What Does Isaiah 53:3 Mean?
He is despised and left off by men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. And as one hiding the face, we hid our faces from him. He was despised, and we did not reckon him.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.THE KEY
The wound here is doubled: pain is endured, then the sufferer is made invisible by those who turn their faces away.
THE MEANING
The one named here is despised and shut out, a man whose knowing includes pain from within. The verse keeps our hidden faces and our refusal to reckon him in the present tense: turning away does not make the suffering disappear.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that rejection proves a person has no worth: the one treated as negligible is still named in full, including the pain others avert their faces from.
THE ROOT
מַכְאֹבוֹת
makhʾovot
GROWS FROM
כאב
k-ʾ-b
To hurt or experience pain.
“a man of sorrows” in this verse is makhʾovot. The word for “sorrows” grows from the root for pain itself. The verse names suffering as something embodied and endured, not merely a sad feeling observed from a distance.
ALSO GROWS
kaʾav: To hurt or be in pain.
כָּאַב
The verb makes the sorrow active and felt: this is pain experienced, not an abstract label.
makhʾov: Pain or sorrow.
מַכְאוֹב
This singular form shares the root of the verse’s plural “sorrows,” joining pain and sorrow under one seed.
וִידוּעַ
wîdûaʿ
GROWS FROM
ידע
y-d-ʿ
To know, recognize, or perceive.
“acquainted with” in this verse is wîdûaʿ. “Acquainted” comes from the root ידע, to know or perceive; here the knowing is joined directly to sickness and pain. The verse presents suffering as known from within, not as information held at a distance.
ALSO GROWS
daʿat: Knowledge or knowing.
דַּעַת
This noun from the same root shows how the verb’s personal knowing opens into knowledge itself.
yodeaʿ: One who knows.
יוֹדֵעַ
This form keeps the knowing attached to a knower: the verse describes a person who knows pain through encounter.
חֲשַׁבְנֻהוּ
ḥăšabnûhû
GROWS FROM
חשב
ḥ-š-b
To think, reckon, count, or devise.
The closing phrase uses the root of reckoning: “we did not reckon him.” The refusal is more than a feeling of contempt; it is a judgment that leaves him out of the account of what matters.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāšav: To think, consider, or reckon.
חָשַׁב
This verb is the root action behind the verse’s admission that “we” did not count him.
maḥashavah: Thought, plan, or intention.
מַחֲשָׁבָה
This noun shows the root reaching into what is held in the mind; the verse exposes the judgment beneath the turned face.
THE PATTERN
Human rejection does not erase the presence or worth of the rejected one.
But I am a worm and not a man; the scorn of humankind, despised by the people.He came to his own, and his own did not take him in.Coming to him, as to a living stone, tested and set aside by men, but chosen by God and precious,THE THREAD
Surely he has borne our sicknesses, and carried our wounds. Yet we reckoned him struck, beaten by God, and bowed low.The paired words return as “our griefs” and “our sorrows,” carrying the same Hebrew roots: חֹלִי (ḥoli, sickness) and מַכְאֹבוֹת (makhʾovot, pains). The movement is from knowing pain to bearing it, while the text keeps naming the suffering that others hide their faces from.
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