Yesterday’s post — the first part — has links to the readings for and exegeses of the Epistle and Gospel for Good Friday.

Yesterday’s exegesis for this reading covered Isaiah 52:13 through Isaiah 53:1.

This post covers Isaiah 53:2-12 (emphases mine):

53:2 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, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

53:3 He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account.

53:4 Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.

53:5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.

53:6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

53:7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

53:8 By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people.

53:9 They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.

53:10 Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him with pain. When you make his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days; through him the will of the LORD shall prosper.

53:11 Out of his anguish he shall see light; he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.

53:12 Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur (as indicated below).

As yesterday’s post explained, Isaiah 53 is a prophecy for a confession that has not yet taken place, one by the Jews of the future who will recognise that Jesus Christ is Lord. That will not happen until events in Revelation unfold, when members of the twelve tribes turn to Christianity.

Much of this chapter explains in their own words to come in future why their forebears rejected Jesus as the Messiah.

He grew up like a young plant, a root out of dry ground; He had no form or majesty that would make us look at Him and nothing in His appearance to make us desire Him (verse 2).

The Jews wanted a mighty king for a Messiah. They had not reckoned on a spiritual Messiah, therefore, Jesus was out of the picture for them.

Matthew Henry says:

The contempt they put upon the person of Christ because of the meanness of his appearance, v. 2, 3. This seems to come in as a reason why they rejected his doctrine, because they were prejudiced against his person. When he was on earth many that heard him preach, and could not but approve of what they heard, would not give it any regard or entertainment, because it came from one that made so small a figure and had no external advantages to recommend him. Observe here,

1. The low condition he submitted to, and how he abased and emptied himself. The entry he made into the world, and the character he wore in it, were no way agreeable to the ideas which the Jews had formed of the Messiah and their expectations concerning him, but quite the reverse. (1.) It was expected that his extraction would be very great and noble. He was to be the Son of David, of a family that had a name like to the names of the great men that were in the earth, 2 Sam 7 9. But he sprang out of this royal and illustrious family when it was reduced and sunk, and Joseph, that son of David, who was his supposed father, was but a poor carpenter, perhaps a ship-carpenter, for most of his relations were fishermen. This is here meant by his being a root out of a dry ground, his being born of a mean and despicable family, in the north, in Galilee, of a family out of which, like a dry and desert ground, nothing green, nothing great, was expected, in a country of such small repute that it was thought no good thing could come out of it. His mother, being a virgin, was as dry ground, yet from her he sprang who is not only fruit, but root. The seed on the stony ground had no root; but, though Christ grew out of a dry ground, he is both the root and the offspring of David, the root of the good olive. (2.) It was expected that he should make a public entry, and come in pomp and with observation; but, instead of that, he grew up before God, not before men. God had his eye upon him, but men regarded him not: He grew up as a tender plant, silently and insensibly, and without any noise, as the corn, that tender plant, grows up, we know not how, Mark 4 27. Christ rose as a tender plant, which, one would have thought, might easily be crushed, or might be nipped in one frosty night. The gospel of Christ, in its beginning, was as a grain of mustard-seed, so inconsiderable did it seem, Matt 13 31, 32. (3.) It was expected that he should have some uncommon beauty in his face and person, which should charm the eye, attract the heart, and raise the expectations of all that saw him … Or it may refer not so much to his person as to the manner of his appearing in the world, which had nothing in it of sensible glory. His gospel is preached, not with the enticing words of man’s wisdom, but with all plainness, agreeable to the subject. (4.) It was expected that he should live a pleasant life, and have a full enjoyment of all the delights of the sons and daughters of men, which would have invited all sorts to him; but, on the contrary, he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. 

John MacArthur says that the Jews were expecting the Messiah to be someone like King Saul:

They were big into appearance, that’s why they picked Saul to be their first king, right? He was more handsome than everybody else and taller. Still seems to be a formula for success. But it was with Him…with Jesus. Wait a minute, maybe He’s not tall enough, handsome enough, stately enough, majestic. Again, not much progress from 1 Samuel chapter 9 when they were picking Saul. Nothing royal about Jesus, nothing regal about Jesus, nothing elevated about Jesus. In fact, the idea that He was a king was so bizarre and so distasteful, they resented that so profoundly that when Pilate, at the end of his proverbial rope having been blackmailed by the Jews in this issue with Jesus, blackmailed and threatened that if he didn’t crucify Jesus, they were going to tell Caesar and he wouldn’t survive another report to Caesar. He knew that.

They blackmailed him. And his pound of flesh, his vengeance, his get back of those Jews was to slap on the top of the cross of Jesus, “This is Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” That was Pilate’s vengeance because he knew that was the most objectionable claim that Jesus made. Though He displayed divine power and divine wisdom and divine truth and divine grace, and holiness, they saw nothing of royal beauty in Him. Nothing attractive about Him. They had scorned from the beginning, His origin. They had scorned for the middle, His life.

MacArthur has a lengthy section on how Jewish rabbinical scholars denigrated Jesus, one of them being this:

The Hebrew word for Jesus is Yeshua…Yeshua. The rabbis through the years have changed that name by dropping the final “a” and they all Him Yeshu. Yeshu is an acrostic meaning, “Let His Name Be Blotted Out.” So you will see in rabbinic writings Yeshu, let Him be blotted out, which is the contemporary way of saying, “We will not have this man to reign over us,” which is what they said when they screamed for His crucifixion.

He is called by the rabbis “The Transgressor.” He is called by the rabbis “The Tolui,” “The Hanged One.” Cursed is whoever is hanged on a tree.

Returning to the wording in verse 2, MacArthur says that the plant references refer to what we call suckers, those rogue shoots at the bottom of certain shrubs or trees — e.g. rose bushes — that need to be cut off:

Let me just say, this is an agrarian society, these people work in the ground, they grow things, they have trees and orchards and they plant in the ground, and so illustrations will come from that realm.  To say that He is like a tender shoot is to simply say He’s a sucker branch, it’s the Hebrew word yoneq and it means a sucker branch.  Sucker branches pop up, and without cultivation, without expectation.  And the thing that you do with a sucker branch so that it doesn’t drain away life and fruitfulness from the other branches is cut it off.  Superfluous, small, unnecessary, irrelevant, insignificant, random.  Sucker branches pop up.  They’re not designed, they’re not cared for, they’re not expected, they’re not needed and they’re cut off. 

Some commentators like to think that this tree the sucker branch comes out of is a metaphoric reference, or an allegorical reference to something like the house of David, or whatever.  That’s really stretching it unnecessarily.  This is very simple language.  This is simply a way to say His beginning was irrelevant.  It was unimportant, it was insignificant, it didn’t matter, He was a nobody from nobodies, from nowhere … 

Or He’s like a root out of parched ground. As the sun comes down in that part of the world, in the Middle East, the ground becomes parched and dry. And as the ground shrinks because water evaporates out, some of the roots begin to come to the surface, dirty, brown roots in parched ground, not cared for. That would be roots of a tree that nobody cares about, because if they cared about it, they’d be watering it. Again, it’s another way to say He’s unnecessary, unwarranted, unwanted, unimpressive, no value, no more significant than a sucker branch or a dry root in a parched place that nobody cultivates, that nobody cares for, that nobody waters.

Furthermore, He was despised and rejected by others; He was a man of suffering, acquainted with infirmity; someone one hides one’s face from because He is despised. Therefore, we held Him of no account (verse 3).

Henry elaborates:

His condition was, upon many accounts, sorrowful. He was unsettled, had not where to lay his head, lived upon alms, was opposed and menaced, and endured the contradiction of sinners against himself. His spirit was tender, and he admitted the impressions of sorrow. We never read that he laughed, but often that he wept. Lentulus, in his epistle to the Roman senate concerning Jesus, says, “he was never seen to laugh;” and so worn and macerated was he with continual grief that when he was but a little above thirty years of age he was taken to be nearly fifty, John 8 57. Grief was his intimate acquaintance; for he acquainted himself with the grievances of others, and sympathized with them, and he never set his own at a distance; for in his transfiguration he talked of his own decease, and in his triumph he wept over Jerusalem. Let us look unto him and mourn.

MacArthur says the Jews found Christ’s death contemptible, certainly not befitting their notion of the Messiah:

He had a contemptible end. For that you go to verse 3, “He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And like one from whom men hide their face, He was despised and we didn’t esteem Him.” His end is in view here in the opening two lines. They had not only contempt for His beginnings and His life, but especially His death. Now remember, they didn’t think they needed somebody to die for their sins. They were in to self-righteousness. They were going to please God by being good and religious and doing works. And here comes this Messiah, this one who claims to be the Messiah and the King, and instead of being triumphant, instead of His career ending in glory and majesty and triumph and victory and elevation and exaltation, He’s despised, forsaken of men. It all ends in sorrow and grief …

… And, of course, on top of that, there was the actual pain. And that was so bad, verse 3 says, that He was like one from whom men hide their face. By the time He got to the cross, He was marred more than any man, verse 14 says of chapter 52 …

The reality of His suffering just doesn’t fit the picture of Messiah. Now remember, they didn’t need, they didn’t think, a savior. And Jesus said, “I can’t do anything with you because I didn’t come to call the righteous to repentance.” He is totally objectionable. So He is like one from whom men hide their face, someone so grotesque, so deformed, so ugly, so objectionable that you don’t even turn to look. It’s too embarrassing, it’s too shameful, it’s too ugly, it’s too horrible, it’s too unforgettable. You don’t want that image in your face. That’s…that’s the ongoing attitude of Israel toward Jesus. He’s hideous to them as a Messiah, despicable.

Then comes the beginning of the future confession.

Surely, He has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet, we accounted Him stricken, struck down by God and afflicted (verse 4).

MacArthur points us towards the word ‘surely’:

… the transition comes in verse 4 with the first word, “Surely or truly, or verily.” This is an exclamation. This is a sudden recognition of something unexpected, a dramatic change from the previous perception. This is a reversal; this is spinning on their heels fast. Surely, as if to say, “Whoa, stop in our tracks, and turn and go the other way.” Now we see our griefs He Himself bore, our sorrows He carried. He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, chastened for our well-being, scourged for our healing.

We have a whole new view of this. Our consideration was that He was nobody. We will not have this man to reign over us, we said. And when we had the option of Barabbas or Jesus, we said kill Jesus, crucify Him. And now we know. Surely, He didn’t die for His own sin. He didn’t die for His own iniquities. He didn’t die for His own transgressions. He didn’t die because He was a blasphemer like we thought He was. He didn’t die because God killed Him for claiming deity. He didn’t die because God killed Him because He claimed to be the Messiah when He wasn’t. He didn’t die because He claimed equality with God.

That’s what they thought. They thought that God killed Him for His blasphemies. He was a blasphemer, they said that, and that God killed Him as a blasphemer for His own sins and His own iniquities, and His own transgressions, which in their mind were supreme blasphemies. Claiming to be the Messiah, claiming to be alive before Abraham, claiming to be equal with God, claiming to be able to raise Himself from the dead, claiming to be the Creator.

This blasphemer died by the hand of God for those horrendous, horrific sins. That’s what we thought. Now we know. It was our griefs He bore. It was our sorrows He carried. He was pierced, crushed, chastened, scourged for us. That is the complete reversal of how they viewed the cross. He took our place, died in our stead, gave His life for us. Technically, we would call this vicarious penal substitution.

This reversal carries on into the next two verses:

These three verses, by the way, verses 4, 5 and 6, are so connected that they’re like concentric circles. They kind of weave around and around each other. And each of them mentions the wrongs and the provision of the Servant to provide atonement for those wrongs, and they do cycle around the same theme. But they are so profoundly rich … They understand how wrong they were.

MacArthur goes into the specific wording:

They get it.  Our griefs He Himself bore, our sorrows He carried.  We ourselves, we are the issue here.  Our griefs.

The word for “griefs” is sickness.  It’s diseases, infirmities, calamities, pretty broad word.  And here sins are viewed from the perspective of their effects.  Sins are viewed from the perspective of what they produce, the conditions that come from sin.  Life becomes full of sickness, disease, infirmity, calamity.  These are the griefs.  And it’s a word that looks mostly at the objective, the outside, the agonies and struggles and issues that we deal with in life.  Our griefs He Himself bore.  The word “bore” means to lift up, pick up and place on oneself.  He picked up all of that that sin produced and put it on Himself.

And then they say it another way.  Our sorrows, that’s the word for pains, that talks more about the subjective or the inward.  Griefs is a word that refers to the outward effects of sin, and sorrows is a word that refers mostly to the inward effect of sin.  But sin is viewed here not as a moral entity, which the word “sin” would convey, but rather from the distress and horrors and issues of life that flow out of sin.  He picked up sin with all that it produces and carried it, put it on Himself, carried it.  Well, we know He carried it to the cross and He bore the full punishment of God … 

You remember in Leviticus 16 that when atonement was made, one animal was killed and one animal was kept alive. And the priests would lay their hands on that one animal, the scapegoat, as if to place all the sins of the people on the scapegoat and he would be sent out into the wilderness, never to return again, never. Jesus is the scapegoat. He picks up all our sin, pays the penalty in full. He’s the sacrificial animal as well, and He’s the scapegoat and carries them all away.

This is not saying Jesus sympathetically feels our pain. It’s not saying that. It is that He takes our sin and its full punishment, pays for it in full, and thus brings to an end the reign of sin in our lives with all of its effects, and all of its manifestations, all of its griefs, and all of its sorrows. And one day we’ll enter into the fullness of that, won’t we? One day when we enter into heaven, no more sin and no more effects. We should have suffered for our sins, but He did. He took away from us all that belonged to us, all that we should have felt by way of judgment, pain, devastation, even eternal punishment and put it on Himself. And thus He shifted the load completely away from us …

And then comes this confession, “Yet…reaching back…we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted” …

And the language here is very strong.  The word “stricken” is to strike violently, a very violent word used in Exodus 11:1 of the plagues.  The word “smitten” means basically to beat someone even to death.  And the word “afflicted” a general word, to be humiliated, to be degraded, to be destroyed.  So we thought that when He was being smashed and beaten and degraded and humiliated, that this was God doing it because He was a blasphemer.  And by the way, that is still the Jewish assessment today.  The Jewish assessment is just that today.  That’s their view.  But there are Jews who see the truth, aren’t there?  Some of you.  And you say that’s what we thought but now we know different. 

The confession continues.

He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the punishment that made us whole, and by His wounds, we are healed (verse 5).

MacArthur explains the extreme nature of the verbs in this verse:

This is such marvelous language here, very graphic.  The words pierced, crushed, chastened, or punished, scourged, very strong words.  Let’s talk about those for a moment. 

The prophet has no knowledge of the cross; He doesn’t know what’s going to happen 700 years hence.  The Spirit of God leads Him to pick these words and we could say that these are metaphoric words in some way, or these are sort of general words that saying pierced, crushed, punished, scourged, simply trying to pick words that are graphic and dramatic and sort of repulsive to think about someone being treated this way, that they’re intended to be somewhat general.  And you would be right about that. 

There are Hebrew scholars that suggest that the word pierced, for example, is the strongest Hebrew expression for violent death.  So that if you look at it in a general sense, you could say, “Well, whoever this is, He’s going to have a violent death,” and you would be right.  And you could look at the word “crushed,” and that word can refer to anything from being trampled to death, literally trampled, crushed under foot, such as Lamentations 3:34, all the way to being battered and bruised.  That would be a lesser of it.  It could be simply a broad word for somebody’s life being crushed out.  But it can be anything, as I said, from being trampled to death to being severely bruised.

And then the word chastisement, very interesting word.  It is the only Hebrew word to express punishment, and punishment is a technical term.  It’s a legal term in some sense.  And you could say, “Well, this definitely was a punishment, generally speaking,” and you would be correct about that.  And the word “scourged” could also be viewed in somewhat of a general sense.  Scourging meaning lashing someone, slashing someone, inflicting wounds on someone.  They could be general words and perhaps when Isaiah wrote that, that’s what he thought.  Well this is…this is just picking all the worst possible descriptions of a horrific, horrendous death.

But, the truth of the matter is, they’re not just general terms because every one of them specifically happened to Jesus.  He was pierced five times, both feet, both hands and His side.  Psalm 22 is a Psalm that looks forward to the cross.  Psalm 22 begins, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”  The very words Jesus said on the cross.  But in Psalm 22:16 the psalmist writes, “They pierced My hands and feet.”  Zechariah 12:10, Zechariah says, “They’ll look on Him whom they’ve pierced.”  And they actually pierced Jesus on the cross.  That actually happened.  In John 19 there are a couple of verses that are tied to this.  Verse 34, John 19, “One of the soldiers pierced His side with a sphere and immediately blood and water came out.”  Verse 37 says, “And another Scripture is fulfilled, they shall look on Him whom they pierced.”  Yes, He was pierced.  How specific a prophecy is that?

What about the word crushed?  It can refer, as I said, to anything from a sort of severe bruising to being trampled to death.  Listen, we know what happened to Jesus.  We know that He was slapped.  We know that He was punched in the face, John 19:3.  And we also know, according to Matthew 27 verse 30, that the Romans took sticks and beat Him in the face with sticks.  Punching Him in the face, slapping Him in the face, and beating His head and His face with sticks would raise bruises and welts that would be within the framework of that word “crushed.” 

What about the next one, chastening, as I said the Hebrew word for punishment.  Was His execution a form of punishment?  Absolutely it was …

And what about the word “scourging”?  Is that just a generic term?  Well, according to Mark 15:15, it says He was scourged.  We all know the story of that.  Heavy stick with leather thongs extending from it, embedded with bone and rock and glass, lacerating His body over and over and over again. 

The Jews knew all that.  They know it now.  They know it today.  They know about this man Jesus who was pierced and bruised and punished and scourged.  They know that very well.  It’s in the record.  But on the day of national salvation, they’re going to look back and realize that God did not do that to Him because it was God who crushed Him.  It was God but God did not do that to Him because of His own sins, but He did it to Him because of their sins.  That’s the difference.  They will confess…I love this…for our transgressions, for our iniquities, for our well-being, for our healing.

That’s what’s going to happen someday.  They’re going to confess that.  In the meantime, folks, the only way you can ever be saved is to confess it now.  Now. 

Then the ultimate part of the confession comes.

The converted Jews, those discussed in Revelation, will admit somethihg of themselves: like sheep, they have gone astray, going their own way, and, because of that, the Lord God laid upon His Son the iniquity of them all (verse 6).

MacArthur says:

Sinners recognize this. They lack well-being; they lack Shalom; they lack peace with God. They had no, as Isaiah 54 calls it, covenant of peace, which couldn’t be shaken. And they also lacked wholeness, spiritual health. They were sick. Chapter 1 says, “Sick from head to toe, sick in sin.”

… confession of sin gets down to the bottom line. It is a matter of who we are. The problem is in our nature, and that’s where verse 6 comes in. It’s in our nature. It is more profound than most would recognize, looking at this section. This part of the confession looks not at the manifestations of sin, but the cause. Here’s the problem. All of us are like sheep, and we’ve gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way. And he says it’s in our nature.

Sheep act like sheep. Sheep don’t act like anything but sheep. We’re acting consistently with our nature. And, in fact, they will find a parallel in sheep. Sheep are stupid, defenseless, helpless wanderers. They don’t…they don’t get in flocks like geese, and they don’t hang around herds like cows. They don’t stay together. So they’re a good analogy. They have built into them a tendency to wander away from security and safety, and provision, and wander off, not in a group, but all by themselves, each going his own way. They follow that internal impulse that leads them away to all that is safe and secure and helpful. Our problem is deep in our nature. We are like sheep, defenseless, stupid, helpless wanderers …

And this is a part of a true confession, folks. This is a genuine repentance that recognizes that the evidences of sin betray a nature of sin. Gathering all that guilt and all that just punishment, and, as it were, dying for not only what we’ve done, but who we are. Jesus bears the full weight of our sinfulness on Himself in the sense that He takes the punishment of God. That’s what the verse says at the end. “The Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.” Our evil deeds, our evil thoughts, our evil deprivations, and our evil nature, for all of that, for all of that, the Servant of Jehovah bears the full weight of punishment.

That’s what it says. The Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. The Lord God Himself chose the sacrificial Lamb, the Servant, Messiah, the sacrificial Lamb. The Servant Messiah was voluntarily willing to submit Himself to become the vicarious substitute. God caused Him then to pick up all the guilt that belonged to us and take the full fury of divine wrath. Five different ways in those verses, five different ways it speaks of the vicarious, substitutionary provision of Jesus Christ, dying in our place. This is the heart of the gospel …

This will be the confession that Israel makes in the future.  But this is the confession that any sinner can make now, and you can make it today.  You remember 2 Corinthians 6:2, “Now is the acceptable time.”  “Today is the day of salvation,” words borrowed from Isaiah again.  Today is the day.  Now is the time of salvation.  Paul says in Romans, quoting again from Isaiah, Romans 10:11, “Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed.  There’s no distinction between Jew and Gentile.  The same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call upon Him, for whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.”  That’s now.  This is the acceptable time.  That means God will accept you now.  This is the day of salvation.

The sheep analogy from verse 6 then continues, referring to Lord Jesus as a lamb in the next verse.

He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; as a lamb is led to the slaughter and as a sheep is silent before the shearers, He did not open His mouth (verse 7).

MacArthur reminds us of the brutality of our Lord’s final hours before His horrifying and humiliating death on the Cross:

Verse 7, “He was oppressed.”  He Himself…literally in the Hebrew, He Himself emphatically was oppressed.  This is a word that takes us to brutality, it takes us to enslavement.  It is a word that refers to being arrested, to being abused.  And it was severe.  So severe was His treatment when He was arrested and abused, that verse 14 of chapter 52 says the appearance that He had, His appearance was marred more than any man and His form more than the sons of men.  He didn’t even look human.

By the time they were finished with Him, both in terms of the physical beating that He took on His body, and the abuse that He took on His head and His face from a crown of thorns, and sticks that beat Him in the face, and spit and sweat and blood running down His face, He didn’t even look human … It started with His arrest in the middle of the night in the garden.  Then it continued through the mockery of trials, false witnesses, the abuse that came to Him there, the psychological torture that He underwent there, and the outrageous injustice of turning Him over to the Romans, and the way they handled Him and abused Him physically.

From the arrest in the garden through the trial at the house of the high priest, trying to indict Him by false witnesses giving false testimony, His time before Herod, before Pilate, all the mistreatment from the Jews and the Romans.  No crime ever validated, no proof ever given, no guilt ever established.  According to Luke 23:15, Herod declared His innocence.  Three times in Luke 23 Pilate says He’s innocent…three times, and he was the governor.  So it was a legal verdict, three times innocent.  Still the leaders of Israel, the Jewish leaders with consent from the people, pushed Pilate to follow his triple declaration of the innocence of Jesus with a call for execution.  That’s what he does in Luke 23:25.  Well, that’s what’s seen here in verse 7; He was oppressed.

And then it says He was afflicted.  But it’s a passive verb, and it really needs to be looked at a little differently, a little more closely.  He allowed Himself to be afflicted.  That’s the way you would translate a passive verb.  Passive means it happens…the action happens to you, not from you.  It also comes to mean…and could fairly be translated this way as it is in Exodus 10:3…He humbled Himself, which is another way of saying He allowed Himself to be afflicted.  Paul may well have had this very phrase in mind when he wrote Philippians 2, “He humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on the cross.”  That may well be a direct reflection of Isaiah 53:7.

This is not normal for tortured people.  This is not normal for innocent people who are being tortured.  Normally an oppressed, tortured person who is innocent and knows that this is a gross injustice cries out, cries out about the injustice, and cries out about innocence.  But not the Servant of Jehovah.  He doesn’t say a word.  “Yet He didn’t open His mouth.”  In spite of the fact that this was all evil, wicked, wretched injustice against not just an innocent man, but a perfectly holy and righteous man, He didn’t open His mouth … 

Isaiah says He was like a lamb. He was led to slaughter and like a sheep that’s silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth. The issue here is the willingness of the Messiah to die. This is not a good plan gone wrong. Seven hundred years before Jesus showed up, the prophecy is crystal clear that when He comes He will come as a lamb for slaughter. And when He arrived, before He began His ministry, John says, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” And that means that He must be a sacrificial lamb because only in the death of the sacrifice is the sin removed.

When Jesus died at the end of the three years of His ministry, that was not as some have tried to portray it, a good thing gone bad. That was the very reason He came in the first place. There was plenty He could have said before His accusers. Oh my, there were plenty of things He could have said to the high priest, the chief priests that made up the Sanhedrin, plenty He could have said to Pilate and Herod. But He didn’t. It was the silence of submission to the will of His Father. But it was also the silence of judgment. You wouldn’t listen, and now I have nothing to say to you. When I did speak about life and salvation, when I did speak about forgiveness and the Kingdom of God, you would not listen, and now I have nothing more to say to you.

He is absolutely silent in judgment. And verse 7 ends again by saying, “He did not open His mouth.” He not only accepted the unrighteous judgment of men, but He accepted the righteous judgment of God on behalf of unrighteous sinners in order to make them righteous. No sacrifice was ever so perfect; no sacrifice ever so pure. Here is the sinless, spotless Lamb of God, acceptable to God, chosen by God and elect, dying for sinners. It is here, dear friends, that Old Testament soteriology reaches its apex. This is the high point of the Old Testament. The Messiah is the sacrifice, slaughtered by God for us.

He is the Servant of Jehovah; He is the Slave of Jehovah; and His service requires that He die, that He be punished for our well-being, that He be scourged for our healing, that He be crushed for our iniquities, that He be pierced through for our transgressions.

By a perversion of justice He was taken away; who could have imagined His future: cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people (verse 8).

MacArthur says:

And as verse 8 puts it, that He be cut off out of the land of the living for our transgressions to whom the stroke is due. That’s the message of the gospel. And it’s a message of sin and judgment, and death and sacrifice.

MacArthur continues in his next sermon:

Being cut off out of the land of the living, Jewish expression.  It appears in a number of places in the Old Testament.  Daniel 9:26 talking about Messiah, says, “Messiah will be cut off.”  Daniel also predicted His death.

So He will be executed.  That’s what that expression means.  He will be murdered; it’s a dramatic way to say it, cut off out of the land of the living, executed, like a lamb led to slaughter.  Which the same expression, by the way, is used in Jeremiah 11:19 to refer to himself.  Jeremiah saw himself as a lamb being led to slaughter.  So, common expression, cut off out of the land of the living.  In spite of all that He was, in spite of all that He did, all that He said, the most horrendous injustice in human history is done to Him and He is executed.

The telling statement in this verse is found in the second line, “As for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living?”  Who considered it?  Who considered that He was violently executed?  Who stepped up and protested?  That’s what it means.  Who saw it for what it was?  Where was the high priest in protest?  Where were the Sadducees or Pharisees or somebody who was a fastidious adherent to the Jewish order and tradition and Law?  Where were the rabbis?  Where were the scribes?  Where was anybody?  Here we find in the prophecy 700 years before it ever happened, the pronouncement that no one will defend Him, no one will defend Him. 

MacArthur tells us that there was a 40-day grace period in those days before an execution, but it was waived in our Lord’s case:

A custom prevailed, by the way. This is most fascinating. Among the Jews in the case of a trial that could lead to execution, it was required that there be a period of time once the verdict was given for people to step up and speak to the innocence of the one who had been set for execution. There was basically a 40-day period. That’s what we find in their literature. Forty days were to pass between the declaration of death and the execution itself, a period of time in which someone could speak in favor of the accused and plead His innocence, which makes an awful lot of sense. They didn’t do that. They got the trial over with in the middle of the night so there was nobody there to interrupt them. Then that very day as the dawn broke, they sent Him in the process that brought Him to death by that very afternoon.

Where were the 40 days? Where were the 40 days? Early in Christian history that began to be asked. Why did the Jews violate that? There appears in answer to that a statement by the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin put together a statement. It is now in the Jewish Talmud, folio 43 in the Jewish Talmud, from the Sanhedrin. It says this, “There is a tradition – ” this is the Sanhedrin’s words – “there is a tradition on the eve of the Sabbath and the Passover they hung Jesus. And the herald went forth before Him for 40 days crying, ‘Jesus goes to be executed because He has practiced sorcery and seduced Israel and estranged them from God. Let anyone who can bring forth any justifying plea for Him come and give information concerning it’ but no justifying plea was found for Him and so He was hung on the eve of the Sabbath and the Passover.”

That’s in the Talmud of the Jews, a lie that they sentenced Jesus and waited 40 days before they executed Him for somebody to show up, and nobody showed up. That’s in the Jewish Talmud authored by the Sanhedrin to cover their tracks …

So when Isaiah 53 begins, “Who believed our message, and who responded to the revelation of the arm of the Lord?” We didn’t. And how extreme was their rejection? That extreme that even after they had done all that, and even after He had risen from the dead, and even after the church had been born and begun to grow, they concocted a lie to put in the Talmud to say that they gave 40 days and nobody showed up. But then again, why would anybody show up? He didn’t belong to the category of people who were worthy for someone to make a plea …

Like Jesus said, “Sheep of another fold.” The Jews know the man Jesus was struck dead. They know He was struck dead. They believe He was struck dead by God, but for His own blasphemies. Such a blasphemer that He wasn’t worthy for anyone to step up to His defense. The truth is, He was struck by God for the transgressions of His people, including Jews and Gentiles and one day the nation of Israel.

MacArthur goes on to say that the anti-Semitism that pervaded the Church for centuries was — and continues to be wherever it exists now, which is outside the Church — the wrong response:

It doesn’t help to perpetuate this even today. Our attitude toward Jewish people has to be one of unrestrained love and compassion and evangelistic zeal.

They made His grave with the wicked — the two criminals, one on either side of Him — and His tomb with the rich — Joseph of Arimathea — although He had done no violence and there was no deceit in His mouth (verse 9).

MacArthur describes what normally happened to people who died on a cross. During that era, there were a lot. This was the plan for Jesus. Many of us will learn something by reading this first paragraph:

Jesus was crucified between two criminals, Luke 23:33; Matthew 27:38.  And here would be the normal disposition.  They would die on the cross of asphyxiation, and they would leave Him there.  Leave Him there dead and rotting, leave Him there for the birds to pluck out their faces.  And they would leave them there like road kill for animals that could climb up the cross to chew their flesh.  They would leave them there for the purpose of warning everybody who was watching of what happens to people who violate the Roman power and the Roman law.  That’s what was planned for Him.  Eventually they would have taken the rotted corpses down and thrown them in a dump. 

The Jerusalem city dump was in the Valley of Hinnom; you can go there today.  It’s not the dump anymore but the Valley of Hinnom on the southeast side of Jerusalem was the city dump, and it was a fire that never went out, a constant fire there.  It is a very interesting place, historically.  It was the place where apostate Jews and followers of Baal and other Canaanite gods burned their children to the god Molech.  You find that back in 2 Chronicles 28:33.  Jeremiah talks about it, Jeremiah 7.  But this was the place where they offered babies to Molech. 

It was there that King Ahaz sacrificed his sons, 2 Chronicles 28.  It is the place that Isaiah identifies at the end of his prophecy as the place where the worm never dies.  And Jesus said it’s a depiction of hell, in Mark, where the worm never dies…Mark 9.  And he says that three times.  Horrible place where they threw what was left of the corpses.  The rabbis describe it as a perpetual fire to consume the filth and the cadavers that are thrown there.  So He was executed with criminals.  He would end up like criminals.

The plan for Jesus went wrong when Joseph of Arimathea stepped in to ask Pilate for His body so that he could put it in a tomb. Isaiah, through the power of the Holy Spirit, prophesied this very thing:

God wasn’t going to let that [desecration] happen.  Psalm 16 says that He would not allow His Holy One to see corruption.  God would never let that happen.  So verse 9 says there’s an amazing turn.  “His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet He was with a rich man in His death.”  How did that happen?  He was with a rich man in His death because all along there was a man by the name of Joseph from a place called Arimathea. 

This man Joseph had become a disciple of Jesus Christ quietly, and he was very rich.  Matthew 27:57, “In the evening there came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, who himself had also become a disciple of Jesus.  This man went to Pilate, asked for the body of Jesus.  Pilate ordered it to be given to him.  Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb which he had hewn out in the rock and he rolled a large stone against the entrance to the tomb and went away.”  He should have been road kill; He should have been in the dump and He ends up in a brand new tomb owned by a rich man.  Just exactly what the Holy Spirit reveals to Isaiah was going to happen.

Why?  Why?  Why was that important?  It tells us at the end of verse 9; this is most inte