# Isaiah 53.3 **Book:** [Isaiah](/codex/isaiah-the-prophet/) · NASB95 ## Verse > He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. (Isaiah 53:3, NASB95) ## Immediate context (±2 verses) **NASB95** ([NASB95](/codex/nasb95/)) > 2. For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty That we should look upon Him, Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. > > **3. He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.** > > 4. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. 5. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. (Isaiah 53:2-5, NASB95) ## Setting - **Speaker:** Isaiah the prophet, voicing repentant Israel ("we did not esteem Him"), the verse is part of a corporate confession that the Servant was unrecognized when He came. - **Audience:** 8th-century BC Judah at the immediate level; the prophetic Servant Songs (42:1-9, 49:1-13, 50:4-11, 52:13-53:12) speak past the immediate audience to a future suffering figure. - **Location:** Jerusalem / Judah. - **Time period:** Isaiah's ministry c. 740-686 BC. The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa-a) at Qumran, paleographically dated c. 125 BC, preserves this verse essentially as the MT, predating Christ by a century and foreclosing post-Christian-retrojection objections to the prophecy. ## Theological reading Isaiah 53:3 is the **rejection-of-Christ verse** within the Servant Song, load-bearing for two distinct apologetic deployments: **(1) Fulfilled-prophecy of Israel's rejection of Messiah.** The verse predicts that the Servant will not be recognized or esteemed by His own people, fulfilled explicitly in **John 1:11** (*"He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him"*), **Mark 9:12** (*"the Son of Man... will be treated with contempt"*), **Luke 17:25** (*"first He must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation"*), **Acts 3:13-15** (Peter's Pentecost speech, *"the One whom you delivered up and disowned in the presence of Pilate"*). The prophecy-and-fulfillment pattern is among the most explicit in the OT-NT canonical-trajectory case for messianic-Jesus. **(2) Christological self-claim.** Jesus appears to allude to this verse in **Mark 9:12** + **Luke 17:25**, the *Son of Man must suffer and be rejected* language echoes Isa 53:3's *despised and forsaken*. Christ identifies His mission with the Servant's path of rejection-leading-to-vindication. **The early church reads this self-identification as decisive**: Acts 8:32-35 (Philip explaining Isaiah 53 as Christological to the Ethiopian eunuch) treats the chapter as the apostolic baseline for explaining who Jesus is. **Patristic engagement.** [Justin Martyr](/codex/justin-martyr/) (*Dialogue with Trypho* 13, 32, 89, c. AD 160) cites Isaiah 53, including the rejection language, as the answer to Trypho's "your Messiah suffered? That's why we don't accept Him" objection: the Song *predicts* the rejection; suffering-and-rejection are not failure-of-messianic-claim but its very *content*. Tertullian (*Adversus Judaeos* 9-10, c. AD 200) develops the prophetic-fulfillment argument. Origen (*Contra Celsum* 1.54-55, c. AD 248) records Jewish interlocutors offering corporate-Israel readings; the *singular* despised-figure rejected by "us" cannot be Israel-as-collective without reflexive incoherence. Eusebius (*Demonstratio Evangelica* 3.2, c. AD 312) makes Isaiah 53 the foundational text in the case from prophecy. Athanasius reads the rejection-and-suffering as the eternal Son's voluntary acceptance in the assumed humanity (against both docetism + Arianism). **Reformation engagement.** Calvin's *Commentary on Isaiah 53* (1559) treats v. 3 as comprehensive description of Christ's social degradation: born in obscurity, raised craftsman's son, rejected by religious authorities, mocked by political authorities, abandoned by disciples, executed as criminal. Luther's *theologia crucis* is grounded in Isaiah 53's pattern: God-glory revealed in apparent contempt, not in worldly majesty. **The apologetic load** is multi-pronged: - **Against the "Christ couldn't be Messiah because Israel rejected Him" objection** (deployed in some Jewish responses + secular-historical critique): the rejection was *prophesied*; rejection-by-Israel is part of the messianic-pattern, not its contradiction. - **Against the "post-hoc retrofit" objection**: Qumran 1QIsa-a (c. 125 BC) preserves the verse pre-Christianly, the prophecy cannot have been engineered after the fact. - **Against the "Israel-corporate reading" rebuttal** (medieval Jewish + some modern scholarly): the singular-Servant grammar + "we" speaker-voice + substitutionary structure (*"surely our griefs He bore"* v. 4 immediately following) require an individual sufferer distinct from the speaking community. ## Key words (Hebrew) - ***nivzeh* (Niphal participle of *bazah*, H959)**, "despised, contemned, treated with contempt", appears twice in the verse for emphasis; the doubling marks the depth and totality of the rejection - ***ish makovot*** (literally "man of sorrows / pains," from *makov* H4341), "sorrows" includes both physical pains and emotional anguish; Hebrew *makov* has the bodily-affliction nuance the English "sorrows" can lose - ***yedua choli*** ("acquainted with grief / sickness," from *choli* H2483), *yada* "to know" + *choli* "sickness/grief"; *choli* is more "sickness" than "grief" lexically, the Servant is *known by sickness*, intimate with affliction. Matthew 8:17's *"He Himself took our infirmities and carried away our diseases"* applies *choli* as physical-illness specifically, supporting the dual spiritual/physical-healing reading of the Servant Song - ***chashavnu* (qal of *chashav*, H2803)**, "we did not esteem / regard / consider Him"; the same verb governs Genesis 50:20 (Joseph: *"you meant evil... God meant it for good"*) and runs through OT theology of moral-and-theological evaluation. Repentant-Israel confesses misvaluation: we did not weigh Him correctly ## Cross-references - **[Isaiah 53.5](/codex/isaiah-53-5/)**, *"pierced through for our transgressions"*, the substitutionary atonement pivot of the Servant Song - **[John 1.29](/codex/john-1-29/)**, *"the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world"*, Servant-imagery applied to Jesus by John the Baptist - **John 1:11**, *"He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him"*, direct NT fulfillment statement - **Mark 9:12, Luke 17:25**, Jesus's own application of the rejection-prophecy to Himself (*"the Son of Man must... be rejected"*) - **Acts 3:13-15**, Peter's Pentecost speech applying the rejection to the crucifixion event - **Acts 8.32-35**, Philip's exposition of Isaiah 53 to the Ethiopian eunuch (apostolic-template application) - **Matthew 8.17**, citation of Isa 53:4 (*"He took our infirmities and carried our diseases"*), links *choli* to physical-healing - **[1 Peter 2.24](/codex/1-peter-2-24/)**, *"by His wounds you were healed"*, direct NT citation of v. 5; companion to v. 3's rejection theme ## Quoted in **Arguments and defeaters:** - [Argument from Prophecy Fulfillment](/codex/argument-from-prophecy-fulfillment/) - [God Causes Cancer Objection Defeater](/codex/god-causes-cancer-objection-defeater/), via [Isaiah 53.3-4](/codex/isaiah-53-3-4/) **Concepts:** - [Messianic Prophecy Probability](/codex/messianic-prophecy-probability/) - [Quick Objection Responses](/codex/quick-objection-responses/) - [Two-Stage Messianic Prophecy](/codex/two-stage-messianic-prophecy/), via [Isaiah 53.1-12](/codex/isaiah-53-1-12/) ## Notes The verse is **the apologetic anchor for the rejection-fulfillment-prophecy argument**. The skeptical-Jewish (or skeptical-secular) move is to treat Israel's rejection of Jesus as evidence-against-messianic-claim. Isaiah 53:3 inverts this: the rejection is *part of the messianic pattern*, prophesied centuries before the event. Combined with the Qumran-scroll dating (1QIsa-a c. 125 BC), the post-hoc-engineering objection fails. The verse pairs with [Isaiah 53.5](/codex/isaiah-53-5/) (penal-substitution pivot) as the dual rejection-and-substitution structural anchor of the Servant Song. The rejection-prophecy continues to be load-bearing in Christian-Jewish apologetic engagement: **Justin Martyr's *Dialogue with Trypho* (c. AD 160)** is the locus classicus where Christianity's argument for Jesus-as-Messiah specifically engages Jewish counter-readings of Isaiah 53, including the "corporate Israel" interpretation that medieval Rashi-tradition would later develop. The grammatical-pronoun argument (Origen *Contra Celsum* 1.55), *"we did not esteem Him"* requires speakers distinct from the Servant, remains decisive against the corporate-Israel reading. ## See also - [Penal Substitutionary Atonement](/codex/penal-substitutionary-atonement/), anchored in Isaiah 53:5 + 53:3 as the rejection-and-substitution pair - [Failed Messianic Prophecy Objections](/codex/failed-messianic-prophecy-objections/), the objection-cluster Isaiah 53 most directly answers - [Atonement Theory Spread](/codex/atonement-theory-spread/), synthesis where Servant Song readings differ across atonement theories - [Jesus is Not a Human Sacrifice (Defeater)](/codex/jesus-is-not-a-human-sacrifice-defeater/), companion defeater on the substitution-misreading - [Christ Was Made (Misread Proof-Texts)](/codex/christ-was-made-misread-proof-texts/), adjacent Christological misread-text catalog - [Bible Verses](/codex/bible-verses/), master scripture index --- _Scripture quotations taken from the **New American Standard Bible®** (NASB), Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by **The Lockman Foundation**. Used by permission. All rights reserved. [www.lockman.org](https://www.lockman.org)_