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In God’s eyes[a] he was like a tender green shoot, sprouting from a root in dry and sterile ground. But in our eyes there was no attractiveness at all, nothing to make us want him. We despised him and rejected him—a man of sorrows, acquainted with bitterest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way when he went by. He was despised, and we didn’t care.

Yet it was our grief he bore, our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, for his own sins!

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Footnotes

  1. Isaiah 53:2 In God’s eyes, literally, “Before him.”

He grew up before him like a tender shoot,(A)
    and like a root(B) out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance(C) that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering,(D) and familiar with pain.(E)
Like one from whom people hide(F) their faces
    he was despised,(G) and we held him in low esteem.

Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,(H)
yet we considered him punished by God,(I)
    stricken by him, and afflicted.(J)

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