No form, no face

According to the NASB, Isaiah 53 says that the Servant has “no stately form ( to’ad ) or majesty ( hadar ) that we should look upon Him, nor appearance ( mar’eh ) that we should desire ( chamad ) Him” (v. 2). Two of those three terms appeared at the end of Isaiah 52: “his appearance ( mar’eh ) was marred more than any man, and his form ( to’ad ) more than the sons of man” (v 14). The people find the Servant undesirable because of these disfigurements. They are not attracted but repelled.

But the language of 53:2 is actually starker than the NASB translation suggests. It is not merely that the Servant lacks the kind of form and majesty that would attract our gaze. The Hebrew literally says “not form to him . . . and not appearance (or visage).” It is as if the Servant is so marred as to become formless and faceless. He is formless, so “we” do not look on him; he is faceless so we do not desire him.

The Servant is an inversion of the tree of Eden. God created the tree of knowledge to be “sightly” ( mar’eh ) as well as “desirable” ( chamad ), and Even found it so when she gazed at it (Genesis 3:6, using chamad ). Though the Servant is a shoot from the dry ground ( tzyah ), he is not a tree with delightful and desirable fruit. More like a thorn bush.

The third term in 53:2 ( hadar ) takes us in a related direction. When God makes the wilderness ( tzyah ) bloom, Isaiah 35:2 promises, the glory of Lebanon and the hadar of Carmel will be given to it, which is the hadar of God. Isaiah 53 is the reverse: No glory, no excellence, even though something is growing from the desert.