Behold, my servant will deal wisely. He will be exalted and lifted up, and will be very high.
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Isaiah 52:13-53:12
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The cited passage
The counter-reading
How this passage is read within its own context.
On the critical reading, Israel is called God's "servant" throughout Deutero-Isaiah (41:8, 44:1, 44:21, 45:4), so the "innocent sufferer" objection, which assumes the servant must be sinless, is answered from the text: the servant is "counted" as bearing others' sins by the nations who observe him (53:4), the nations speaking here in the first person ("we esteemed him stricken"). This reading takes Israel's suffering to be not punishment for Israel's own sins but suffering caught up in the nations' conflicts. The Targumic reworking is read as particularly telling — the rabbis kept the messianic identification but eliminated the suffering, which on this account shows a suffering messiah was not the expected reading. On the critical reading the dominant pre-Christian Jewish interpretation was collective (Israel), and the individual messianic reading is taken to have developed largely in and after the Christian period rather than before it.
The fulfillment reading
How this passage is read as pointing to the Messiah.
On the fulfillment reading, Isaiah 53 describes an innocent individual who suffers voluntarily for the sins of others — a profile the reading takes not to fit the nation of Israel, which the prophets consistently describe as sinful rather than innocent. This reading emphasizes the specificity: "like a lamb led to the slaughter" (v. 7), "his grave with the wicked" (v. 9), "he bore the sin of many" (v. 12). The Talmudic messianic readings, though a minority, are read as showing that an individual messianic interpretation existed in Judaism before Christianity could have influenced it. The Targumic reworking — making the messiah triumphant — is taken as evidence that the messianic identification was accepted while the suffering element was theologically uncomfortable.
The fulfillment reading has two provenance panels and the counter-reading one. The extra panel records how the New Testament takes up these passages — including where it does not — because it is a canon that cites them, the fulfillment reading's own textual basis. The counter-reading engages the same passages through the Jewish exegetical and translational tradition — the Targums, the Talmud, the rabbinic commentators, and the medieval exegetes — with no parallel canon that cites them as its own textual basis. That difference is about which sources exist, not a judgment reached here.
In the Jewish exegetical tradition
How the passage is read in the Jewish interpretive tradition — the Targums, the Talmud, the rabbinic commentators, and the medieval exegetes, named and dated in order from earliest to latest; a direct quotation is shown where a public-domain translation of the work survives.
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Targum Jonathan Targum Jonathan ben Uzziel
Keeps the messianic identification but redistributes the suffering away from the messiah: the humiliation and affliction are transferred onto Israel and the people, while the punishment and destruction fall on the wicked Gentile nations — the messiah himself remains triumphant.
Targum Jonathan on Isaiah 52:13-53:12
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Babylonian Talmud R. Joshua b. Levi and Elijah
Preserves the aggadah of the suffering messiah — the ‘leper’ or wounded messianic figure who sits among the afflicted poor at the gate of Rome, binding his wounds one at a time — a minority strand, not the standard reading.
“At the gate of Rome, among poor people inflicted with wounds. … All the inflicted poor open the bandages of all their wounds, fix all of them and then dress them. And he opens one bandage, fixes the wound and dresses it, and then goes on to the next one.” Sanhedrin 98a — tr. Michael L. Rodkinson, New Edition of the Babylonian Talmud, Tract Sanhedrin (New York, 1903), p. 308
Sanhedrin 98a
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Rashi Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki
Identifies the servant as Israel, suffering in exile among the nations. This became the standard medieval Jewish interpretation and was developed explicitly to counter Christian readings.
“Israel suffered in order that by his sufferings atonement might be made for all other nations: the sickness which ought to have fallen upon us was carried by him.” On Isaiah 53:4-5 — tr. S.R. Driver, in Neubauer & Driver, The Fifty-Third Chapter of Isaiah According to the Jewish Interpreters, vol. 2 (Oxford & London, 1877), p. 38
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Radak Rabbi David Kimchi
Follows Rashi's collective interpretation.
“This Parashah refers to the captivity of Israel, who are here called ‘my servant,’ as in xli. 8; the prophet says, ‘Behold the time will come when my servant will prosper, and be high, and exalted exceedingly.’” On Isaiah 52:13 — tr. S.R. Driver, in Neubauer & Driver, The Fifty-Third Chapter of Isaiah According to the Jewish Interpreters, vol. 2 (Oxford & London, 1877), p. 49
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Ramban Nachmanides (Moses ben Nachman)
Holds that the true sense of ‘my servant’ is the whole of Israel, but — because the Midrash refers the passage to the Messiah — expounds it messianically as well: the Messiah son of David perceives the end and rises to gather Israel's exiles, and though pained and afflicted for their sins, is never conquered or slain by his enemies.
Exposition of Isaiah 53
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Abarbanel Isaac Abarbanel
Weighs each proposed referent — Jesus, the future Messiah, Jeremiah, Israel — and settles on the servant as the people of Israel, despised and afflicted in exile among the nations (offering, as a second course of his own, the historical king Josiah), while refuting the Christian reading at length: against inherited guilt, against one bearing another's punishment, and against the incarnation.
Commentary on Isaiah
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.
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Acts 8:32-35 Direct quotation
Ethiopian eunuch passage; Philip interprets the servant as Jesus
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Philippians 2:5-11 Allusion
Christ hymn echoes the servant's suffering and exaltation pattern
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1 Peter 2:22-25 Direct quotation
Quotes and applies the suffering servant language to Christ
In the Christian exegetical tradition
How the passage is read as messianic in the Christian interpretive tradition — the patristic writers, the Reformers, and later confessional commentators, named and dated in order from earliest to latest; a direct quotation is shown where a public-domain translation of the work survives.
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Justin Martyr
In his dialogue with the Jew Trypho, Justin cites the fourth Servant Song repeatedly as prophecy of Christ's first advent in humility and suffering, reading the servant's marred appearance, silence before his accusers, and burial as fulfilled in the passion. He frames it within his doctrine of two advents: a first coming in lowliness and suffering foretold here, and a future coming in glory. He presses the passage as an answer to Jewish objection that a crucified, dishonored figure could not be the Messiah.
Dialogue with Trypho
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Tertullian Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus
Tertullian applies the passage to Christ to argue two distinct comings — the lowly, suffering advent described here versus a future advent in majesty — using the servant's meekness ("led as a sheep to the slaughter") against Jewish denial that the Messiah would suffer. In Against Marcion he deploys the same text in the opposite direction, insisting the servant's real disfigurement and death prove Christ possessed genuine suffering flesh, contrary to Marcion's docetism.
Against the Jews (Adversus Judaeos) and Against Marcion
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Franz Delitzsch Franz Julius Delitzsch
Delitzsch reads the fourth Servant Song as an individual portrait that transcends what the nation of Israel can embody, since the servant is expressly distinguished from the people ("for the transgression of my people") and is sinless where the nation is not. He argues the servant's vicarious, sin-bearing death, burial, and subsequent life to "see his seed" point to a personal Messiah, and he engages Jewish interpretation directly, having himself been deeply learned in rabbinic sources.
“But whereas Israel thus heaped up guilt upon guilt, the Servant of Jehovah was He upon whom Jehovah Himself caused the punishment of their guilt to fall, that He might make atonement for it through His own suffering.” on Isa. 53:6 — Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Isaiah, tr. Rev. James Martin, T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1884, Vol. II
Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Isaiah
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Alec Motyer J. Alec Motyer
Motyer argues the servant is an individual set apart from Israel, whose death is substitutionary and penal ("the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all") rather than a national suffering caught up in the conflicts of the nations. He contends that the servant's post-mortem vindication — seeing his offspring and prolonging his days after being "cut off" — requires a resurrection, and reads the whole song as a messianic prophecy of atoning death and exaltation.
No public-domain edition available; Motyer's 1993 commentary remains in copyright. Read in context
The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction and Commentary
Where this stands
This is the most contested passage in the entire debate. The fourth Servant Song describes a figure who suffers vicariously for others, is despised, and is ultimately vindicated by God. The Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 98a) includes a messianic interpretation — Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi's apparent acknowledgment that the messiah sits among the suffering. The Targum Jonathan translates it messianically but reverses the suffering: the messiah triumphs and the nations suffer. At Qumran, fragments suggest awareness of a suffering figure. In critical scholarship, the dominant reading identifies the servant as personified Israel in exile, suffering among the nations. The NT applies this passage to Jesus more than almost any other OT text — the passion narratives, Philippians 2:5-11, 1 Peter 2:22-25, and Acts 8:32-35 all depend on it.