< Isaiah 53 >
1 Has anyone believed our news? Who has the Lord shown his power to?
2 Like a young shoot he grew up before him, like a root growing up from dry ground. He had no beauty or glory to make us look at him; nothing about his appearance attracted us to him.
3 People despised him and rejected him. He was a man who really suffered and who experienced the deepest pain. We treated him like someone you turn away from in disgust—we despised him and had no respect for him.
4 However, he was the one who carried our weaknesses, he was loaded down with our pain—but we assumed he was being hit, beaten, and humiliated by God.
5 But he was wounded because of our rebellious acts, he was crushed because of our guilt. He experienced the discipline that brings us peace, and his wounds heal us.
6 All of us have wandered off, just like sheep. Each of us has gone our own way, and the Lord allowed all our guilt to fall on him.
7 He was persecuted and mistreated, but he didn't say anything. He was led like a lamb to be killed, and in the same way that a sheep about to be sheared is silent, he didn't say a word.
8 Through force and a death sentence he was killed—who cared what happened to him? He was executed, removed from the land of the living; he was killed because of my people's wickedness.
9 They buried him as if he was someone evil, giving him a grave among the rich, even though he hadn't done anything wrong, and he hadn't told any lies.
10 However, it was the Lord's will for him to be crushed and to suffer, for when he gives his life as a guilt offering he will see his descendants, he will have a long life, and what the Lord wants will be achieved through him.
11 After his suffering, he will see the results and be satisfied. Through his knowledge my servant who does what is right will set many right, and he will bear their sins.
12 That's why I'm going to grant him a place among the great, and give him the prize of the victorious, because he poured out his life in death and was counted as one of the rebels. He took on himself the sins of many and asked forgiveness for the rebels.
