Isaiah 50:6 - Smitten and Spit Upon

ACCORDING TO MATTHEW

In Matthew 26:67, we are told that before Jesus went to see Pilate, he stood before the High Priest and was condemned by him and the audience shouted to have Jesus executed. And (KJV):

“Then did they spit in his face, and buffeted him; and others smote him with the palms of their hands”

So, they spat at him, pounded him with their fists, or with the flat of their hands.

This is before he goes to Pilate and then gets whipped.

ACCORDING TO ISAIAH

The claim here is that the spitting and whacking fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah 50:6 which says:

“I offer my back to the floggers, and my cheeks to those who tore out my [facial] hair, I did not hide my face from insult and spittle.”

To say that the story in Matthew matches this one is to be creative in one’s interpretation that Matthew was talking about flogging and beard tearing. OK, we do have being spat at and insulted.

ANALYSIS

But the verse in Isaiah is not about a protagonist who is purely passive about this.

In the verses leading up to this we have:

               1-3: God saying that he had never abandoned him (contrary to Matthew 27:46)
               4-5: The protagonist declaring how he will trust God in all things even when…
               6: “I offer my back to the floggers…”
               7-10: God will help me out of all of this. Always trust Him.
              

But it is the final verse of this which is the clincher. It is the protagonist that anyone who has tried to harm him, that person is going to be killed in a painful way, by the protagonists’ own hand. As if to say “Yeah, I trust God, and I will expose myself to their abuses. But you know what? Their mockery will be short lived because I AM GOING TO KILL THEM, PAINFULLY, BY MY OWN HAND!” (verse 11).

CONCLUSION

No, this verse is not about a prophecy of being spat at. It’s a promise of retaliating with deadly force against any who have the temerity to do so.

Definitely not about Jesus.

Meme used:

 

Isaiah 53:5 - Wounded and Bruised

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.

  Meme used:

Isaiah 53:7 - Silent Before Accusers

ACCORDING TO MATTHEW

In Matthew 27:12, we are told that after Jesus was arrested and was brought eventually to Pilate. And was asked to defend himself, that Jesus remain silent. Fourteen verses later, Jesus is scourged, beaten, and eventually crucified, and in the midst of that cries out in complaint “My God, my God, why have you removed yourself from me?” (Based on the Aramaic).

We are told that this fulfilled the prophecy in Isaiah 53:7.

Let’s look at the verse with some explanations. I will highlight the verses so that it’s easy to scan with the eyes.

TRANSLATING ISAIAH 53:7

The verse says “נגש”, or “He had been oppressed”. This word is also used in Isaiah 14:4 when God promises to one day stop the oppression against the Jews.

“and had been abused”. The verb root is “ענה”, which is often an expression for torture, and when it refers to what a man does to a woman, it is translated as “raped”. Here, however, it’s torturous abuse.

“And yet, he would not open his mouth”. I am translating the vav-prefix here as “and yet”, since the context is “despite the pain, he didn’t open his mouth”, rather than the usual simple “and”, “or”, or “but”. This verse is also part of a song, with the second and fourth parts of the quatrain echoing one another to provide emphasis on this one point that seems to make it a praiseworthy act.

“like a ram lamb to the slaughter” – the noun “שה” is masculine and refers to a designated offering, a sheep or a goat, usually. And sine they were usually young for being slaughtered, I used “lamb”. Using “ram” is just to point out the gender in the verse which will then switch. “Slaughtered” can refer to a sacrifice or a meal (see Genesis 43:16), or massacring a person (Isaiah 34:2).

“he’d been brought”. The masculine form is carried forth. The type of bringing was typically one who is bound, which may be the imagery implied.

“like a ewe”. Here the gender switches while making a parallelism between “like a ram lamb” and “like a ewe”.

“before her shearers”. The use of the plural form is a nice expression when applying it to one who is before his enemies. The feminine form is perhaps being used to imply more passivity from the view of the ancient songwriter.

“who is dumbstruck”. While it literally translates to “she is dumbstruck”, I felt that “who” flows better. It’s a continuation of the feminine form.

“and yet, he would not open his mouth”. This is a parallelism to the second segment of this quatrain. And its relation to “dumbstruck” is possibly to provide even more emphasis.

COMPARING MATTHEW TO ISAIAH

As I mentioned at the beginning, Matthew has Jesus being silent, and then tortured, and then crying out his complaint.

In Isaiah, it’s the exact opposite: the protagonist has been tortured, and despite it being understandable if he complained, he instead kept silent and accepted his fate, like a lamb.

Since Isaiah is speaking about being silent in the midst of such torture, and seems to hold it as honorable, the text in Matthew has Jesus being silent when no such torture was happening, which is an easier thing to do.

CONCLUSION

Did the Matthew text fulfill the text in Isaiah?

No.

 Here's the meme

Psalm 35:11 - Accused by False Witnesses

In Matthew 26:59-63 we have a docile Jesus being led to the High Priest’s palace for judgement. He stood quietly while someone who was a “false witness” repeated a saying of Jesus before them, but slightly modified (whether intentionally or not, it’s unclear). When confronted with the words that Jesus should have known, Jesus remained silent.

The claim is that this man, being a false witness, fulfilled a “prophecy” of Psalm 35:11.

How can one say that “Jesus literally fulfilled it” when it was the chief priests who made it happen? That happens a lot more than it should by the people who make up the “Jesus literally fulfilled all of these prophecies” lists.

But was Psalm 35:11 talking about Jesus?

The prior 10 verses depict a very angry man who is sick and tired of being attacked by enemies who are intent upon hurting him. And he repeated asks God to kill them.

Here are the first 11 verses in a nutshell:

“Fight against them” (1). “Grab your shield” (2), “Draw your spear” (3), “Make them turn back” (4), “Make them as chaff before the wind, falling” (5), “Make their way dark” (6), “They are being treacherous” (7), “Let destruction come upon them” (8), “Then my soul will rejoice” (9), “I will be grateful to you” (10), “They publicly embarrass me by asking me questions of things that I do not know.” (11)

So, we have someone who is sick and tired of his enemies and wants them all dead.

Now, what about verse 11? Is it about someone lying, or understanding incorrectly, what the protagonist has said?

No.

It’s about someone being publicly embarrassed by being asked questions to which he doesn’t have the answer ("e.g., "Where is your God now?"). 

Let’s go through the checklist.

1. Jesus was angry at his oppressors? No.
2. Jesus prayed to God to kill his oppressors? No.
3. Jesus was asked a question that he couldn’t answer? No.

No, Jesus did not fulfill Psalm 35:11 by not answering a question that he had the ability to answer.

Here’s the meme:

 

 

Zechariah 13:7 - Forsaken by his Disciples

This is yet another example of seeing an event in the New Testament and looking for a verb that matches to make it a prophecy that was fulfilled.

In Mark 14:49-50, we have the soldiers arresting Jesus, who complains and then says that it must be done to fulfill scripture (whatever that means!) and all of the apostles ran away.

Here’s the KJV version:

Jesus: “I was daily with you in the temple teaching, and ye took me not: but the scriptures must be fulfilled.” And they all forsook him and fled.

The claim is that this fulfills Zechariah 13:7.

So, prior to 13:7, in verse 11:15, God gives over His flock to the foolish shepherd, which is a metaphor for the Jews being exiled or captured into another nation. Some say that this was Edom, and others have their own ideas. But then when it’s time to free them, God says in Zechariah 13:7:

“Sword! Rouse yourself against My shepherd, upon the man who I had dealings with””, says YHVH of Hosts. Strike down the shepherd and let the flock disperse, and I will return My hand upon the young ones.”

As we see, the “shepherd” is not the Messiah, but someone that was foolish, dominating His flock, and who, in the end, was commanded by God to be executed so that His people could flee. The weren’t dispersing because they were afraid that they would be next, but they were dispersing towards home, freedom.

There is no equivalence here. The problem is interpreting “shepherd” as always being a kindly metaphor, when the other side of that coin, he is the one who keeps them from leaving, which is how it is being used in this verse, which is why God wants him dead.

The apostles running away was not fulfilling a messianic prophecy. Jesus wasn’t killed and they weren’t running back to Israel after being kept away against their will.

It’s a forced narrative, like so many of the “Prophecies that Jesus literally fulfilled”.

Zechariah 11:13 - Price Given for Potter's Field.

 The PDF that I acquired this list from has the title:

 Old Testament Messianic Prophecies Literally Fulfilled by Jesus of Nazareth

Other web sites, also claim that these were prophecies that Jesus personally fulfilled.

So, what’s the deal with this one?

In Matthew 27:7, a couple of priests find the money that Judas has tossed into the Temple, wanting nothing to do with it. They then make the odd claim that, because it was blood money, it couldn’t be used by the Temple anymore, so the bought the field from the potter so that Gentiles can have a place to be buried.

And even though nobody in the story says that they were fulfilling a prophecy, there is a claim by many that this fulfils the prophecy in Zechariah 11:13.

Even though there are no priest mentioned, and there is no potter’s field purchased with the money.

Oh, and Jesus had nothing to do with this anyhow.

Rather than going into the details of this difficult verse which has never been accurately translated as far as I can tell, the fact is, for Jesus to “fulfil” this non-prophetic verse, he would have had to have been commanded by YHVH to take the money himself and toss it at the yotzer (which is usually translated as “potter”, but has other meanings, such as “the creator”, being a bit of wordplay by the Hebrew author.)

So, no. Jesus didn’t fulfil Zechariah 11:13 because he wasn’t given the 30 silvers (as the text calls it) by YHVH, nor did he take it to the Temple and toss it at the “yotzer” (The LXX translates that to be a smelting forge), and as for buying a field, that’s not in Zechariah either, but if it were, Jesus didn’t buy that either.

So, this is a failed attempt to create a fulfilled prophecy where there was no prophecy, and Jesus didn’t do it anyway, so what’s the point?

So, Jesus failed again.

Meme used:

Zechariah 11:13 - Money to be Thrown into God's House

There is a story in Matthew 27:5 where Judas, after having pocketed the money a chapter earlier, was so disgusted by what he had done, betraying another person for blood money, that he threw it into the Temple and left. 

This is supposedly the fulfilment of a prophecy in Zechariah 11:13.

But was it?

If one actually reads the text, one will see that:

In Zechariah 11:12-13, God, using a metaphor of getting paid 30 shekels, tells His holy prophet to take the precious pieces of silver that the people had just given to Him.

God then tells Zechariah (specifically!) to toss the purse of silver to "היוצר", which can refer to the artisan (a potter or, perhaps, a silversmith) who is working in the Temple. It is also a term for the creator of these object, and was possibly chosen for the wordplay of THE Creator (YHVH) tells Zechariah to toss the silver to "the creator". It's something worth considering. (See the Abarbanel on this idea).

This craftsman may be a specific craftsman, perhaps even the lead one since he is referred to as "היוצר" or THE potter. Or perhaps it is a pun for "THE creator". As to what the potter is supposed to do with the silver is unclear although the LXX version has "smelting furnace" (χωνευτήριον) instead of "potter", so perhaps he is to melt it if one holds that the LXX is correct in this area.

In any case, this interaction between God and His prophet is generally assumed to be a metaphor (e.g., God doesn’t need cash and 30 pieces of silver is too specific of a request), and there are many interpretations. But that’s not at issue here.

What is crucial here is that all of these actions had been handled by Zechariah himself.

There was nothing left that needed to be fulfilled in the future. Not by a messiah nor anyone else.

End of story.

CONCLUSION

A traitor to a messiah hundreds of years after Zechariah had already accomplished the silver tossing was not fulfilling anything.

The assertion by Christians that the scene in Matthew, where a traitor threw away his blood money in disgust, is equated to Zechariah taking silver that was precious and delivering it to the temple's craftsman, is absurd.

So, no, Jesus did not fulfil this. Neither did Judas.

Here was the meme used: