It seems to be definite beyond doubt, then, that Jesus applied Isaiah 53 to himself and that he understood his death in the light of it as a sin-bearing death. As God’s ‘righteous servant’ he would be able to ‘justify many’, because he was going to ‘bear the sin of many’. This is the thrust of the whole chapter, not just that he would be despised and rejected, oppressed and afflicted, led like a lamb to the slaughter and cut off from the land of the living, but in particular that he would be pierced for our transgressions, that the Lord would lay on him the iniquity of us all, that he would
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