Link to this page

https://gebible.app/messianic-prophecies/catalog/isaiah-53-6-256

Messianic Prophecies

Isaiah 53:6

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.

Show this passage in

WEB

Isaiah 53:6

All we like sheep have gone astray. Everyone has turned to his own way; and Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Read in context

Show the surrounding verses

Who has believed our message? To whom has Yahweh’s arm been revealed?

For he grew up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no good looks or majesty. When we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering and acquainted with disease. He was despised as one from whom men hide their face; and we didn’t respect him.

Surely he has borne our sickness and carried our suffering; yet we considered him plagued, struck by God, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought our peace was on him; and by his wounds we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray. Everyone has turned to his own way; and Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

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.

The fulfillment reading

How this passage is read as pointing to the Messiah.

This reading extends the Servant Song to Isaiah 53:6, emphasizing that all have gone astray and that God lays the iniquity of all on the Servant. The fulfillment reading maps that universal scope onto Christ's atonement, citing 1 John 2:2 and 4:10, passages the tradition reads as presenting Christ's death as covering the sins of all humanity. Read this way the verse supplies both the universality of human sin and the divine initiative behind the substitution, elements advocates see realized in the universal reach of the cross.

The counter-reading

How this passage is read within its own context.

The critical reading places Isaiah 53:6 as the closing stage of the sustained argument of verses 4-6, in which one vicarious-suffering claim is restated and intensified through Hebrew parallelism. On this reading the 'us all' most naturally denotes the confessing community of Israel rather than all humanity, and the universal-atonement sense is imported from 1 John rather than derived from Isaiah. Critics note that 1 John does not quote the verse but echoes its theme, and that treating each verse of one extended passage as a separate prophecy multiplies prophecy-claims from a single argument.

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.

  • 1John 2:2 Echo

    1 John 2:2 and 4:10 share the theme of universal sin-bearing / atonement but contain no verbal quotation of Isa 53:6 and no citation formula.

  • 4:10 Echo

    1 John 2:2 and 4:10 share the theme of universal sin-bearing / atonement but contain no verbal quotation of Isa 53:6 and no citation formula.