Isaiah 53

Haystack bible commentary

"Stacks and stacks of commentary...."

==Isaiah 53:1-4:

Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant,
And as a root out of dry ground.
He has no form or comeliness;
And when we see Him,
There is no beauty that we should desire Him.
3 He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
4 Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.

==Isaiah 53:5:

But He was
wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was
upon Him, And by
His stripes we are healed.

God does heal and God can heal, but He doesn’t always heal. What Jesus did on the cross is surely able to reverse the curse of sin, which includes sicknesses (Matthew 8:17). That is what Heaven is about. In the meantime, while we await ultimate deliverance (Romans 8:18-22), sickness will continue to be part of our experience. We rejoice that Isaiah 53:5 is a promise primarily for spiritual healing today. Isaiah 53:6 talks about how we have gone astray due to sin, and how Jesus takes up the punishment for our sins. First Peter 2:24, which cites Isaiah 53:5, is also about spiritual healing today. 9. How should I approach sickness today? a) Examine my life for any unconfessed sin. b) Pray for healing and wisdom, and confess known sins. c) Ask fellow believers or the church to pray for healing. d) Seek medical help. e) Rejoice that God is working out His sovereign will for good even if He chooses not to heal. f) Remain humble and teachable in the journey of sickness. -Gospel Light

==Isaiah 53:6:

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.

==Isaiah 53:7-9:

He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He opened not His mouth;
He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
So He opened not His mouth.
8 He was taken from prison and from judgment,
And who will declare His generation?
For He was cut off from the land of the living;
For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.
9 And they made His grave with the wicked--
But with the rich at His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was any deceit in His mouth.

Isaiah declared that the suffering Servant did not deserve the punishment heaped upon Him. He was the victim of a terrible miscarriage of justice. Isaiah also plainly proclaimed that the punishment was due to the nation of Israel. Isaiah honestly and fearlessly included himself in the group deserving of the punishment that was meted out to the Messiah. You and I must make that same honest assessment of ourselves. Some see the question as involving the length of the Messiah’s life. Others see the question as related to the longevity of the church founded by the Messiah. Others interpret the verse to be asking who among His contemporaries would correctly understand the Messiah and what happened to Him. Some believe the question is about the number of physical or spiritual descendants emanating from the Messiah.

==Isaiah 53:10:

Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him;
He has put Him to grief.
When You make His soul an offering for sin,
He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days,
And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.

==Isaiah 53:11:

He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied.
By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,
For He shall bear their iniquities

Richardx Meux Benson

“Think of the Holy Ghost dwelling within us, mindful of all our past sins. But his memory of our sins is not censorious. It is not that he would reproach us, as weak mean-spirited persons regard someone who has strayed, eager to accuse while thinking to make escape impossible. The memory of the Holy Ghost is the memory of magnanimous love. He remembers our past sin most truly, but only because he desires to deliver us from it. He would teach us to remember it, he would bring us to the same remembrance as his, but only to effect our deliverance. He desires that all this work of sin may be done away, that all these full powers of his love may stream forth on our soul, and that he may ‘see of the travail’ of his divine purpose ‘and be satisfied'(Is. 53:11), as we are formed anew and perfected in the very image of Christ.” ~ Richard Meux Benson, Look to the Glory

==Isaiah 53:12:

Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great,
And He shall divide the spoil with the strong,
Because He poured out His soul unto death,
And He was numbered with the transgressors,
And He bore the sin of many,
And made intercession for the transgressors.

Because he became a mediator, standing between we who deserved nothing but wrath and judgment, and the Holy God, against whom we have sinned. He made His own life our sin offering. His sinless life , perfectly pleasing to God, becomes our only plea for pardon and favor. The cross itself, which fixed him between heaven and earth, is the ultimate intercession, the final and complete act of interposition. He put himself between sinful man, and the Holy God! He took upon himself our judgment, our guilt and the sorrows that accompany our rebellion! --Bill Randles