The fourth Servant Song reaches its center. The Servant grows up as a tender plant and a root out of dry ground — the hidden, unlikely shoot of Jesse from Isaiah 11, raised in obscurity without form or comeliness that men should desire him. The parallelism of verses 3-5 stacks rejection upon rejection: despised, rejected, sorrows, grief — then turns on the hinge of verse 4, where the hidden cause is named. He bears what was ours. The atonement is laid out in legal precision: wounded for transgressions, bruised for iniquities, the chastisement of peace upon him, stripes for healing. The Servant is silent before slaughter, cut off out of the land of the living, his grave appointed with the wicked and the rich. Yet it pleased Jehovah to bruise him — the offering for sin produces seed, prolonged days, and the pleasure of the Lord prospering in his hand. The chapter holds both the first-coming fulfillment in Christ and the ongoing pattern by which the righteous Servant justifies many through knowledge.
