[Note: We often cite the description in Isaiah about the suffering servant. I wrote this piece to give us new appreciation and perhaps deeper clarity for this remarkable passage. Harold Shank]
The coroner wheeled the body from the morgue to the autopsy room. His assistant readied the instruments, adjusted the lights and turned on the recording device. They were especially interested in this post-mortem because of the paper work it had generated. The death of this man had attracted wide attention. Government officials and the local press were awaiting the report. There would certainly be a trial to find out who was responsible for his death.
That was the coroner”s job. What was the cause of death? Was this a murder? Was it an accident? Why did this man die at such a young age? Are there any clues that would help identify the murder weapon? Would the identification of the means of death or the weapon of death offer any indications of who might have done this deed?
When the assistant removed the sheet covering the body both men turned away. Both were at a loss to explain their actions. They had done this hundreds of times. They were not fresh out of medical school. The pathologist had dealt with all kinds of corpses–victims of war, crime, natural disaster. He had seen people who had been beaten, cut up and mangled. There seemed to be no end to the ways of dying or to the methods by which one person put another person to death.
To turn away from the body was so unusual, so un-characteristic, and so unprofessional. Yet with the sheet removed the coroner saw an unbelievable sight. Before him was the most hideous corpse he had ever seen. The body was more mutilated than they could image. The body was so disfigured that it hardly looked human. Only with difficulty could they recognize that this had been a man and not an animal of some sort. The damage done to the exterior was the most severe that the coroner had ever seen.
Both men recognized the need for professional distance from the case so they put aside their personal distaste for the appearance of the body and began the report. The body was that of a young adult male about 30 years of age in good health. He was of average height and weight. The pathologist paused to think of the best words to describe the body”s condition. There was nothing attractive about him. Nothing would draw you to this man. The disfigurement was total from head to toe.
The pathologist thought back to some of the affidavits he had read. Particularly interesting was the report from the man”s father. They had an unusual father-son relationship. The older man called the boy his servant. The doctor thought that was odd, but to each his own. But the father had written, “My servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.” Looking at the boy”s body he was amazed at how wrong the father had been. He had not acted wisely. He had not been raised. He had not been lifted up. He had not been highly exalted. If he had ever seen a case of a person who had failed at life, who had hit bottom, it was the remains of this man.
The father had also said, “He grew up like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground.” Apparently it was a reference to better times for the young man. “He must have grown quickly as a teenager,” the doctor thought, “perhaps he was mature for his age.” He mused to himself, “If only he had known what was going to happen fifteen years down the road.” The doctor had no information about other family members. That information was just not available at this time.
The pathologist also remembered the police report. At the scene of the crime there had been an unusual situation. Although the man died at a public place nobody seemed to be a witness. According to the police nobody would look at the man. People ignored him. They treated him as if he were nothing. People hid their faces from him. Others stood at a distance and shouted obscenities and jeers, despising his name, his family, his purpose and his life. The people rather than showing mercy and interest in the dead man”s situation had turned on him almost like a mob.
One bit of testimony in the police report came from an eye witness. The person said, “He is being punished by God. His suffering comes directly from heaven. This is divine retribution. God did this. God is responsible for this man”s death.” The coroner shook as he thought about those words. He had never seen a body so marred and mutilated. It was almost beyond human power to render a body so disfigured. Maybe God did have a role. He stopped in the middle of the thought and remembered that he was a scientist, not a theologian and went on with the examination.
Witnesses to the crime indicated that the man had offered no defense. That explained the severity of the wounds. He never raised a hand. He never resisted. He didn’t back off. They said with each blow he almost seemed to step forward. Other witnesses were haunted by his silence. He never said a word. He didn”t try to talk to his accusers. When thy insulted him, he did not insult them. When they swore at him, he remained silent. When thy ridiculed his father, when thy laughed at his dress, when thy mocked his life, when thy taunted him about his teachings, he didn”t reply at all.
Someone had said that when he died it was like a dumb animal being led to the slaughter house. The animal thinks its feeding time. It thinks there”s a drink of water inside. The animal goes willingly into the door of the slaughter house. But instead of food and water, a prong shocks it. Instead of comfort and nourishment a knife slits its throat. It offers no resistance. The animal enters as if it’s another carefree day out in the pasture.
This man was like that dumb animal. He went willingly. Did he think something good was in store for him? Did he just misunderstand? Was he not able to understand? Had he been tricked or deceived or set up? What got into this man that he so meekly met his death?
The pathologist could find no evidence of prior brain damage. There was no evidence of any mental malfunctions. The lab reports indicated no foreign substances in his blood stream. He was not under the influence of any drug or substance. Other reports indicated the deceased had been quite bright and articulate. He found wounds on the head, but nothing that would suggest that he was not in control of his final actions. The doctor knew he would have to appear in court and say that whatever happened that day, this man was thinking. He went willingly. He went of his own free will.
Yet he didn”t go just willingly. The pathologist thought about how he might word this concept. The wounds were so plentiful, that the normal human would have fought back or tried to escape. The natural defense mechanisms seemed absent. Did he override them by iron-will discipline? How could someone endure this kind of torture? Yet was not just the absence of resistance. The wounds were so severe that he almost pressed for more. The trauma was such that this man almost sought it out. Yet nobody could want this kind of beating.
The coroner thought back to a time when he had gone fishing. He caught a lure in his finger. It was buried beneath the skin. He had taken the pliers and pushed the hook on through the skin so that it came out a few millimeters from where it entered. Then he cut off the shaft and pulled the hook out. He knew that once a hook is embedded in the skin, you can”t pull it back you have to push it forward. As a physician he knew he had to push it out. It was painful, but he kept pushing until the point broke the skin again. He noticed that his forehead became sweaty just thinking about the incident.
This man before him had done the same thing. He had stepped up to the pain and then pushed himself to accept it. He bore agony. With each wound, the pain increased and yet as the pain increased his determination to stand there and take the next blow almost increased. When that blow landed, the agony only compelled him to face the next one with great courage. Nothing else could explain such mutilation.
As the examination proceeded the doctor began to list and categorize the wounds. Separating the different blows and cuts posed a tremendous task, but he was well-trained. The man had been hit. Other instruments had severed the skin. Every part of the body evidenced some trauma. After listing the wounds, he proceeded to determine which ones occurred prior to death, which ones caused death and which ones were administered after death. He concluded that nearly all the wounds occurred while he was still alive. One of two wounds caused the death. One, a cut in his side was made after he expired. That incision had been made by some sort of sword. He measured the width of the incision and the depth and determined it was made by a standard issue Roman soldier”s blade. The tip of the sword had entered a few centimeters below the rib cage and travelled upwards at a 65° angle into the heart cavity. The blade had done considerable internal damage rupturing several sacks of bodily liquid which seeped out through the incision. Soldiers often used this method to verify that criminals subjected to capital punishment had died. Sometimes it was that very wound which killed them. However, the wound was not the cause of this man”s death and had probably been performed to determine if the young man was indeed dead.
The use of an official weapon surprised the pathologist. He had heard that the kings were speechless when they heard about this man. News of his death startled the high first-ranking leaders. Even though they had not been properly briefed on the man”s business and death, they seemed to be quite aware of his mission. Word had spread to other countries and the reports were the same there. If the highest officials knew this man”s business and were startled by it, how did they have a part in his death? Who was responsible for his death? That was a matter for the courts to decide.
The pathologist finally identified two potentially fatal wounds. At one point the deceased had been grotesquely pierced. The large hole made in the body cavity caused extensive internal injury. Such a wound could have been made by a sword or a spear or any long slender object. Many times these kinds of wounds caused instant death because they attacked the body”s essential organs.
The second wound did not break the skin but was a crushing action that compressed the internal organs. Some massive object, perhaps a large person or another kind of weapon like a mace could have been used. Many of these weapons did break the skin, but there was no evidence that this wound was anything but a massive crushing action.
Although either the piercing or the crushing could have been the cause of death, there were two problems. First, the doctor could not determine which wound occurred first. Clearly either wound would have ended his life, in which case the other occurred after death. But the evidence indicated that both wounds, both the piercing and the crushing were made while the man still lived. Could they have occurred simultaneously? How could such massive injuries have been delivered at the same time? What kind of barbaric death did this man face? Scientifically and medically such a dual blow did not seem possible.
The doctor struggled to keep his composure. Although the initial appearance of the body had turned his head, the evidence he now uncovered bothered him more. Why with all his training did he seem to be at an impasse? What would the lawyer”s do when he said, both wounds were fatal. They could not have occurred at the same time according to any known means of death. He could hear it now, “Then the man died twice? Doctor, tell us, did he die, then come back to life and then receive the other wound?” Such cross examination would discredit his authority.
Yet the other problem was greater. He knew of no means of creating such wounds. The body was crushed from all sides at once. He even detected a crushing movement from within the body itself. Something had hit this man from the front, back and both sides, and then from one portion of his interior to another. It was as if a huge hand penetrated his body, squeezed his interior and then exited the body without doing any damage to the surrounding tissue. Such a wound was impossible. Scientifically and technologically there was no way such a crushing wound could be delivered. It was not administered by any current weapon in the governor’s arsenal. Even the underworld didn”t have the means to administer this crushing.
The piercing was another matter. The incision was not smooth or ragged. It was almost like hundreds and thousands of little teeth had taken a bite out of the man. He had never seen the body invaded in that way. Under magnification the jagged edges increased into the millions. There was not a smooth edge anywhere along the incision. No chemical could duplicate it. Even a laser guided by a complicated computer program could not duplicate the cut. This man died of strange means.
Normally this would end the autopsy, but in all fairness to the listener, this was not a normal autopsy. One man was examining the body of another. He was looking for the cause of death. He was qualified to make these judgments. He was fully aware of the reports associated with the fatality. The facts as I”ve reported them seem to be true extensions of what the actual autopsy report said. But there are some major differences between this autopsy and a normal one.
Actually the man I”ve been calling the pathologist was not a coroner at all. He did write the autopsy, but he went far beyond science. It wasn’t that he was unscientific; perhaps it would be better to say that he was nonscientific. Forensics could not answer the question he faced. If he had only been a medical doctor he would have written an inconclusive report. His investigation would have been incomplete. Cause of death: Two wounds one delivered after another both causing death. Instrument of death: Not known. An uproar would have followed. His credibility would have been tested. His job would have been at stake.
In his final report he said three other things that make this the most famous death report in human history. No death has been more studied, scrutinized, reviewed and discussed as this one. First, he quoted the victim”s father. The man”s father had said, “My servant will act wisely, he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.” Such a claim wild be easy to discredit. Just looking at the body would render any claim to exaltation invalid. All the opposition had to do was produce the body.
Years later the official police report said, His followers came at night and took the body. The police were trying to get people to think that his followers went to take the body away so that they can say he was exalted. So the police report said that the unarmed followers of this man came at night while the police slept and removed the body from the tomb. But nobody was ever arrested. The case was never investigated. Clever people got to thinking. Why would has followers steal the body? If they hid the body, thy surely couldn”t be telling people he was alive. Since they were telling people he was alive, if somebody else took it, all they had to do was bring the body down to a press conference and that would stamp out that story. The father”s claim that he was exalted took on added meaning in light of the missing body.
The doctor recalled something else the man”s father had said, “He will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.” To live again after death was amazing, but to predict it was even more astounding. The doctor thought of the mutilated body. He had never seen a man more dead. What kind of power could raise such a corpse back to life? How could life be poured back into such a broken vessel? Yet thousands of people would come to believe the very thing that the doctor found so incredible.
The second thing the doctor said was that he knew the cause of death. What was the cause of death? Which of the many injuries had led to the end of this man”s life? He said, “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.” It was not the normal cause and effect statement typical to science. He didn”t say that transgressions pierced him. He didn”t say iniquities crushed hm. Yet he maintained the cause of death was human sin.
He talked at length about human sin. In his first chapter he spoke about ingratitude, insincerity, infidelity, evil deeds, bribes, abuse of children and elderly. In his second chapter he referred to pride, haughtiness, arrogance, boasting, abandoning the weak. Another list appeared in chapter five: bloodshed, selfish greed, self-indulgence, cynical materialism, perversion of moral standards, intellectual pride and self-sufficiency, intemperance, lack of integrity. In the tenth chapter he wrote about making unjust laws, depriving the poor of their rights, robbing oppressed people, taking advantage of widows, robbing children. Then in chapter 48 he listed stubbornness, idolatry, rebellion, and treachery.
The doctor made it clear that all those evils caused the death of this man. No physical blow hurt him as much as the slap of human rebellion, the piercing of human treachery. The arrogance, injustice, selfishness and oppression crushed his insides. Greed, materialism, bribery and infidelity marred him so that he didn’t even look human. Each sin was like a fist pounding on his bruised body. Each act was like kicking him in side.
No one else would die because of human sin in exactly the same way this man died. No one else would die that way because after he died no one else would have to die because of sin.
The doctor’s third point stunned everybody. The punishment and death this man received was meant for the people who had done the sins. Each of us should have been beaten beyond recognition. We should have been crushed and pierced. But before death reached our body, he stepped in front and bore the attack. Each blow meant for us he absorbed. Each slap intended for our face, each crushing weight sent to our lives, each bruising blow aimed at our direction was absorbed in his body.
Because he stepped in and took our punishment, we find ourselves set free. We live un-bruised because he was bruised. We live without being crushed because he was crushed. We escape the piercing because he was pierced. Incredibly it means that the people who cheated old women, who abused young children, who ate while others starved, who oppressed while others suffered, none of that is held to our account. Each act wounded us differently. But his suffering healed us. We bear no scars because he bore the punishment.
This incredible story becomes all the more amazing when we realize that this doctor never saw the body. He never saw the man. He wrote this autopsy report eight hundred years before the events would happen. He saw with a clarity we seldom enjoy. He saw details we”d never imagine. He knew facts we”d never learn. He understood causes we would never have seen.
He knew that many of us would turn our heads away saying, “That”s too awful. God is punishing that man.” We walk by him. We despise hm. He saw it all. He also knew that some of us would come to see as he did. That the body bruised and broken was in payment for what we had done, by his acts we are set free. He took our place. He willingly gave his life so we could have ours. He offered forgiveness.
Isaiah of Jerusalem wrote of Jesus of Nazareth. His message written eight hundred years before the events speaks as crisply today two thousand years after the events as it has at any time in history. It”s not a message about death, but a call to life. Our doctor’s report begins where we shall end. Isaiah asks, “Who has believed our message? Who has seen the Lord”s hand in this?”
The question belongs to Isaiah. The answer belongs to you.