Isaiah 53:6

‘All we like sheep have gone astray,

We have turned every one to our own way,

And Yahweh has laid on him,

The iniquity of us all.'

Here we have stress laid on each individual. It is not just the group that have failed, it is all the group including each individual. And they are described in total as ‘we', thus including Isaiah, Israel and all men in contra-position to the One. The picture is of sheep-headedness, wandering aimlessly, heedless of instruction, going their own way without thought of what they should do, except to do what they wanted to do. Thus have they left the control of the shepherd, they have turned away from God. He might well have put it as ‘all have sinned and come short of the glory of God' (Romans 3:23).

‘Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all.' The verb ‘laid on' means ‘caused to arrive on, made to meet on'. Again he could have put it thus, ‘He was made sin for us, He Who knew no sin' (2 Corinthians 5:21). And it is Yahweh Who has done it. He has as it were gathered the sins and iniquities of ‘us all' and placed them inexorably on Him. The same idea is present in Leviticus 16:21 so that we now expectantly await some reference to sacrifice. We will not be disappointed.

Note that the verse begins with ‘all we' and ends with ‘us all'. None are excluded. But again it is potential. It only in the end applies to those who respond.

In seeking to expound this passage commentators regularly seize on one aspect of the picture presented. Some see it as portraying a plague-ridden man, others as a victim, and so on, but the whole point of the picture is that He was all this and more. Every possible indignity that a human being could face looking from all aspects met upon Him. He was the One Who suffered beyond anything that anyone has ever suffered. Thus to apply it to a contemporary of Isaiah or some unknown prophet who suffered is to miss the point. This One suffered as no one ever had or would again. He alone was not one of the ‘we'.