Isaiah 53: the suffering servant and why Christians read it as a picture of the cross

A royal official from Ethiopia sat in his chariot reading aloud from the scroll of Isaiah. “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter,” he read, and he could not understand who the prophet meant. Philip, the evangelist, ran alongside and asked whether he understood what he was reading. Starting from that passage, Acts 8 says, Philip told him about Jesus. The passage was Isaiah 53, and Christians have read it the same way ever since.

The servant songs

Isaiah contains several passages known as the servant songs, which describe a servant of the Lord. Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12 is the last and most famous. The servant has “no form nor comeliness”. He grows up “as a root out of a dry ground”. People do not admire him; they turn away from him. “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” These words have been set to music, most famously in Handel’s Messiah.

Wounded for others

The heart of the passage is the claim that the servant suffers for others: “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities… and with his stripes we are healed.” “All we like sheep have gone astray,” the prophet says, and “the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

The servant does not defend himself. He is “brought as a lamb to the slaughter”. The Gospels describe Jesus remaining silent before his accusers. The passage says the servant was buried “with the rich in his death”, which Christians connect with Jesus’ burial in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.

Vindication and interpretation

The passage does not end in defeat. The servant will “see his seed” and “prolong his days”, which Christians read as pointing to the resurrection. Jewish readers have often understood the servant as the people of Israel, suffering among the nations. This reading is part of a long conversation about the passage. For Christians, Isaiah 53 explains the meaning of the cross: Jesus bore the punishment that others deserved.

Read the chapter slowly and notice each time the words “our” and “us” appear. The Ethiopian official went home baptised and rejoicing. He had started the day puzzled by a passage about a silent lamb, and finished it knowing the lamb’s name.