Isaiah 53:5
“But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought our peace was on him; and by his wounds we are healed.”
Where this sits
From the fourth Servant Song, written centuries before the crucifixion and quoted by the early church more than almost any other Old Testament passage.
Reflection
The pronouns do all the work in this verse, and they alternate with unusual regularity. He was pierced — our transgressions. He was crushed — our iniquities. The punishment — our peace — was on him. His wounds — we are healed.
Read it slowly and the pattern is a transfer, stated four times in four different ways. Every clause has two parties, and in every clause what belongs to one lands on the other.
That is the whole content of the verse. Isaiah does not explain the mechanism, and he does not soften what happens to the servant — pierced and crushed are not gentle verbs, and neither is a metaphor available in that period for anything except violence done to a body.
And the final phrase is the one the early church could not stop quoting. By his wounds we are healed. Healing arriving by way of somebody else's injury is not an intuitive idea. It is not how medicine works, or justice. The sentence only functions if the two parties are somehow joined, which is what the surrounding chapter spends its length establishing.
What is striking is the tense of the last clause. We are healed — completed, done. The wounds are described as historical; the healing is described as a present state. Isaiah writes both as though he is looking back at them.
- Theme:
- Healing
- Book:
- Isaiah