Isaiah 53:3
He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
Isaiah 53:3 (NKJV)
He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
Isaiah 53:3 (NIV)
He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Isaiah 53:3 (KJV)
He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care.
Isaiah 53:3 (NLT)
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Isaiah 53:3 (ESV)
He was despised and abandoned by men, a man of great pain and familiar with sickness; and like one from whom people hide their faces, He was despised, and we had no regard for Him.
Isaiah 53:3 (NASB)Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.lockman.org
He was despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and pain and acquainted with grief; and like One from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we did not appreciate His worth or esteem Him.
Isaiah 53:3 (AMP)Scripture quotations taken from the Amplified® Bible (AMP), Copyright © 2015 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.lockman.org
He was despised and rejected and forsaken by men, a Man of sorrows and pains, and acquainted with grief and sickness; and like One from Whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we did not appreciate His worth or have any esteem for Him.
Isaiah 53:3 (AMPC)Scripture quotations taken from the Amplified® Bible (AMPC), Copyright © 1954, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. was www.lockman.org
He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand. One look at him and people turned away. We looked down on him, thought he was scum.
Isaiah 53:3 (MSG)Scripture quotations from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.
New Covenant Meaning
A Man of Sorrows: Jesus Entered Human Suffering Completely
Isaiah 53:3 describes the Servant as ish makhoboth, a man of pains, and yodea kholi, one who knows sickness. These are not metaphors. They are descriptions of someone for whom suffering was not an abstraction. Jesus entered human existence at its most vulnerable and painful. He knew hunger, exhaustion, the grief of loss (John 11:35), the anguish of betrayal, and ultimately the physical torment of crucifixion. When you bring your suffering to Him, you are not bringing it to someone who observes suffering from a distance. You are bringing it to the one who knows it from the inside. Hebrews 4:15 makes this claim precisely because Isaiah 53:3 is true: He was in all points tempted and tried as we are.
Despised and Rejected: The One No One Expected
The Hebrew chadal ishim means the one from whom men withdraw, the one they turn away from. Jesus's earthly ministry fulfilled this in ways the original hearers of Isaiah could not have anticipated. He was rejected by His hometown (Luke 4:28-29), dismissed by the religious establishment, abandoned by His disciples, and executed as a criminal. The verse says "we hid our faces from Him, we did not esteem Him." This is a corporate confession: we did not recognize Him. We looked at the Servant and saw nothing that commended Him to us. But the verse does not end there. The rest of Isaiah 53 reveals that what looked like defeat was in fact the design of salvation.
Isaiah 53:3 is quoted and alluded to throughout the New Testament as fulfilled in Jesus. John 1:11 says "He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him." Mark 9:12 records Jesus saying the Son of Man "must suffer many things and be treated with contempt." The rejection and suffering of the Servant were not an accident. Isaiah 53:4 immediately clarifies: "Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." The despised, rejected, sorrow-acquainted Servant was carrying something on behalf of others. The suffering was substitutionary. He was not suffering because His life went wrong. He was suffering because yours needed to go right.
Application for Your Life
You Are Never Alone in Your Pain
Isaiah 53:3 means that whatever you are carrying, Jesus is not a stranger to it. He is yodea kholi: the one who knows sickness, pain, and grief from personal experience. When you feel despised, He knows what it is to be despised. When you feel rejected, He knows what it is to be rejected. When you feel alone in your suffering, you are with the one who bore suffering as the defining description of His earthly life. This is not a platitude. It is the testimony of the prophet about the actual lived experience of the Son of God on earth. Bring your pain to the Man of Sorrows. He will not be surprised by it.
The Rejected One Became Your Righteousness
2 Corinthians 5:21 says God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us. The despised, rejected, grief-acquainted One absorbed the full weight of human shame and sin so that you would not have to carry it. The rejection Isaiah 53:3 describes was not random cruelty. It was the means by which the Servant took what belonged to you and gave you what belonged to Him. You do not stand before God as one who deserves rejection. You stand before God in the righteousness of the one who was rejected on your behalf. That exchange is the heart of Isaiah 53.
Prayer Based on This Verse
Jesus, You were despised and rejected so that I would not be. You know grief from the inside. You know what it is to be looked down on, dismissed, and abandoned. I bring You my pain today, not as someone confessing to a distant God, but as someone coming to a Man of Sorrows who is fully acquainted with everything I am carrying. You bore it. You know it. You are with me in it. Thank You for not being a stranger to my suffering. In Your name. Amen.