Isaiah 53:4,5

‘Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows,

Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions

He was bruised for our iniquities,

The chastisement of our peace was on him,

And with his stripes (‘open wounds') we are healed.'

There are always two ways of looking at things. Men will esteem Him as stricken, smitten by God and afflicted, considering that it must be because He was paying for His own sins. But God will see Him as bearing our griefs and carrying our sorrows, as wounded for our transgressions, our overt outward behaviour, and bruised for our iniquities, our deepest inward sins. For that was the question at the cross, ‘why was He there by God and man forsaken?' And here was God's answer, and man's.

‘Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.' ‘Surely.' It was a matter of complete certainty (see Isaiah 40:7). It was part of the king's acknowledged responsibility to bear the burden of his people. But he did not do it as personally and realistically as this. For this One will bear the sufferings and griefs of His people on His own shoulders. And as the thought expands we are made to recognise that He bears what we deserve to bear. He shoulders it Himself. And that is why our own suffering is not as devastating as it might have been.

The word for ‘griefs' might also be rendered ‘sicknesses' as it regularly is. Bearing someone's sicknesses means bearing the guilt of their sin which resulted in the sicknesses. As the idea of this comes in the following verses, perhaps ‘griefs' is the better translation.

Suffering is in the end a consequence of sin, not individually but in total. And He had come to shoulder that suffering and sorrow, so that He might alleviate it and help others to bear it. We do not know what the world's suffering would have been if He had not come, but it would have been multiplied compared with what it is. For He stood between the world and God's own natural antipathy against sin, giving the world chance to repent. And in a secondary way He was helped to relieve men's sufferings as the Servant by the fact that central to the Christian message through the ages has been the alleviation of pain and suffering, and none have contributed so much to it as God's people.

‘Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.' The general view would be that the Servant was suffering because He was especially sinful. They would consider that He had reaped the consequences of His false claims, and they would therefore have little sympathy. ‘Stricken' was often applied to men afflicted with severe skin disease, but here refers to all the most dreadful things that come on men (see its use in Psalms 73:14), seen as coming from the hand of God because of a man's deserts (see John 9:1). ‘Smitten of God' becomes even more specific. God Himself has taken note of this man's evil and blasphemy and has smitten him. ‘Afflicted' refers to the man's experience of the smiting. He finds himself suffering the blows of God. So this is how men would account of the Servant's sufferings. But God would see otherwise.

In Isaiah 1:5 Israel was depicted in her sinfulness as being like a dreadfully sick person, ‘stricken', with the head ‘sick' and the heart faint, with no soundness from head to foot, covered in wounds and ‘bruises' (= ‘stripes') and festering sores. She was bearing her sin. And now this One Who in Himself is ‘Israel' (Isaiah 49:15), He too is ‘stricken', He is bearing their ‘sickness' and carrying their diseases. He is bearing their sin and its penalty. The depicting of the Servant as a sick man is precisely because He is standing in for sinful Israel. By His ‘bruises' they will be healed of their ‘bruises'.

‘But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was on Him, and with His stripes we are healed.' Note the piling up of verbs to cover the suffering He faced. Wounded, bruised, chastised, scourged. It is the ultimate in punishment. And here there is a moving on from sorrow and suffering to its cause, sin and transgression. This is the root of the matter. Here was total representation, the One suffering for the many, and total substitution, by the One in place of the many, with a complete satisfaction thus being made possible. His wounds were for our transgressions, His being bruised was for our iniquities, all that militated against our deepest wellbeing was put on Him, and by the scourging He bore, ‘being made whole' was made available to us. Have we transgressed? He bore the wounds of it. Do we sin deeply in our inner hearts? He was bruised because of it. Do we lack peace and well being because of our sin? He was chastised that we might be restored to peace with God and a sense of wellbeing in His presence. It involves the removal of ‘wickedness', for there really is no peace to the wicked, they cannot know peace (Isaiah 48:22). Do we need to be healed, restored, delivered, made whole? Then because He was scourged and wounded we can be. It is the One in contrast to the many, and the One has taken all and suffered all for the many. It is a picture of One Who was abused in every possible way.

While any one of these statements might metaphorically have been applied to a prophet or to the faithful in Israel, the gathering together of them all to depict the total and deepest need of mankind, borne and paid for, goes far beyond that. No prophet or group of faithful men could bear this load, or be thought of as doing so. Even Isaiah could only look on and wonder. It could only be done by One Who was the Arm of Yahweh, and He could only do it because He was unique and like no other man, because He was the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father (Isaiah 9:6), and had no sins of His own to suffer for.

As we read these words it becomes crystal clear that One would come into the world Who would uniquely bear the sins of the world and, as we learn later, make full atonement for them and meet the deepest needs of mankind. As we meditate on it, it should truly fill us with awe.

But it is all only potential as far as man is concerned. The benefit to man is not automatic. If we are to really benefit we must come and receive it. We must look to Him and trust Him for it. And then it will be ours.

‘Wounded.' Compare Psalms 109:22 where it means wounds of the innermost being. The word can mean ‘polluted' (e.g. Zephaniah 3:4) or ‘profaned' (e.g. Amos 2:7; Malachi 2:10) or ‘pierced' (Job 26:13) or ‘cut in pieces' (Isaiah 51:9). It represents wounds of the deepest kind.

‘Bruised.' This too is a strong word. In Job 5:4; Lamentations 3:34 it is rendered ‘crushed', in Psalms 72:4; Psalms 89:10; Psalms 94:5 ‘broken in pieces', in Psalms 143:3 ‘smitten down to the ground'. It thus represents a heavy battering.