Our Western instinct is to boil a story down to a concept. But when we do this with Isaiah 53:7, we lose the depth and complexity of the multilayered imagery. The Jewish authors of the New Testament realized this. Over and over they spoke of Christ as the “Lamb who was slain,” referring to the entire scene in Isaiah rather than reducing it to a theological label (see Acts 8:32; 1 Cor. 5:7; 1 Pet. 1:19; Rev. 5:6, 12).
