ACCORDING
TO MATTHEW
In Matthew
27:26, we are told that Jesus was flogged and then sent off to eventually be
crucified and there is a claim that this was prophesied in Isaiah 53:5.
The verse
in question will vary, depending on which translation that you see. Some tweak
the verse in Isaiah to reflect the Jesus story in Matthew a lot better.
KJV: “But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our
iniquities, upon him was a chastisement that brought us peace, and with his
stripes, we are healed.
Words not
found in the Hebrew text: “wounded”, “for our”, “stripes”, “brought us”.
Some
versions, such as the NIV, NLT, NASB, and so forth will replace “wounded” with “pierced”,
which also isn’t in the Hebrew text. In fact, as I respond to many of the
claims which cite a piercing for other Tanach verses, I see this one word
misapplied almost more than any other.
Greek: “But he was weakened by abuse because of our sins, and he
became weakened because of our lawless acts. The discipline of our peace
was upon him. By his bruise we were healed.”
Now, the
Greek version doesn’t even try to identify the two types of harm, but simply
translates both as “weakened”, which isn’t bad, but also weakens the text. It
does reflect the Masoretic text (MT) by using “bruise” and using the singular
form. It also correctly reflects the MT by writing “abuse” in the singular.
The
important difference from the English is that it correctly used “because of”,
in reference to the sinful behavior. The punishment was not to cleanse away the
sins, as is part of the Christian ideology, by it was the sinful behavior, the
attacking and harming, which was causing the suffering. While I am not excited
by the interpretive translation overall, it is certainly much better than the
English ones.
The Dead
Sea Scroll (DSS) version has a few differences from the MT, which are
interesting. It pluralizes “bruise” and “wrongdoing” and inserts an “and” in a
couple of places to aid in the flow of the text:
“But he was harmed through our wrongdoings and emotionally
crushed through our wicked behaviors and his mussar was our peace
and with his bruises is was a healing for us.”
Now, before
I can explain about the Biblical Hebrew word “mussar”, let’s look at the
Biblical view of suffering altogether.
BELIEF
ABOUT SUFFERING
There are a
number of views on the idea of suffering, and many of these are based on
Leviticus 26:14-41, which lists all of the curses by God to those who don’t
follow every one of his commandments. And out of that, there’s a Talmudic
debate (Shabbat 56a) that says that if it were not for sinning, one would never
get sick or die, that both of those experiences are a result of sin. And the
application of God harming others who sin is often associated with the verb “מוסר”,
which I will explain below. It is worth noting that whenever someone in the
Tanach is killed by God, apologists will explain why he must have deserved it
even though the text is silent as to why, which is reflecting this view of God
giving mussar to the sinful, to turn them back. And it is from this view
that the Rabbis created a blessing that a religious Jew recites upon seeing a
deformed person or hearing news about a death, calling God “the true Judge”,
meaning, “He must have had His reasons, and the person deserved it.”
Keep in
mind that Isaiah was not written with chapter and verse numbers. While there
are indicators for where a new though begins, which is often, but not
necessarily, where a chapter will start (Isaiah 53 has such an indicator, even
in the DSS), verse breaks aren’t so easily noticed and Isaiah 53 has almost no
gaps, and we can clearly see that in the Great Isaiah Scroll from the Dead Sea
archives.
I bring
this up because in order to gain a better understanding of Isaiah 53:5 which
most translations begin with “BUT”, it’s important to look at the second half
of verse 4 which explains the use of the “BUT” (which is really a “ו” and
could also be “And”, “Or”, “Furthermore”, etc.
ISAIAH
53:4b
“We accounted that his having been infected, beaten, and abused, was from
God”
Prior to
this verse (verse 1), the name “YHVH” was used and, in context, referred to a
redeeming God. In this verse we see that the name “Elohim” is being used. Very
often, when this type of name change takes place, especially in songs, it is
referring to a more hardened nature of the Deity in His role as Divine Judge.
It isn’t perfectly clear who the “We” are at the beginning of this second
segment of verse 4, but whoever they are, they understood that if the person
had been sick and was suffering from inflicted pains, then all of these things
were from God, and so obviously the protagonist deserved it.
The style
of this segment makes it appear that this has been going on for some time, and
this “we” is the same “we” in the next verse, then it’s not just mussar
from God, but He had help.
CONTINUING
INTO ISAIAH 53:5a
And this is
where Isaiah 53:5 begins with a single letter as a continuation. I will
paraphrase for simplification, but will translate more exactly later on:
“But it wasn’t just God who harmed him, but we did that through our evil
actions. And it wasn’t just God who caused him emotional distress, but our
sinful actions against him did that.”
So, this
verse isn’t about “He will be tortured”, but, rather:
“The sinful protagonist was stricken by God. And God permitted the evil
people to commit their own sinful acts against the sick and hurting individual.
Those evil actions that will be repaid in verse 9 where it says “and He will
cast the evil doers and the wealthy into his grave with all of its dead ones…”.
WOUNDED
OR PIERCED?
Now it
should be noted that I never said that he had been “wounded” or “pierced”.
That’s because the word for “wounded” or “pierced” isn’t in the Hebrew or Greek
editions of this verse, even though “wounded” and “pierced” is in a number of
translations. The verb used in the Hebrew text is מחולל and this verb isn’t used elsewhere. There is a noun
with the same root “חלל”
used in Deuteronomy 21:1 where it speaks of the slain person discovered between
two communities and nobody knows how he got there or who did it.
So, it “could”
mean “assassinated” as Ibn Ezra holds or my choice, “grievous harm”. “Wounded” implies
an injury of no specific strength and is easily applied to generically. And “pierced”
is just pushing a verb into the verse to make it work with the Jesus story
CRUSHED
The Hebrew
word דכא
has two types of
meanings. “Crushed” as used in Psalm 143:3 “he has crushed my life” and Psalm
72:4 “may he crush the oppressor”. But another use of the term is as a synonym
for “contrite”, which works well here for the idea of one being punished for
his sins being emotionally crushed and feeling remorse. We see this in Isaiah
57:15 where it means “contrite and humble” and Psalm 90:3 “a contrite man turns”.
So, I chose
“emotionally crushed” out of preference because it seems to fit much better
than simply “crushed”.
As we move
past the first half of this verse, it’s important that I explain another
Biblical Hebrew word, “mussar”.
WHAT IS
MUSSAR
Mussar (מוסר) in the Tanach is the act of
providing corporal punishment in order to change someone’s undesirable (sinful)
behavior, to send them a message (מסר) to shape up. The first
appearance is in Deuteronomy 11:2 when Moses explains how God gave mussar
to those in Egypt with His mighty hand and outstretched arm by way of the
plagues that afflicted them. It appears 51 times in the Tanach, and more than
half of those in Proverbs. It carries a connotation of Torah-based ethical
instructions (as indicated in Leviticus 26:14-41) of having been violated.
There was
this belief by the ancient sages that if someone was suffering of, say, a
painful illness, that it was God’s mussar, and before praying for a
healing, they would ask the person if he was getting any benefit from the mussar,
and, if not, would he like it to go away?
We read a
view of this in Proverbs 3:11 where it says:
“Do not reject the mussar of YHVH, my son. Do not abhor His
affliction/punishment.
In other
words, accept the pain given to you by God and make changes to your life to
stop it. There are cases where mussar is applied by a father,
representing God, to his son. In Proverbs 13:24 we read:
[A father] who withholds his switch [for striking], hates his son. And
[a father] who loves his does mussar early (meaning, uses the switch to
strike).
Mussar is painful experiences inflicted to
cause one to change one’s ways, to become more observant and fearful of Divine
(or parental) retribution, in order to turn away from sin.
Other equally
valid translations are: Corrective punishment, disciplinary action, moral
correction, behavioral correction, restorative punishment.
It’s clear
from Isaiah 53:4-5, that the protagonist is not only suffering from God, but by
the will of God, as a form of mussar to correct his behavior. The word
is in the Hebrew text, but what it implies is watered down with terms like “chastisement”
and “disciplined” which doesn’t really cry out “because God decreed that he
deserved it” like “mussar” does.
PARALLELISMS
The last
segment is a difficult read because it doesn’t really flow well.
That’s
because it is listing two pairs of opposites to end the verse to give the
differences between the protagonist and his God-approved abusers. You have mussar
opposing shalom, and bruise[s] (where one needs a healing) as compared
to “a healing for us”. It’s a poetic use that also includes a repetition of the
sound “nu” in each segment.
There are
those who want to interpret this part of the song as cause and effect, as in “the
painful chastisement of the sinner causes peace, and his bruise[s] or
contusion[s] causes a healing. While forced, I have seen this appear a lot by
both Christian and Jewish commentators. It pushes meaning into the song, which
ignores that it’s a song.
CONCLUSION
The person suffering
is not an innocent, but has sinned and God has caused his past illnesses and
pains while He permits the evil-doers to add to that with their own application
of harming.
Isaiah 53:5
is not talking about Jesus, unless you want to referred to a verse in Matthew
where Jesus is purging his own personal sins. And the wording indicates that
this had been going on for more than a single day, not that it was over a few
hours.
Calling Isaiah
53:5 a description of the trial and whipping of Jesus is a forced interpretation
with a lot of bad translations.
To finish,
here’s a nice and honest translation of Isaiah 53:4b-5
“We accounted that his having been infected, beaten, and abused, was from
God.
And he was grievously
harmed by our wrongdoing[s] against him,
emotionally crushed from our wicked behaviors against him,
his punishment from God (mussar), our peace,
and with his bruise[s], for us a healing.
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