Isaiah 53:10 - Exposition

Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him (see the comment on Isaiah 53:6 , ad fin. ) . The sufferings of Christ, proceeding from the "determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God" ( Acts 2:23 ), and being permitted by him; were in some sort his doing. It "pleased him," moreover, that they should be undergone, for he saw with satisfaction the Son's self-sacrifice, and he witnessed with joy man's redemption and deliverance effected thereby. He hath put him to grief; rather, he dealt grievously— a sort of hendiadys. "He bruised him with a grievous bruising." When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin . It is proposed (Ewald, Cheyne), by the alteration of a letter, to make the passage run thus: "When he shall make his soul an offering," etc; and argued that "he who offers the Servant's life as a sacrifice must be the Servant himself, and not Jehovah" (Cheyne). No doubt the Servant did offer his own life (see Matthew 20:28 ," He gave his soul a ransom for many"); but that fact does not preclude the possibility of the Father having also offered it. "Believest thou not," said our Lord to Philip, "that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works" ( John 14:10 ). This perienchoresis , as the ancient theologians called it, makes it possible to predicate of the Father almost all the actions which can be predicated of the Son—all, in fact, excepting those which belong to the Son's humanity, or which involve obedience and subordination. As the Father had "laid on Christ the iniquity of us all" ( Isaiah 53:6 ), as he had "bruised him and put him to grief," so he might be said to have "made his soul an offering for sin." All was settled in the Divine counsels from all eternity, and when the ideal became the actual, God the Father wrought with God the Son to effectuate it. "Offerings for sin," or "guilt offerings," were distinct from "sin offerings." The object of the former was "satisfaction," of the latter "expiation." The Servant of Jehovah was, however, to be both. "As in Isaiah 53:5 the Divine Servant is represented as a Sin Offering, his death being an expiation, so hero he is described as a Guilt Offering, his death being a satisfaction ". He shall see his seed . The "seed" of a teacher of religion are his disciples. St. Paul speaks of Onesimus as one whom he had "begotten in his bends" ( Philemon 1:10 ). He calls himself by implication the "father" of his Corinthian converts ( 1 Corinthians 4:15 ). Both he and St. John address their disciples as "little children" ( Galatians 4:19 ; I John 2:1 , John 2:18 , John 2:25 ; John 3:7 , John 3:18 ; John 4:4 ; John 5:21 ). It had long previously been promised that "a seed should serve" Messiah ( Psalms 22:30 ). Our Lord himself occasionally called his disciples his "children" ( Mark 10:24 ; John 21:4 ). He has always "seen his seed" in his true followers. He shall prolong his days. A seeming contradiction to the statement (verse 8) that he should be "cut off" out of the land of the living; and the more surprising because his death is made the condition of this long life: "When thou shalt make his soul an offering [or, 'sacrifice'] for sin," then "he shall prolong his days." But the resurrection of Christ, and his entrance upon an immortal life ( Romans 6:9 ), after offering himself as a Sacrifice upon the cross, exactly meets the difficulty and solves the riddle (comp. Revelation 1:18 ). The pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. "In his hand" means "by his instrumentality." The "pleasure of the Lord" is God's ultimate aim and end with respect to his universe. This would "prosper"— i.e. be advanced, wrought out, rendered effectual—by the instrumentality of Christ. "Taking the verse as a whole, it sets forth

Taking the last clause by itself, we have