Isaiah 53:3

The context

Isaiah 53 belongs to a series of servant poems, and this one begins at 52:13 with the servant's exaltation before turning to his appearance. Verse 3 describes how he was regarded: despised, rejected, one from whom people hid their faces. The poem then moves to the suffering it interprets as borne for others.

What it establishes

The verse establishes the social shape of the servant's suffering. Contempt is not incidental to the poem; it is the first thing said about him. He is not merely misunderstood or briefly unpopular but held in disregard, and the poem treats that disregard as part of his identity.

What it does not establish

It does not identify the servant. Whether the figure is Israel, a prophet, or someone else is disputed, and the Christian reading that finds Christ here is the New Testament's, not the verse's. The text gives a portrait; the identification is an argument made from outside it.

Short note, first pass, October 2026. Corrections welcome.

Cited in these answers

• Matthew quotes a prophecy that Jesus would be called a Nazarene (2:23), but no such prophecy exists in the Old Testament.
• Since God knows everything, He would have known how much suffering would come. Why didn't He stop the process before it started, and spare His creatures all that pain?

Part of Scripture, Opened — the exegetical layer behind every citation on this site. Scripture quotations are from the ESV.