What credence for such news as ours? Whom reaches it, this new revelation of the Lord’s strength?✻

He will watch this servant of his appear among us, unregarded as✻ brushwood shoot, as a plant in waterless soil; no stateliness here, no majesty, no beauty, as we gaze upon him, to win our hearts.

Nay, here is one despised, left out of all human reckoning; bowed with misery, and no stranger to weakness; how should we recognize that face?✻ How should we take any account of him, a man so despised?

Our weakness, and it was he who carried the weight of it, our miseries, and it was he who bore them.✻ A leper, so we thought of him, a man God had smitten and brought low;

and all the while it was for our sins he was wounded, it was guilt of ours crushed him down; on him the punishment fell that brought us peace, by his bruises we were healed.

Strayed sheep all of us, each following his own path; and God laid on his shoulders our guilt, the guilt of us all.

A victim? Yet he himself bows to the stroke;✻ no word comes from him. Sheep led away to the slaughter-house, lamb that stands dumb while it is shorn; no word from him.

Imprisoned, brought to judgement, and carried off, he, whose birth is beyond our knowing; numbered among the living no more! Be sure it is for my people’s guilt I have smitten him.✻

Takes he leave of the rich, the godless, to win but a grave, to win but the gift of death;✻ he, that wrong did never, nor had treason on his lips!

Ay, the Lord’s will it was, overwhelmed he should be with trouble. His life laid down for guilt’s atoning, he shall yet be rewarded; father of a long posterity, instrument of the divine purpose;

for all his heart’s anguish, rewarded in full. The Just One, my servant; many shall he claim for his own, win their acquittal, on his shoulders bearing their guilt.

So many lives ransomed, foes so violent baulked of their spoil! Such is his due, that gave himself up to death, and would be counted among the wrong-doers; bore those many sins, and made intercession for the guilty.