Season 6, Podcast 112, Isaiah 53:1-12, “Surely He Hath Borne Our Griefs.”

Season 6, Podcast 112, Isaiah 53:1-12, “Surely He Hath Borne Our Griefs.”

Isaiah was the prophet of Judah, the southern kingdom, during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, and perhaps part of Manasseh. It is recorded in secular history, and it is held by tradition that Isaiah was murdered by Manasseh by being sawed in half. 

Hezekiah was the most righteous of the kings and Ahaz and Manasseh the most wicked during Isaiah’s reign. Isaiah’s primary focus was on the life of the Savior, yet he lived about 700 years before the Birth of Christ. Isaiah’s descriptions of Christ were so personal one would think that he actually lived during the time of Christ. Isaiah 53 is an example.

Isaiah 53:1

1 Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?

The “report” may easily be interpreted as the writings of Isaiah himself for no one focused more on the life and mission of the Savior. “To whom is the arm of the Lord revealed” refers to those prophets who spoke of Christ as well as those who received a testimony of Christ through the Holy Ghost. There is no timeline to that statement. It reaches back in time before Isaiah and forward in time primarily to the Second Coming as well as to the end of the world.

In other words, we all need a personal testimony of the divinity of Christ which comes only through the Holy Ghost. 

For someone who never met Christ except through visions and revelations, Isaiah gives a startingly accurate description of the man himself.

Isaiah 53:2

2 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

The Jews rejected Christ for they were looking for a king and a champion to free them from the Romans. Effectively from the days of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans, Judah had either been a vassal state or completely bound in slavery to neighboring nations, all of which were prophesied by Isaiah. He attributed their bondage to idol worship and to changing the ordinances and breaking the everlasting covenant, and to breaking the Ten Commandments.

Because they looked beyond the mark, they rejected Christ, though his birth and life and death had been explicitly described by the prophets from the beginning as recorded by Moses, and especially from Isaiah himself. In the following verse, notice the use of the present tense and the use of “we.” It is as if Isaiah were living during the time of Christ.

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Isaiah 53:3

3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

For those who studied Isaiah, as surely the learned Jews did during the time of Christ, it is  impossible to understand how they justified crucifying the Savior. They fulfilled the prophesies of Isaiah with precision.

In the next verse Isaiah accomplishes two things: (1) He defines the mission of the Savior—to bear our sins and our sorrows (2) He gives a description of how Christ will be treated.

Isaiah 53:4

4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

In other words, rather than take personal responsibility for their evil behavior, the Jewish leaders claimed that Christ was being punished by God for his sins. Isaiah himself described their behavior earlier when he said they would call good evil and evil good. 

Isaiah clearly understood the mission of the Savior. Could there be a clearer statement of the atonement than the following? Notice that it is given in the past tense as if the event has already occurred.