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Messianic Prophecies

Isaiah 53:12

This passage comes from the wider catalog — a broader, more lightly curated list than the core set. Both readings are shown as peers; GEBible takes no side.

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Isaiah 53:12

Therefore I will give him a portion with the great. He will divide the plunder with the strong; because he poured out his soul to death and was counted with the transgressors; yet he bore the sins of many and made intercession for the transgressors.

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He was oppressed, yet when he was afflicted he didn’t open his mouth. As a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he didn’t open his mouth.

He was taken away by oppression and judgment. As for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living and stricken for the disobedience of my people?

They made his grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.

Yet it pleased Yahweh to bruise him. He has caused him to suffer. When you make his soul an offering for sin, he will see his offspring. He will prolong his days and Yahweh’s pleasure will prosper in his hand.

After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light and be satisfied. My righteous servant will justify many by the knowledge of himself; and he will bear their iniquities.

Therefore I will give him a portion with the great. He will divide the plunder with the strong; because he poured out his soul to death and was counted with the transgressors; yet he bore the sins of many and made intercession for the transgressors.

The counter-reading

How this passage is read within its own context.

On the critical reading, Mark 15:28 — the verse that actually quotes the Isaiah clause — is absent from the earliest and best manuscripts (Sinaiticus, Vaticanus) and is omitted by NA28/UBS5 as a probable scribal harmonization to Luke, so Mark's authentic text supplies only the bare detail of two rebels. Critics note that crucifixion alongside other condemned prisoners was standard Roman practice for multiple executions, and that an explicit citation (Luke 22:37) could itself have shaped the narrative detail rather than being independently fulfilled by it. The clause also belongs to a verse read repeatedly as prophecy, so it is treated in part as one verse subdivided into several distinct prophecies.

The fulfillment reading

How this passage is read as pointing to the Messiah.

On the messianic-fulfillment reading, Isaiah 53:12's clause that the servant was numbered among transgressors is fulfilled when Luke 22:37 has Jesus explicitly cite it and apply it to himself, and when the crucifixion narrative places Jesus between two condemned men (Mark 15:27). Proponents count this among the most specific correspondences in the Song, strengthened by an explicit dominical self-citation and by the servant's innocence (53:9) matching repeated declarations of Jesus' innocence in Luke and John (Luke 23:4, 14, 22; John 18:38; 19:4, 6). The specificity of the detail and the explicitness of the citation are read as making the connection unusually strong.

How the New Testament uses this passage

Each entry names how the New Testament author draws on the passage — a direct quotation, an allusion, an echo, or a typological reading. An echo or an allusion is not the same as a prediction; the label says which is which.

  • Mark 15:27-28 Direct quotation

    Luke 22:37 quotes Isa 53:12 ('counted/numbered with the lawless') under an explicit fulfillment formula ('this scripture must be fulfilled in me'); Mark 15:28 also quotes it but is text-critically secondary.

  • Luke 22:37 Direct quotation

    Luke 22:37 quotes Isa 53:12 ('counted/numbered with the lawless') under an explicit fulfillment formula ('this scripture must be fulfilled in me'); Mark 15:28 also quotes it but is text-critically secondary.