Isaiah 53:3-5 New English Translation
3 He was despised and rejected by people,[a]
one who experienced pain and was acquainted with illness;
people hid their faces from him;[b]
he was despised, and we considered him insignificant.[c]
4 But he lifted up our illnesses,
he carried our pain;[d]
even though we thought he was being punished,
attacked by God, and afflicted for something he had done.[e]
5 He was wounded because of[f] our rebellious deeds,
crushed because of our sins;
he endured punishment that made us well;[g]
because of his wounds we have been healed.[h]
Footnotes
- Isaiah 53:3 tn Heb “lacking of men.” If the genitive is taken as specifying (“lacking with respect to men”), then the idea is that he lacked company because he was rejected by people. Another option is to take the genitive as indicating genus or larger class (i.e., “one lacking among men”). In this case one could translate, “he was a transient” (cf. the use of חָדֵל [khadel] in Ps 39:5 HT [39:4 ET]).
- Isaiah 53:3 tn Heb “like a hiding of the face from him,” i.e., “like one before whom the face is hidden” (see BDB 712 s.v. מַסְתֵּר).
- Isaiah 53:3 sn The servant is likened to a seriously ill person who is shunned by others because of his horrible disease.
- Isaiah 53:4 sn Illness and pain stand by metonymy (or perhaps as metaphors) for sin and its effects, as vv. 11-12 make clear.
- Isaiah 53:4 tn The words “for something he had done” are supplied in the translation for clarification. The group now realizes he suffered because of his identification with them, not simply because he was a special target of divine anger.
- Isaiah 53:5 tn The preposition מִן (min) has a causal sense (translated “because of”) here and in the following clause.
- Isaiah 53:5 tn Heb “the punishment of our peace [was] on him.” שָׁלוֹם (shalom, “peace”) is here a genitive of result, i.e., “punishment that resulted in our peace.”
- Isaiah 53:5 sn Continuing to utilize the imagery of physical illness, the group acknowledges that the servant’s willingness to carry their illnesses (v. 4) resulted in their being healed. Healing is a metaphor for forgiveness here.
New English Translation (NET)
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