The Daily Office · Isaiah 53:3–6
The Suffering Servant
Isaiah 53:3–6
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What's happening here
This is the fourth and most famous of Isaiah's Servant Songs, addressing a community that knew exile and longed for vindication. The prophet speaks in the first-person plural, adopting the voice of a people who had misunderstood the servant's suffering and assumed it was divine punishment for his own sins. Early Jewish interpretation debated whether the servant was Israel personified, a righteous remnant, or an individual figure; the New Testament writers identified him with Jesus. The language of substitutionary suffering—one bearing the punishment due to others—was not common in ancient Near Eastern literature, making this passage theologically distinctive.
The word that matters
Hebrew · to lift, carry, bear a burden
This verb appears twice in verse 4, translated 'borne' and 'carried.' It denotes physically lifting and bearing weight, used elsewhere for carrying ark, sin, or iniquity. The term implies active assumption of a load that properly belongs to another. English 'borne' captures endurance but loses the image of hoisting something heavy onto one's own shoulders, the way a porter takes up cargo or a priest takes up the guilt offering.
Where else this shows up
Leviticus 16:21-22
The scapegoat carries away the iniquities of Israel into the wilderness, bearing sin that is not its own.
1 Peter 2:24-25
Peter quotes this passage directly, applying the servant's wounds and the sheep going astray to Christ's crucifixion.
Matthew 8:16-17
Matthew cites Isaiah 53:4 to explain Jesus healing the sick, interpreting the servant's burden as including physical disease.