Isaiah 53

1Who has believed the news that reached us? And the arm of the LORD, to whom has it been laid bare? 2He grew up before him like a little shoot, like a root coming up from parched earth. He had no stately form, no splendor to draw our eyes, no fine looks to make us long for him. 3He was despised and shunned by everyone, a man of pains, no stranger to sickness. People turned their faces away from him; he was despised, and we counted him as nothing. 4Yet it was our sicknesses that he bore, our pains that he shouldered, while we took him for a man under a plague, beaten down by God and brought low. 5But it was for our rebellions that he was pierced through, for our guilt that he was crushed. On him fell the discipline that won our peace, and his welts have brought us healing. 6Every one of us has wandered off like sheep; we have each turned aside down our own path, and the LORD has made all our guilt fall on him. 7He was hard pressed, and he bowed low under it, yet he did not open his mouth. Like a young sheep led off to be slaughtered, like a ewe silent in front of those who shear her, he did not open his mouth. 8He was taken off by a cruel judgment, and of the people of his day, who gave it a thought? For he was torn from the land of the living; because my people rebelled, the blow fell on him. 9His burial was set among the wicked, and he lay with a rich man in death, although he had never done violence or spoken deceit. 10Yet it pleased the LORD to crush him and make him sick. If he offers himself as a guilt offering, he will see children and live long days, and through his hands what pleases the LORD will thrive. 11After all his soul’s hard labor he will see, and he will have his fill. My servant, the righteous one, will make the many righteous by his knowledge, and he will shoulder their guilt. 12So I will give him a share among the many, and he will split the spoils with the mighty, because he emptied out his life to the point of death and was reckoned among the rebels. It was he who bore the sin of many, and he pleads on behalf of the rebels.