Back when I first read Isaiah 53, I think I was struck by the way it seemed to magically predict the suffering of Jesus, the Messiah. Now, that fascination with the magical has given way to a deeper sense of the miraculous. The boy who got goose bumps in the seventh grade Pilgrim Holiness Sunday School class in Richmond, Indiana, is the man who listened with wonder as one of his seminary professors explored the ways in which the Scriptures interact with each other, echoing back and forth across the canon like living voices. In studying the text of Handel's Messiah we find that the composer used a mosaic of Jewish Scriptures and Christian Scriptures in this kind of echo effect one speaking to the other and the other responding in the music of this great masterpiece. Some biblical scholars believe that the original suffering servant talked about in this passage was Jeremiah or Second Isaiah himself.
Most scholars focus instead on the theological lessons learned through that servant.
And that is a miracle I would not trade for any amount of magic. In so called primitive cultures we have a preliterate phenomena of a hunter gatherer society which does not always have a successful hunt, the crops do not always grow, things do not always work out. The people have the shamen and priest to help them understand what they must do to hedge their bets and assure more successful hunts and battles. They do a kind of crude morbid calculation. It will mean someone must die in order for us to be successful.