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Messianic Prophecies

Isaiah 53:7

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 53:7

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.

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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.

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.

The critical reading observes that the silence motif is drawn from more than one Old Testament text and applied to the same trial detail, so a single NT moment can be credited to several sources. It notes that Matthew 27:12-14 does not quote Isaiah, and that a gospel author familiar with the Servant Song could have shaped the trial scene using its imagery, leaving prediction and literary construction difficult to distinguish. Critics grant that the lamb-before-shearers image is vivid and more specific than the psalmic silence parallels sometimes cited. Whether the correspondence reflects foretelling or narrative patterning remains the open question on this reading.

The fulfillment reading

How this passage is read as pointing to the Messiah.

The fulfillment reading connects the Servant's refusal to open his mouth in Isaiah 53:7, imaged as a lamb silent before its shearers, with Jesus' silence before Pilate in Matthew 27:12-14. Advocates regard this as one of the closer correspondences in the tradition, since a defendant's silence in a capital hearing is distinctive. They note the silence is reported across multiple Passion accounts (Mark 14:61; 15:5; Luke 23:9; John 19:9), which they take as historical memory matching the Isaianic image. The Servant's deliberate, dignified silence is read as prefiguring Jesus' bearing at trial.

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.

  • Matthew 27:12-14 Allusion

    Matthew 27:12-14 does not quote Isaiah 53:7 but the trial-silence scene widely read as evoking the Servant's silence supplies a recognizable conceptual marker, above a bare echo.