For small groups · 10 questions
Isaiah 53 Bible study questions
The suffering servant is despised, carries our pain, is wounded for our wrongs, and is silent like a lamb. Christians read it as a picture of Jesus.
Read the chapter aloud first. Then take the questions in order: what it says, what it means, what to do. About 45 minutes. Skip any question that doesn’t fit your group.
Start here
- Who is someone who took the blame or carried a load for you?
Look: what does it say?
- How do people see and treat the servant?Isaiah 53:2-3
- What does the servant carry, and for whom?Isaiah 53:4-6
- How does the servant respond when he is oppressed?Isaiah 53:7
Understand: what does it mean?
- The servant’s wounds bring healing to us. What does that mean?Isaiah 53:5
- We all went astray like sheep. What does that say about everyone in the room?Isaiah 53:6
- Where in the Gospels do you see this chapter happen?Isaiah 53:7-9,12
Live it: what will we do?
- What pain or sorrow would you like to hand to the one who carries it?Isaiah 53:4
- Where have you gone your own way lately?Isaiah 53:6
- The servant was silent before his accusers. When might you need to be silent instead of defending yourself?Isaiah 53:7
Close in prayer
Thank Jesus for carrying what you could not, and pray for anyone in pain.
Isaiah 53
Lumin Translation. It prints after the questions, so the group has the words in front of them.
1 Who has believed our report? To whom has the arm of Yahweh been revealed?
2 He came up before him like a sapling, like a root out of thirsty ground. He had no stately form or splendor to draw our gaze, no appearance that would make us delight in him.
3 He was despised and shunned by others, a man of many pains, who knew sickness well. Like someone people hide their faces from, he was despised, and we counted him as nothing.
4 Surely it was our sicknesses he bore and our pains he carried, yet we thought of him as stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced because of our transgressions, crushed because of our iniquities; the discipline that secured our peace was laid on him, and by his wounds healing has come to us.
6 Like sheep, all of us have strayed; we have each turned to our own road, and Yahweh has brought down on him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was treated harshly, and he submitted, yet he did not open his mouth. Like a lamb brought to be slaughtered, like a ewe that falls silent in front of her shearers, he did not open his mouth.
8 Through coercion and judgment he was taken away, and who of his generation gave it a thought? For he was cut off from the land of the living, struck down for my people’s transgression—the blow that was due to them.
9 His grave was assigned with the wicked, and with a rich man in his death, though he had done no violence and no deceit was in his mouth.
10 Yet Yahweh was pleased to crush him; he made him sick. When his life is made a guilt offering, he will see offspring and live long, and Yahweh’s good pleasure will prosper by his hand.
11 After the hard labor of his soul he will see, and he will be satisfied. Through his knowledge the righteous one, my servant, will justify the many, and it is he who will carry their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the many, and he will share the spoils with the mighty, because he emptied out his life to the point of death and was counted among the transgressors. Yet he himself bore the sin of many, and he interceded for the transgressors.
Lumin’s own translation, drafted with AI from the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, checked verse by verse against them, and approved by Lumin. Brackets mark verses not found in the earliest manuscripts.