The Holy Bible – Knox Translation
The Prophecy of Isaias
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Chapter 53
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1
What credence for such news as ours? Whom reaches it, this new revelation of the Lord’s strength?✻
Cf. Rom. 10.16.
2
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.
‘Unregarded as’; in the original, simply ‘like’, but this sense appears most probable, in view of what follows. The second part of the verse may also be interpreted as meaning, ‘there is no stateliness, no majesty here to catch our eyes, no beauty to win our hearts’.
3
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?
Literally, ‘his face was as it were hidden’. In the Hebrew text, it is not clear whether the face of the Servant is hidden from the onlookers, or theirs (in disgust) from him.
4
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;
Mt. 8.17.
5
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.
6
Strayed sheep all of us, each following his own path; and God laid on his shoulders our guilt, the guilt of us all.
7
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.
Literally, according to the Latin version, ‘He has been offered up because he himself willed it’. The meaning of the Hebrew text seems to be rather, ‘he has been cruelly treated, and all the while he abased himself’.
8
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.✻
The beginning of this verse in the Hebrew text runs literally, ‘He was taken away from the restraint and from judgement, and his generation—who will meditate?’ The meaning usually given to the passage uses almost every word in a strange sense, and it seems probable that there has been a corruption in the text; cf. the Septuagint Greek version, quoted in Ac. 8.33.
9
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!
The Hebrew text here yields a more simple translation, ‘He (God) gave him burial with the wicked, and with the rich (man) in his death’; but the bearing of the phrase is difficult to determine. The Latin can only be interpreted (on the lines of verse 3 above) as meaning that the Servant renounced all fellowship with the wicked and the rich in order to win himself a felon’s grave.
10
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;
11
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.
12
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.
