John Calvin Commentary Isaiah 53:2

"For he grew up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him." — Isaiah 53:2 (ASV)

Yet he shall grow up before him as a twig. This verse refers to what was previously said: that Christ will at first have no magnificence or outward display among men, but that before God He will nevertheless be highly exalted and esteemed.

Therefore, we see that we must not judge the glory of Christ by human perspective, but must discern by faith what the Holy Scriptures teach us about Him. The phrase “before Him” is thus contrasted with human senses, which cannot comprehend that lofty greatness.

Almost the same metaphor was used by the Prophet (Isaiah 11:1) when he said, A branch shall spring out of the stock of Jesse. For the house of David was like a dry stock, in which no vigor and no comeliness was visible. For that reason, it is called there not a royal house, but “Jesse,” a name which had no fame. Only the Prophet adds here, In a desert land.

By this, he means that Christ's power to spring up will not be derived from the sap of the earth, as in trees, but contrary to the ordinary course of nature. Those who speculate in this passage about the Virgin Mary, supposing she is called a desert land because she conceived by the Holy Spirit and not by ordinary generation, are speaking beside the point, for the present subject is not the birth of Christ, but His whole reign.

He says that it will resemble a twig springing out of a dry soil, which looks as if it could never grow large. When we consider the whole method of establishing His kingdom—the means He employed, how weak its beginnings were, and how many enemies it faced—we will easily understand that all these things were fulfilled as foretold.

What sort of men were the Apostles, to subdue so many kings and nations by the sword of the word? Are they not justly compared to offshoots? Thus the Prophet shows how the kingdom of Christ is to be set up and established, so that we do not judge it by human conceptions.

He hath no form nor comeliness. This must be understood to relate not merely to the person of Christ—who was despised by the world and eventually condemned to a disgraceful death—but also to His whole kingdom.

In human eyes, His kingdom had no beauty, no comeliness, no splendor. In short, it had nothing in its outward appearance that could attract or captivate people's hearts to it.

Although Christ arose from the dead, the Jews always regarded Him as a person who had been crucified and disgraced. Consequently, they haughtily disdained Him.