Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows... and with his wounds we are healed.
The Song That Begins with Exaltation
The fourth Servant Song does not begin in the dust; it begins on high: 'Behold, my servant shall act wisely; he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted.' Isaiah uses for the servant the very words he used for the LORD on his throne (Isa 6:1). Then, without warning, the song plunges: marred beyond human semblance. Exaltation and disfigurement, held together in one figure — the mystery the whole song will carry.
The Substitution Verses
The center of the song hammers one truth in every grammatical form Hebrew allows: he bore OUR griefs, carried OUR sorrows, was pierced for OUR transgressions, crushed for OUR iniquities; upon HIM was the chastisement that brought US peace. 'All we like sheep have gone astray... and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.' Whatever else can be debated about the atonement, the grammar of exchange is not a later invention; it is the syntax of Isaiah 53.
Silent as a Lamb
'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.' The lamb imagery gathers everything: Passover's substitute, the daily offerings, and now a person. This is the exact sentence the Ethiopian official was puzzling over when Philip met his chariot — 'about whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this?' — 'and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus' (Acts 8:34-35). The church's oldest sermon on Isaiah 53 is in the Bible itself.
The Will of the LORD
The song's hardest sentence: 'It was the will of the LORD to crush him.' No theory fully drains it. But the same verse turns: 'when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days.' Death is not the servant's end. He will see light, be satisfied, justify many, divide spoil with the strong — resurrection language written centuries before the empty tomb gave it a name.
Who Believed?
The song opens with a question — 'Who has believed what he has heard from us?' — and Israel and the church have answered differently ever since. Jewish tradition has often read the servant as Israel personified, suffering among the nations; the church from the beginning read a person who suffers FOR Israel and the nations. Read the song closely and weigh where the 'we' stands: the speakers confess that the servant suffered for THEM. The debate is real and old; the text's grammar of exchange is the place to have it honestly.
Go deeper: The Lamb (Symbol Index) · Dikaiosyne — righteousness (Lexicon) · Justification (Disputed Questions)