The Song of the Suffering Servant

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The Suffering Servant is described in four passages in the Book of Isaiah, in the part of the book (chapters 40–55) that scholars call Second Isaiah, or Deutero-Isaiah, because it does not come from the eighth-century B.C. prophet Isaiah but was written after the Babylonian Exile in the sixth century B.C. Deutero-Isaiah includes four servant poems: Isaiah 42:1–7, 49:1–6, 50:4–9 and 52:13–53:12. The last of these is the most famous:

He was despised and rejected by men;

A man of suffering, and acquainted with grief:

And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;

He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;

Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.

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.

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.

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…

Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him;

he has put him to grief:

when you will 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.

He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied:

By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many;

For he shall bear their iniquities.

Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great,

and he shall divide the spoil with the strong;

Because he has poured out his soul to death:

and he was numbered with the transgressors;

And he bore the sin of many,

and made intercession for the transgressors.

Isaiah 53:3–12