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wounded, He is actually `cut off out of the land of the living' (Isa. 53:8), and finds His grave with the wicked (Isa.
53:9). He is seen as both dead and buried. Yet verse 10 says, `when Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin,
He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand'. Here
then is abundant life, life from the dead, resurrection life and glory.
Just as Isaiah 53 prophetically depicts the suffering, death and burial of the Saviour, following that burial with
words that can mean nothing else than newness of life, so another prophetic foreview of the cross (Psa. 22), does not
end before introducing the word of life, saying of Him Who for our sakes had been `forsaken' (Psa. 22:1):
`A seed shall serve Him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation' (Psa. 22:30).
This passage would be better rendered, with Perowne:
`A seed shall serve Him; it shall be told to the generation (to come) concerning the Lord', and should be read as
being similar in thought to Psalm 71:18; `Forsake me not; until I have shewed Thy strength unto this generation'.
Not only shall the Messiah have a seed but He, Himself, shall prolong His days. Under the law, the prolonging
of one's days was a special promise to those who kept the commandment of the Lord, as the apostle Paul notes
where he alludes to it as the `first commandment with promise' (Eph. 6:2; Exod. 20:12). According to Deuteronomy
4:26, the alternative to the prolongation of one's days is `to utterly perish', `to be utterly destroyed'. Throughout the
book of Deuteronomy the association of prolonged days with obedience is maintained (there are nine separate
references). One passage particularly noteworthy, is 25:15, where the keeping of a perfect and just weight and
measure is connected with this promise of life. We have learned, both by bitter experience and by the teaching of
the Scriptures, however, that `if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should
have been by the law' (Gal. 3:21). But the law was rendered `weak through the flesh' (Rom. 8:3) and so Isaiah 53
was the blessed answer of grace. The fact should not be lost sight of, that by choosing the expression, `He shall
prolong His days', Isaiah intentionally introduces the thought that here, at last is the righteous Servant of the Lord;
One Who has magnified the law; One in Whose heart and life that law was honoured and obeyed, even though the
Righteousness provided by the Gospel be infinitely beyond anything that `the law' could attain.
`It pleased the LORD to bruise Him' - yet He was the righteous One, an enigma solved only by the teaching of the
New Testament concerning Him Who, though He knew no sin, was made sin for us, that we might be made the
righteousness of God in Him. Not only shall He see His seed, not only shall He prolong His days, but something
even more wonderful than length of life is His for `the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand'. Let us allow
no tampering with the word `pleasure'. There are other Hebrew words that are rightly rendered `will', `purpose' and
`counsel', but the prophet has been inspired to use a word that in the Authorized Version of Isaiah alone is nine
times rendered `delight', four times `please', and seven times `pleasure'. At the opening of the second part of Isaiah,
Cyrus foreshadows the coming of Christ:
`That saith of Cyrus, He is My shepherd, and shall perform all My pleasure' (Isa. 44:28).
The restoration of Israel, includes the New Jerusalem, whose `gates' shall be of carbuncles, and whose `borders'
`pleasant stones', and in Isaiah 62:4 the word attains its highest fulfilment in this prophecy when the marriage of the
redeemed people is celebrated under the name Hephzi-bah, `My delight is in her', for this word chephets, is the very
word `pleasure' we are considering. This `pleasure', eventuating in blessing such as the world has not yet
experienced, is the direct outcome of the Saviour's sufferings. These blessings flow from the grace of atonement,
for it is the self-same `pleasure' of the Lord that will fall in judgment upon Babylon, and would, and must, fall upon
all whose sins are unremoved.
Consequently we are prepared for the lesson of Isaiah 53, and observe that this same word, `pleasure', of verse
10, has previously been used of the Saviour's sufferings in the same verse, where we read:
`Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him ... the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand'.
It shall prosper. Gesenius gives as the primary meaning of the word translated `to prosper', `to go over, or
through (as of a river)', and so we find the word used in a literal sense in such a passage as 2 Samuel 19:17, `they
went over Jordan', and in Joshua 1:8, we read, `Thou shalt make thy way prosperous'. The conquering King of
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