These words where written by a man named Isaiah[1], considered a prophet, about 700 BC, before Christ, before a man named Jesus from the small town of Nazareth in the 1^st Century Palestine died on a Roman cross by crucifixion. This man was crucified for blasphemy, for claiming to be God in human flesh, for claiming that before Abraham was born,” I AM”. The words of Isaiah, though spoken 700 years before this historical event that we remember today, couldn’t have described the circumstances of this event any better if they had been written the day after….

¹ Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
² He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
³ He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

⁴ Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
⁶ We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

⁷ He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
⁸ By oppression[2] and judgment he was taken away.
Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was punished.
⁹ He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.

¹⁰ Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.
¹¹ After he has suffered,
he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.
¹² Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.

We remember Jesus as he was sentenced and hung on a cross this day that we call Good Friday.

Postscript:

Lest anyone may think that Isaiah only appears to have been written over 700 years ago, but was really written after Christ, the Dead Sea Scrolls put that idea to rest. The Isaiah Scroll, one of the original seven Dead Sea Scrolls and most well-preserved, dates to 125 BC.[3]

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[1] Isaiah 53

[2] Could be translated “by arrest”

[3] See the Digital Dead Sea Scrolls