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Today's Devotional

Stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted—Isaiah 53:4 (ESV).

Stricken, smitten, and afflicted,

See him dying on the tree!

’Tis the Christ by man rejected!

Yes,my soul, ’tis he! ‘tis he!

’Tis the long expected prophet,

David’s son, yet David’s Lord ;

Proofs I see sufficient of it:

’Tis a true and faithful word.

 

Tell me, ye who hear him groaning,

Was there ever grief like his?

Friends thro’ fear his cause disowning,

Foes insulting his distress.

Many hands were raised to wound him,

None would interpose to save;

But the awful stroke that found him,

Was the stroke that justice gave.

 

Ye who think of sin but lightly,

Nor suppose the evil great;

Here may view its nature rightly,

Here its guilt may estimate.

Mark the sacrifice appointed

See who bears the awful load!

’Tis the Worm, the Lord’s Anointed,

Son of man, and Son of God.

About the author and the source

Hymns are often useful aids in worship and meditation. Thomas Kelly (1769–1855), an evangelical preacher in Dublin, arranged hymns by topics such as Christ’s nativity, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, etc. Today’s hymn was written to aid in contemplating the Crucifixion. Tradition attributes the Latin original to the Christ-centered monastic reformer, Bernard of Clairvaux (died 1153).