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Isaiah 52–53 presents one of Scripture’s most striking figures: the Suffering Servant, who is rejected, suffers for the sins of others, dies, and then is raised to life. Yet the passage never explicitly calls him the Messiah or identifies him as a descendant of David. So why have Christians always understood this prophecy as pointing to Jesus?
Jimmy Akin examines the identity of the Suffering Servant, the different ways Jewish tradition has interpreted the passage, and how biblical prophecy can operate on both a literal and a spiritual level. He explains why the New Testament writers recognized Isaiah’s Servant as a profound prophecy of Jesus Christ and his saving work.
The Suffering Servant
Coming Up
One of the most famous prophecies in the Bible describes a servant who suffers, dies, and rises again.
But it never calls him a king, and it never calls him a son of David.
So . . . is Isaiah 53 really about the Messiah?
Let’s get into it!
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Howdy, folks!
We’re in our third year of the podcast now, and you can help me keep making this podcast for years to come—and get early access to new episodes—by going to Patreon.com/JimmyAkinPodcast
What Makes a Clear Messianic Prophecy?
In Episode 95, we looked at Isaiah and Micah, and we saw 2 very clear prophecies of the Messiah as a future Davidic king.
Those passages aren’t controversial—both Jewish and Christian scholars agree they’re about the Messiah.
In general, we can be confident that a passage is a messianic prophecy if it does 3 things.
- It speaks of a future ruler.
- It identifies that ruler as a descendant of David.
- It portrays him as ideal, or as ruling in an ideal age.
Without those three marks, the prophecy isn’t as clear.
The Suffering Servant
Now, one of the most famous messianic prophecies is found in Isaiah 52 and 53, and deals with a figure called the Suffering Servant.
That is, a servant of the Lord who is known for his suffering.
This passage is quoted and alluded to multiple times in the New Testament, where it is applied to Jesus—and Christians have cited it as a messianic prophecy ever since.
The prophecy begins in Isaiah 52:13, where God says:
Isaiah 52:13
Behold, my servant shall prosper,
he shall be exalted and lifted up,
and shall be very high.
So—at the beginning of the prophecy—things sound like they are going well for the servant. We’re told that he shall prosper and that he shall be exalted and lifted up.
But then, in the next two verses, things take a turn, and Isaiah tells us:
Isaiah 52:14-15
As many were astonished at him—
his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance,
and his form beyond that of the sons of men—
so shall he startle many nations;
kings shall shut their mouths because of him.
So something horrible happens to the servant and many people become astonished at him and his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance.
Isaiah then starts to spell out what happened in this dramatic turn of events:
Isaiah 53:3-6
He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
struck down by God and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
he was bruised for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that made us whole,
and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned everyone to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
So the Servant’s suffering was part of God’s plan.
God laid our sins on him, and his sufferings “made us whole” and “healed” us.
The prophecy continues:
Isaiah 53:8-9
By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people?
And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death.
So the Servant actually dies—he’s “cut off out of the land of the living,” and his grave is somehow both with the wicked and with a rich man.
And then, in Isaiah 53:10, the prophecy says:
Isaiah 53:10
When he makes himself an offering for sin,
he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days;
the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
Even though he died, the Servant will come back to life and “prolong his days.”
The prophecy closes with more about the Servant:
Isaiah 53:11-12
He shall see the fruit of the travail of his soul and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous;
and he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong;
because he poured out his soul to death,
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.
So the passage gives us a Servant of the Lord who suffers on behalf of others all the way to death, giving his life as a sin offering, and he is then raised back to life and rewarded.
And the obvious question is: who is this Servant?
From a Christian perspective, the answer is the Messiah, and this passage reflects exactly what happened with Jesus—which is why it gets quoted again and again in the New Testament and applied to him.
But Who Is the Servant?
But there’s a complication.
Even though this is a clear messianic prophecy, it doesn’t have any of the three traits of a clear messianic prophecy.
It doesn’t speak of a future ruler.
It doesn’t identify the figure as a descendant of David.
And it doesn’t portray him as an ideal king ruling in an ideal age.
So, on the surface, you could question whether it’s a messianic prophecy at all.
And it gets trickier, because this Servant isn’t the only “servant” in the book of Isaiah.
Isaiah uses the word “servant” for several different people.
Isaiah 20:3
The Lord said, “As my servant Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot for three years as a sign and a portent against Egypt and Ethiopia.”
In Isaiah 20:3, God calls Isaiah himself “my servant.”
Isaiah 22:20
In that day I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah.
In Isaiah 22:20, God calls a royal steward named Eliakim “my servant.”
In Isaiah 41:8, God addresses the servant this way:
Isaiah 41:8
You, Israel, my servant,
Jacob, whom I have chosen,
the offspring of Abraham, my friend.
So here the servant is the whole nation of Israel.
But a little later, in Isaiah 49:5, the servant speaks in his own voice and says:
Isaiah 49:5
[The Lord] formed me from the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him,
and that Israel might be gathered to him,
for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord,
and my God has become my strength.
Here the servant’s job is to bring Israel back to God, so obviously the servant can’t simply be Israel in this passage.
Thus we see that, in the book of Isaiah, the servant can be Isaiah, or Eliakim, Israel, and someone other than Israel.
Which leaves us with a question about the Servant of Isaiah 52 and 53.
Now, we do know that the Messiah was one of the things Isaiah cared about, because in Episode 95 we saw him give 2 crystal-clear messianic prophecies—ones that had all 3 characteristics of clear ones.
So it’s entirely possible this passage is about the Messiah in the plain, literal sense of the text.
But without those 3 classic marks, the matter can be disputed—and in the Jewish tradition, the interpretation really is mixed.
Some Jewish sources read the Servant here as the Messiah, and some don’t.
That’s a genuine puzzle—but it’s one we can shed a lot of light on, once we understand how prophecy actually works.
How Prophecy Works
In hindsight, a passage like Isaiah 53 looks like it’s describing Jesus down to small details.
But that wouldn’t have been obvious before Jesus came along, and part of the reason is the way prophecy works.
Prophecy doesn’t just operate on one level, because it’s divinely inspired.
Both Jews and Christians have recognized this, as 2 Peter 1:20 and 21 say:
2 Peter 1:20-21
First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.
So a book of Scripture has a human author, and behind him stands God, the divine author.
The human author has a limited point of view, and whatever he intends to communicate is what scholars call the Literal Sense of the text. What human author intended
But God knows far more than the human author does, and he may intend meanings the human author never even thought of.
Those extra meanings—the ones God intended but the human author wasn’t aware of—are what scholars call the Spiritual Sense of the text. What God intended
And ancient Jews began to notice that passages of Scripture could carry more than one meaning, so they started looking for them.
Out of Egypt
Let me give you a famous example.
In Hosea 11:1, God says:
Hosea 11:1
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.
Now, it’s perfectly clear what Hosea—the human author—means by that.
He’s calling the nation of Israel God’s son, and he’s talking about the Exodus, when God called Israel up out of Egypt and into the promised land.
Israel went down into Egypt, was enslaved there, and then God called him back out—that’s the obvious, literal meaning, and it’s what Hosea was aware of.
But just because that’s what Hosea was aware of doesn’t mean it’s all that God, who knows infinitely more than Hosea, may have meant.
In the first century A.D., the evangelist Matthew noticed that something very similar happened in the life of Jesus.
Jesus is also God’s son—in an even more unique way than Israel was.
And Jesus also went down to Egypt—to escape Herod’s slaughter of the infants—and then came back out.
So Matthew saw Hosea’s words as also pointing forward to Jesus, and in Matthew 2:13 through 15 he writes:
Matthew 2:13-15
Now when [the Magi] had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there till I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” And he rose and took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt have I called my son.”
Now, Matthew knew perfectly well that, in the literal sense, Hosea was talking about Israel coming out of Egypt in the Exodus.
Hosea 11:1
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.
Hosea even names Israel as the son in question.
But in addition to that literal meaning, Matthew also saw a spiritual meaning pointing forward to Jesus, who is the Son of God in the fullest sense.
And so, within the spiritual sense of the text, Christians saw a messianic prophecy that was fulfilled when Jesus came back out of Egypt after the death of Herod the Great.
And this kind of reading wasn’t a Christian invention.
Non-Christian Jews used the very same techniques, and they turn up in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the writings of the rabbis.
Conclusion
So, to sum up, Isaiah 52 and 53 give us the haunting portrait of a Servant of the Lord who suffers and dies for the sins of others and is then raised to life.
It doesn’t carry the 3 classic marks of a clear messianic prophecy, and the Jewish tradition is divided about it.
But once we understand that prophecy works on 2 levels—a literal sense and a spiritual sense—the puzzle starts to come into focus.
Whatever Isaiah himself understood, God intended the passage to point forward to Jesus the Messiah.
And the New Testament writers, reading the way their fellow Jews already read, recognized the Servant the moment they saw him.
In the future, we’ll start turning from the prophecies to the man they point to—Jesus of Nazareth—and ask whether he was even a real figure of history.
And, as always, this series is based on my book Evidence for Christ: How We Know That Jesus Is the Messiah.
If you want the full case for Jesus in one place—including a lot more on the Suffering Servant—I hope you’ll pick up a copy.
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God bless you always!