Isaiah 53:4

The Servant’s humble appearance and unattractiveness were for the benefit of humankind. It was the consequences of our sins that He would bear, not those of His own sins (cf. Matthew 8:17). Yet onlookers would consider that God was striking, smiting, and afflicting Him for His own sins. This is a typical response to suffering. People often conclude that a person is suffering because he or she has done something bad, and God is punishing him or her. This was the viewpoint of Job’s friends. Because the Hebrew word for stricken, nagua’, refers to smiting with leprosy in 2 Kings 15:5, a tradition arose among the Jews that Messiah would be a leper. This view also appears in some of the ancient Greek versions. [Note: Young, 3:346.] The Servant did not just suffer with His people but for them. His atonement was substitutionary.

Who were the people that Isaiah had in mind when He described the benefits of the Servant’s work? Were they only those who would become the people of God by faith in the Servant, or were they all people? Isaiah did not make this distinction in His prophecy. He did not contribute to the debate about limited and unlimited atonement. What he wrote does not enable us to solve the question of for whom Christ died.