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Ordinary Time · Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time · Year B

Isaiah 53:10-11

The Suffering and Glory of the Servant

The Man of Sorrows, William Dyce
The Man of Sorrows, William Dyce, 1860National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh
Dyce sets Christ not in Judea but on a Scottish moor, in winter, sitting alone on a rock. The geology is painted with a naturalist's accuracy.Isaiah 53 describes a man despised and rejected, and Dyce put him in a landscape his viewers would recognise as empty and cold.William DyceA Scottish painter, scholar and church musician who helped shape British art education and painted sacred subjects into real Scottish landscape.National Galleries of Scotland, EdinburghScotland's national collection, on the Mound between the Old and New Towns of Edinburgh.National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh

Overview & Insights

“He was pierced for our transgressions… and with his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5)

Like 48:20–21, the end of the previous section, 50:4–52:12, both suggested closure and questioned it. The comment about the impossibility of shalom which followed 48:20–21 led into the new twist to the servant motif in chapter 49. The point is less explicit at the end of 50:4–52:12, but the implication is again that not all the prophet’s agenda has been handled. Everything is in place for the restoration of the community to Jerusalem and for the restoration of the city itself—but what of the community’s morale and faith, its commitment and hope, and what of its servant calling that is now long-unmentioned? Once again there is a new twist to the servant motif, and once again its implications are worked out for the city (ch. 54) and the people (ch. 55).

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Commentary

Background & Word Study

The Church Fathers

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Why is Isaiah 53 the Good Friday reading?

The Suffering Servant, despised and rejected, bears the sin of many and is led like a lamb to the slaughter, the clearest Old Testament portrait of the cross.

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