his soul makes an offering for guilt,
he will see his offspring; he will prolong his days;
the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.
11 Out of the anguish of his soul he will see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge will the righteous one, my servant, make many righteous,
and he will bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will allot him a portion with the many,
and he will divide the spoil with the strong,
because he poured out his soul to death
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and makes intercession for the transgressors.
Translation notes (12)
- Isaiah 53:1a Shemu'atenu means 'what was heard from us,' that is, the report or message rather than the hearing of it. The verse is quoted twice in the New Testament, at John 12:38 and Romans 10:16, both times of unbelief. 'The arm of the LORD' is a standing image for God's power in action (compare 51:9 and 52:10).
- Isaiah 53:2a Yoneq describes a sucker or fresh shoot, the growth a farmer prunes away, and 'a root out of dry ground' continues the image of something with no prospect of thriving. The point is not ugliness but insignificance.
- Isaiah 53:3a Two Hebrew phrases carry the weight. Ish mak'ovot is 'a man of pains,' and yedua choli is 'acquainted with sickness' — choli is ordinary bodily illness, not grief of mind alone. The verse describes physical suffering as much as sorrow.
- Isaiah 53:4a Nasa means to lift and carry away, and what is carried is again cholayenu, 'our sicknesses,' and mak'ovenu, 'our pains.' Matthew 8:17 quotes this verse of Jesus' healings, taking the sickness literally, while the surrounding verses apply the same bearing to sin. Both dimensions are present in the Hebrew.
- Isaiah 53:5a Mecholal, 'pierced,' comes from a root used of a fatal wound (compare Jeremiah 51:4), and meduka, 'crushed,' is equally violent. The four clauses set the servant's suffering against 'our' transgressions in strict parallel; the exchange, not the suffering alone, is the subject.
- Isaiah 53:6a The closing verb hiphgia literally means 'caused to strike' or 'made to meet.' The same root returns in verse 12 for the servant's intercession. The image is of the iniquity of all being made to converge on one.
- Isaiah 53:7a This verse and the next are what the Ethiopian official is reading in Acts 8:32-33, quoted there from the Greek Septuagint. 'He opened not his mouth' stands at the beginning and the end of the verse, framing the two animal images between silence.
- Isaiah 53:8a The Hebrew here is among the most difficult in the book. Dor, 'his generation,' can mean a lifetime, a generation, or the circle of contemporaries who might have spoken for him. The last phrase, nega lamo, is literally 'a stroke to them,' a plural form applied to a single servant, which the ancient versions resolved in different ways.
- Isaiah 53:9a Two details are unexpected. Bemotav is plural in the traditional Hebrew text, literally 'in his deaths,' where the Great Isaiah Scroll from Qumran has a singular form. And 'a rich man' stands parallel to 'the wicked,' where the parallel would ordinarily repeat a negative term; the tension has been read both as agreement and as contrast.
- Isaiah 53:10a Asham is the technical term for the guilt or reparation offering of Leviticus 5:14-19, the offering that makes restitution for a wrong. Applying it to a person rather than an animal has no parallel elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible.
- Isaiah 53:11a The traditional Hebrew text reads 'he will see and be satisfied.' Two Isaiah manuscripts from Qumran and the Greek Septuagint all read 'he will see light and be satisfied,' adding the Hebrew word or, 'light.' The shorter reading is followed here; the longer one is early and widely attested.
- Isaiah 53:12a 'Numbered with the transgressors' is quoted by Jesus of himself at Luke 22:37. The final verb yaphgia shares its root with hiphgia in verse 6: the one on whom iniquity was made to strike now intervenes for those who struck.
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