Isaiah 53:3 vs. “Man of Sorrows”

Reawaken Hymns · checked 2026-08-01

What we checked

PassageIsaiah 53:3 chapter ↗ 2 more proofs on Isaiah 53 →

Translation shownKJV (public domain) · fixed (the finding depends on this wording)

Presents itself asinspired-by

Categorynot a quote

AlbumHymns of the Son (Reawaken Hymns) · 2022

Words addressed tonot addressed to God (sung about Him)

Teaching or experienceteaching (states truths)

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria not graded: this song never presents its words as scripture

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

The opening phrase is Isaiah 53:3 in the King James wording, and the hymn treats it as shocking, which is what the verse's own context makes it
Keeps the confession on the right side: the singer stands with the guilty, exactly where the verse's "we" stands
The stanzas move from contempt through substitution to exaltation, the same arc the servant passage runs from 53:3 back to 52:13 and on to 53:12
Its own first printings point at this verse: Gospel Hymns No. 2 (1876) set the heading "Isaiah 53:3" over the hymn
The arrangement checked here keeps all five of Bliss's stanzas and his melody, so what gets memorized is the 1875 hymn rather than an abridgment

⚠ Cautions

In the verse the phrase is a report, not a name. The first stanza's marvel depends on knowing that, and heard cold, "man of sorrows" can register as one more honorific instead of an insult the text records
No translation is named in the song. The phrase follows the King James; the WEB reads "a man of suffering", so the title itself is one translation's wording
The final stanza's returning King looks past Isaiah 53 to the New Testament's hope. Fair for a hymn, but not a line to attribute to this chapter
Hymnals have altered the wording over the years; Hymnary documents a rewritten third stanza in one hymnal, so the text your congregation sings may not be Bliss's

Verse Proof

Isaiah 53:3

The text in KJV (public domain)

“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.”

Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12 is one unit about the LORD's servant, and it opens with God announcing that the servant will be exalted and extolled and very high. Verse 3 is spoken by a group looking back at how they treated him. The phrase "a man of sorrows" sits inside their report, between "despised and rejected" and "we esteemed him not", said of someone they hid their faces from. It is not a title anyone gives him in honor. It is a description of what his life looked like to people who wanted no part of it. The unit ends where it began, with the servant given a portion with the great in 53:12.

What the song says, described not quoted

Philip Bliss's 1875 hymn, sung here in Nathan Drake's arrangement, which keeps Bliss's melody and all five stanzas. The first stanza takes the phrase "man of sorrows" and marvels that this, of all things, is a name carried by the Son of God, who came to recover people wrecked by sin. The middle stanzas confess from the guilty side: the singer owns the sin, and Christ stands where the guilty belong, bearing scorn and making the atonement the helpless could not. The fourth stanza moves from the cross and Christ's final cry to his exaltation in heaven, and the last looks ahead to his return as King. Every stanza lands on the same one-line refrain of praise, which is the hymn's other name. No verse is cited in the sung text and nothing is framed as a quotation.

What shifted is the phrase's job. In the King James of Isaiah 53:3, "a man of sorrows" is one item in a report of contempt. The hymn lifts those three words and holds them up as a name worth marveling at, then says who bears it, the Son of God, which the verse does not say. It also answers every scene with a refrain of praise the verse does not contain. What it keeps is the direction of the whole passage: the unit opens with the servant's exaltation announced in 52:13 and closes with his portion among the great in 53:12, so the movement from despised to acclaimed is the chapter's own. One more thing is worth naming: "man of sorrows" is the King James phrasing, kept by the BSB, while the WEB reads "a man of suffering". The name the hymn crowns belongs to a translation's wording.

· Not a quote: The hymn never says it is quoting. It lifts the King James phrase "man of sorrows" from Isaiah 53:3. There the words are a description of contempt rather than a name. The hymn sings them as a title, a reversal the passage itself performs in 52:13 and 53:12.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

In the verse, "man of sorrows" is how they saw the man they despised. The hymn crowns the phrase, and the chapter crowned him first.

Why it matters

A phrase can keep its words and change its job. In the verse, "man of sorrows" is what the servant looked like to people who hid their faces. In the hymn it is a crown. A turn like that is either the passage's own logic or a misreading, and the only way to tell is to check whether the text turns too. Here it does: the same unit that records the contempt opens and closes with the servant exalted. The hymn is reading the chapter's shape, not decorating it.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song fixes your attention on God.

The dwelling tag is God, and it is not close. Christ is the subject of every stanza, and the singer appears only where the verse's speakers appear, on the guilty side of the substitution. What looping this plants is a name with its history attached: the phrase repeated is one the text records as contempt, sung as praise because of what the despised one did and where he now is. That is a rare thing for repetition to drill, the habit of praising at the exact point of the shame. The refrain returns after every scene, the scorn, the cross, the exaltation, the return, so what memory keeps is that no part of the story sits outside the praise. Sung often, it works against the posture verse 3 confesses, the hidden face and the withheld esteem.

Helpful comparison

Two documentation trails are worth setting side by side, because this site's adjacent entry covers the next two verses. Stuart Townend's own page for "How Deep the Father's Love for Us" lists twelve scripture references and Isaiah 53 is not among them; the hymn reaches this passage through texts that quote it. Bliss's hymn runs the other way: its 1876 printing in Gospel Hymns No. 2 carries "Isaiah 53:3" as a heading, so a reader could work backwards from the hymnal page to the verse. Neither trail is a fault. Only one of them can be followed home.

The backstory, since it is widely retold: Bliss wrote both words and tune in 1875, and he and his wife Lucy died on 29 December 1876 when a bridge collapsed under their train at Ashtabula, Ohio. He was reported to have escaped and gone back into the wreck for her, and neither body was recovered. Ira Sankey recalled this as the last hymn he heard Bliss sing. None of that is evidence about the text, which is why it sits down here and not in the verdict.

Sources

Reawaken Hymns — Man of Sorrows, official lyric video · (the recording checked for this proof; oEmbed author_name "Reawaken Hymns"; the description credits words and music to Philip P. Bliss, 1875, arranged and recorded by Nathan Drake, and links the album)
Reawaken Hymns — Man of Sorrows chords and resources · (Bliss, 1875; the arrangement's five stanzas, from the opening line to the returning King; CCLI 7197297)
Spotify — Hymns of the Son (Reawaken Hymns), Nathan Drake · (the album, released 2022, with Man of Sorrows as track 1)
Hymnology Archive — Man of sorrows, what a name · (first published in International Lesson Monthly, October 1875; printed in Gospel Hymns No. 2, 1876, under the heading "Isaiah 53:3"; Bliss's tune; Sankey's recollection of the last time he heard Bliss sing it)
Hymnary.org — "Man of Sorrows," What a Name · (five stanzas with refrain; author and year; scripture references including Isaiah 53:3-6; the Psalter Hymnal's altered third stanza)
The Gospel Coalition — The Story Behind the Hymn "Man of Sorrows" · (Bliss wrote both words and tune in 1875; the Ashtabula bridge collapse of 29 December 1876; his return into the wreckage for Lucy; the bodies never recovered)

Corrections

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