Isaiah 53:5

What Isaiah 53:5 means

The verse is built in four lines, and each one sets the servant's suffering against our need. He was wounded, we had transgressed. He was bruised, we had committed iniquity. The chastisement, meaning the punishment or discipline, was upon him, and it brought us peace. He received stripes, the marks of a whip, and we are healed.

The key idea is substitution: one suffers what others deserved. Verse 4 says onlookers thought he was stricken, smitten of God, as if he were being punished for his own sins. Verse 5 corrects them with the word But. He was suffering for ours. Verse 6 sums it up: the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Healed in this verse is first about being made whole from sin and its damage, set in a chapter about transgression and iniquity. Matthew 8:17 also connects the servant's work with Jesus healing the sick, quoting Isaiah 53:4. Christians differ on how much physical healing the verse promises today, but all read it as centred on forgiveness and peace with God.

The New Testament applies this passage to Jesus directly. Peter writes that Jesus bare our sins in his own body on the tree, by whose stripes ye were healed (1 Peter 2:24). The Gospels record that Pilate had Jesus scourged (John 19:1). Jewish interpreters have often read the servant as the people of Israel, or as a righteous figure, so the identity of the servant is a point where the two traditions part.

Background and context

The book carries the name of Isaiah the son of Amoz, who prophesied in Jerusalem in the 700s BC. Many scholars place chapters 40-66 later, during or after the exile in Babylon; others hold to Isaiah's authorship of the whole book. Either way, the passage was written centuries before Jesus.

Isaiah 53:5 is part of the fourth of the so-called Servant Songs, which runs from Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12. It opens with the servant exalted and very high, then tells of his rejection, suffering, death and burial, and ends with him dividing the spoil with the strong because he poured out his soul unto death.

Key verses

Cross references

• 1 Peter 2:24 Peter applies the verse to Jesus: by whose stripes ye were healed.Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.
• Acts 8:32-35 Philip explains Isaiah 53 to the Ethiopian eunuch and preaches Jesus from it.The place of the scripture which he read was this, He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth: In his humiliation his judgment was taken away: and who shall declare his generation? for his life is taken from the earth. And the eunuch answered Philip, and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man? Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus.
• Matthew 8:17 Matthew quotes Isaiah 53:4 when Jesus heals the sick.That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.
• John 19:1 Pilate took Jesus and scourged him.Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him.
• Romans 4:25 He was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification.Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.
• 2 Corinthians 5:21 He who knew no sin was made sin for us.For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
• Luke 22:37 Jesus says Isaiah 53:12, he was reckoned among the transgressors, must be fulfilled in him.For I say unto you, that this that is written must yet be accomplished in me, And he was reckoned among the transgressors: for the things concerning me have an end.