EDIT, February 2011: I've reversed my contention that Hebrew text is missing from Isaiah 53. By Isaiah's Hebrew meter pattern, you can prove that no text is missing. You can also prove it, I just learned, by examining the interplay between Psalm 90 and Isaiah 53, Daniel 9's prayer and of all things, Ephesians 1:3-14's Greek! So much of what follows in this webpage is obsolete, a a relic showing where things 'were'. The videos, however, are au courant, and I'm still documenting by video the astonishing meter ties in Daniel 9 and Ephesians, live Bible text onscreen: for unless one sees it live, it isn't believable. It's the most sophisticated and AUDITABLE accounting meter imaginable. Shocks me still, here as I edit this page.
You might already know that Isaiah 53 is a hotly-contested passage. Some of the biggest 'scholar' names in Christendom have 'decided' that there was more than one 'Isaiah', and also that Bible Hebrew has no meter. For over 100 years respectable people have also claimed that Isaiah 53 is missing some words (i.e., the Isaiah scroll). They are all proven WRONG on all three counts, SIMPLY BY COUNTING AND EXAMINING THE METER! Even a five-year old can count syllables. Guess this wasn't done! So of course, you have to see it yourself, vet it yourself, before you can justify believing it. Ergo the videos below, provide that live evidence in mss Bible text you have and can test (e.g., BHS or Leningrad). No words are changed from the standard text, and no funny assumptions about syllables are needed, either. Video text comes from BibleWorks 5, directly pasted from its WTT (which was the BHS text in that version). So you can easily verify the results.
It took seven years (heh) for me to get to this politically-incorrect (!) reversal. So, the videos below on Hypothesis #4, walk you through how I got here, beginning with an overview, followed by the first 2 Hypotheses, which still assumed Hebrew text was missing; Hypothesis #3 couldn't balance. Hypothesis#4 videos turned out to be correct. The video collection walks you through all that, and then concludes with a panoramic review of Isaiah's meter pairing (lol play on Hupostatic Union throughout!), and how you can see the predictive quality as a calendar. (Suggest you also get the Isaiah series from my pastor, especially Lessons 25-29, which cover Isaiah 53. This webpage was created before I heard those lessons, and I'm not allowed to post his copyrighted audio.)
The videos on Psalm 90's (and Daniel 9's) Hebrew meter and keywords, meaning, and how Isaiah 53 plays off them, follow in the third playlist below. You might want to start there first, as it's the most current material -- and is yet unfinished, as I'm still documenting Daniel 9. Word docs showing the mss and metered translations are provided in each video of that playlist for Psalm 90, Isaiah 53, Daniel 9, and Ephesians, so you can test the meter yourself.
Sadly, only the first 50 videos (there are over 70) will play off-Youtube. So with the 50th video you'll have to view the rest IN Youtube.
Now, one still needs the amalgamated meaning in the LXX and Hebrew in translations, so the exegesis and translations within this webpage material are still valid. However, I revised the poetic translation to the now-revised meter shown in Hypothesis #4. You'll see that, at the end of the second playlist below (last three videos of it go through the metered translation, which you can download).
The videos themselves are on Youtube with relevant updated material not yet listed in this webpage. Video descriptions contain important links. Worksheet on the historical importance of Isaiah 53's meter: click here.
Also click on a video, to put it in the main video window; then, click in that window to get Youtube to open a new window on that video directly. Thus you should be able to access the many links to the Word docs. If you have a problem, email me or contact me in Youtube.
This first playlist is merely about exegesis:
This one covers the Meter Hypotheses:
Here is the Psalm 90 playlist, which is the most comprehensive coverage of the meter ties within all four passages (Psalm 90, Isaiah 53, Daniel 9, and Ephesians 1:3-14, still in progress):
The rest of this webpage contains the old material, and is generally not updated for the videos above. Its import is interpretational, assessing Isaiah's style and the doctrinal value of what Chapter 53 means. It is mostly what you'd expect, with some minor wrinkles about Isaiah's rhetorical style which perhaps scholars know -- but I can't find them notice.
Else, there's not much different from the 'standard' interpretation. More color and nuance, which indeed affects how you read the passage, but no major doctrinal shifts -- excepting the awesome meter, of course.
To skip the Preface and go straight to the WORKING translation, Click Here. To instead go straight to the EXPANDED translation with exegetical notes, click here. To go instead to the POETIC translation which apes Isaiah's meter in the Hebrew, Click Here. The Poetic Translation is best viewed full-screen; it's designed to show wholly, in that format. Of the three translations, I think the poetic one is the most 'loyal' to what God caused Isaiah to say in his own style. The prose translations below are not exactly the same, of course; they were done two years prior to the poetic translation. They do show more meaning in the text than you can find in published translations, and help one see the wordplay Isaiah actually uses. Alas, prose versions cannot reflect Isaiah's metered style of writing, which greatly matters: for you get DOCTRINE TAUGHT from the very meter he uses. So the poetic translation, apes his meter. ALL translations here will be revised/refined as time passes. There is no substitute for the original-language texts, so every translation is at best, an approximation.
Reading tip: if you want easy side-by-side comparison with only the original-language Hebrew and Greek texts of Isa52:13-54:1 which also shows the meter in the original Hebrew and Greek, click here for ISA53.RTF, a Word.doc. For that document you'll have to download the BibleWorks fonts: you can do that in the first link of that rtf doc. The Hypotheses videos use that meter for the Hebrew, but also show alternate metering per Hypothesis. Another video collection which goes verse by verse, is in the Expanded Translation section.
Site importance: Isaiah 53 tells us how God Makes Sons From His Son; so this is His Plan for each of our lives; salvation, and then Living With Him Forever. Which means, we have to be Made Like Him On The Inside, in our souls. This Plan is a Marriage Contract provision made in Eternity Past, per Eph1. That Contract is sourced in Isa53's clauses, which constitute the most concentrated explanation in the Bible. So, to designate the Bridal Contractual Nature, this website's background uses the "Thinking" series color scheme of Bridal Legal-Pink Parchment. [If you don't like it, just change "background" in the BODY statement of the sourcecode to "bckground", and it will disappear.] A shorter version of this page is in the "Isa53:10-12" link at pagetop (Isa53.htm), which only covers the heart of the contract. But to interpret it, you need the whole context to see the rhetorical styles Isaiah uses throughout the whole chapter (which really starts in 52:13). Hence this webpage. The two pages might not have the exact same translations; God's Word is multi-storied, like a skyscraper, so it's good to vary translations to see nuances you'd otherwise miss. [This Genius is consistent in Isaiah. So I don't buy for five seconds the idea that there is a mix of authors, at least for any Messiah passages (and there are many throughout the book), i.e., the so-called 2nd and 3rd Isaiah. Possibly post-mortem, some other authors wrote down what ISAIAH taught, as all the Gospel writers tell us about what Christ said and did. But God the Holy Spirit knows what Isaiah said; same as Moses was given to know what Abram said, etc. So it's STILL Isaiah, really.]
It's worth more than all the kingdoms of the world, to see this Chapter. No wonder the Lord turned Satan's 3rd Temptation down: sorry, Charlie, nuthin' compares!
Upshot: God offers you a Contract: to exchange your (thinking, true soul) nature just as you are.. for His Own Nature. Which is a conversion from human nature, DNA+your 'soul' DNA, to His Divine DNA, which is Pure Thought: the Thought which paid for our sins on the Cross, per Isa53:10-12. So Isaiah uses this biological metaphor (expressed without our modern vocabulary), to explain what's really going on, what salvation is really about.
So what happened to Him, is to happen to us.
Isaiah deftly explains this problem in Isaiah53:2c, by the use of the Hebrew word, "hadar". The term means man's glory, man's achievements -- man's, not God's. Christ didn't conform to hadar, and we despised Him for it. We still do. We want God to make us important in our own eyes, not in HIS Own Eyes. It's that sad, that simple, and that's why He keeps on being crucified by us even now, Heb6:1-6. So we miss out on being made True Glory, from Him Who is Glory.. preferring like Esau, some red lentil stew ("pottage" in English Bibles), instead. No wonder our works are so full of wind, reaping the tornado.
Which, sooner or later, one learns the hard way. We are slaves to the body, and it is our 'god', tyrannizing us. We won't recognize that. We will do just about anything to make the body feel good (however we subjectively define the term). So we can and do invent any manner of rationalizations for what we think and do, always subservient to the body. So our souls, atrophy. We become progressively animalistic (i.e., demanding) as we age, reverting to a spoiled version of a child. Fancying ourselves all the while, holy. So when all crashes down during some adversity, or when faced with illness or death, well.. then we've an opportunity to see how futile it is, to live in this world's hadar. Sic transit gloria mundi. At which point, we hopefully recognize our addiction, and grab the liferaft of John 3:16, or Romans 8:4, thus turn and get healed...
Frankly, the angels had essentially the same Grow-up-in-God plan we do; their particulars of course differ quite a lot; so we who started out lower, end up higher than the angels, if we complete the training/surgery of this transformation in Christ, which is to say, in His Thinking. Ergo, the NT is devoted to explaining Isaiah 53, and all the OT runs through it as well: for this was an Eternity Past Contract between Father and Son ('heart' of contract is in Isa53:10-11). So, all the Bible is about the Due Diligence Disclosure And Implementation Of That Contract, to get His Nature (Son's, "Seed") into us. Each 'dot' of that Nature, deliberately made subject to our consent, since it was First Subject To His Own Consent. Love never coerces.
But He won't do that, apart from your ongoing consent. First consent, John 3:16, which sets up the Compatible Structure. After that, it's all Romans 8, the Ongoing Process Of DDNA Conversion, with a 24/7 need for consent. (Paul looks at Isa53 in everything he writes, and thus likens this ongoing process to a pregnancy, in the Greek of Romans 8, with crescendoes about it after that, in Romans 9-12.) So when you finish being functionally built per Romans 8:4 (Greek), when your thinking has been sufficiently transmuted as per Romans 12:1-3 (Greek), then you are "Pleroma", Eph3:15-19: built and living at God's Level, fully. Notice this goal is internal, not external. Notice that since it requires the Holy Spirit's power to make God's Thinking FUNCTION in you, it's God-quality, "treasure in earthen vessels". That's a kind of hupostasis, union of opposites. So indeed the thoughts in you are Divine, even though you yourself, are not only a mere human, but quite imperfect. Of course, the imperfection is shed at death, but the finity remains. So does, the ACCUMULATED THINKING you learned down here. It's this thinking alone, which you take with you when you die. Something your soul, becomes.
So What Kind Of Person Due To What Kind Of Thinking.. do you forever become?
For it's your soul, not your body, which is saved and going to heaven. That's the goal, to make your soul's thinking fully like Christ's; for that's what happened TO Christ via the Holy Spirit; so that's His Legacy to each human (main theme of Book of Hebrews, Ephesians). Your choice, what of that offer, you accept. God's Choice, how He does it. His Power, your choice. Just as it was, for Christ Himself.
We all know that people become what they think. The progressively bitter-thinking person becomes a bitterness to be around. The progressively-happy person becomes a happiness to be around. Thinking of any kind literally transforms the soul by means of progressive, repetitive, association with life. And let's face it, the childhood dreams we all had, turn out to be just that: childish, not at all like reality. So it's very easy to become bitter, as one ages. The soul becomes infused with bitter thinking.. so the soul ITSELF becomes bitter. By the end, even the simple pleasures in life are bitter. For as the soul thinks, so the person is, Prov23:7.
Christ is the happiest Person in the universe. So clearly learning His Thinking makes one progressively happier. So happy, that even being made sin was a happiness to Him. How is that possible? But surely it must be so, else why would Father do that to His Own Son? Why would God, Who doesn't have to put up with anything, WANT to even create -- knowing, as He surely has always known, the horror of it all? Something He THINKS (i.e., knows) must JUSTIFY that, and it wouldn't justify creating -- unless HAPPINESS comes from it. God can make Happiness come from anything. Yet never gerrymanders truth. So there MUST be something about the Truth, which JUSTIFIES God ordaining free creation. So if we learn that Truth, we become progressively happy, even as He is, Phili2:5-10, 2Pet3:18, Heb12:1-2. That's why Isaiah 53's contract is so helpful: it gives you the entire story in but 16 verses.
God could 'make' Truth be whatever He wanted, obviously -- else He wouldn't be omnipotent. For if we puny humans can make our own souls via our own thinking -- how much more, God? So, then: the Truth He chooses to ordain must be free and happy, for Him to elect to create as He does. How is this possible?
It's the OT which is more complicated, because there are two versions of inspired OT writ: the first is in Hebrew (well, and other languages, but mostly Hebrew), and is known as the "Masoretic" text or "BHS" (which means one of the Massoreh, which is preserved in Stuttgart, Germany). Three copies of the Masoretic text survive (if I recall correctly), but the "BHS" is the one most respected for its fealty. However, the Masoretic texts date back to medieval times, and we have proof from an earlier set of copies that the Masoretic text is faulty (copying errors). Not to worry, God knew all that in advance, and in fact provided what's called the "Septuagint" (aka "LXX", the Roman numeral for the same word, meaning "seventy") so we can compare to the BHS text and thus find what's faulty in it. The LXX was used by Christ and the NT writers, far more often than whatever Hebrew OT they had (the BHS of course didn't exist during the first century, but rather it's some version of what did exist back then).
Because the original-language text of the Massoreh is the same as the original languages initially written by OT authors, scholars tend to regard the BHS text as more legitimate, and all your translated Bibles (except Brenton's) do NOT use the LXX as their basis for translation. That's a real pity, for where the BHS is wrong, you need the LXX to find what is wrong. Scribes are hard-working, but who is perfect? Only God. So we should be looking at what GOD provided. But, we don't. That's a fatal mistake, if you want to understand Isaiah 53.
Which three verses, you 'll see here yet again. Larger page on just those three verses, is in the pagetop link, "Isa53:10-12". Important: the translation here of those three verses is often very different, and purposely so. Idea is to show how so much meaning is in the original-language texts, you can't but lose significant amounts of it, when you translate. So any translation suffers from having too little meaning, versus the inspired text. Hence translations can differ, and quite a lot; sometimes the difference is due to sheer sloppiness in the translating, but often it's because you cannot convey all the meaning in any translation. Especially, the deliberately-fuzzy English, since that language was developed for use in law, diplomacy and commerce (where fuzziness is vital to survival, so you always have interpretative 'wiggle room'). [Law, diplomacy, commerce all are based on precision, but the language used needs to be fuzzy, so that all possible uses of what usually amount to obligations can be covered, yet negotiated ad hoc. English language is great for that; but lousy, for learning your Lord's communication.]
Isaiah 52:13ff is in the context of a deeply marital warning and promise-of-blessing to Israel, as are most of Isaiah's 'exhortations'. The words used are graphic, intimate, and even in this modern internetting age, I can't put in writing all the marital nuances. The wording is not crass, generally, but it always (nearly every word) has bedroom-intimacy connotations. For example, the word "turns" is more like a wife turns away from her husband in bed, not wanting 'it' tonight, honey. Or, running after other lovers.
Those are but a few examples how God mixes holiness with marital intimacy, and all the rituals and Temple keywords have this connotation built into them (which you can prove from a detailed lexicon, as you search out the Hebrew or Greek LXX roots). Knowing itself is euphemistically used for the sexual act in the Bible; the idea being, Intimately Know God. Else, you are spurning Him. That's why fornication, idolatry, and religion, good deeds are all illicit 'sex', for God is not the Real Object. Bible is very explicit about all this, IN the original-language texts. Ascetically covered over, in pretty much every translation. Because, like this webpage, the translators can't exactly publicly state/print what's really 'in there'. We have to worry about public offense. God is not so encumbered.
Now, switch to defend the mistranslations: it's impossible to port over the Genius of Scripture, into any other language. For example, in Isa52:14, which you'll see translated below, the Hebrew SOUNDS like this (spelled phonetically): "k'asher shamaymu alayká rabbim; ken-mish'hát me-yish maraáyhu; wuh-toáro mi-beniy adam." It's metered. The first clause is 10 syllables; second is 8, last is 9, depending on how you want to drawl the vowels; the LXX uses 10-8-9-10 syllables, because both the first and the last Hebrew clause are double-entendre for His God-Man nature. So the last Hebrew clause is intentionally SHORT, for the Most High Who Incarnated to bear the grief of and by, men. So He! was looked upon with horror and shame (not sympathetic, k? they are ashamed OF Him); so He! is beaten beyond recognition by men! Yet these who beat Him -- all of us! -- are the very ones (rabbim=many) He will SAVE! Ok: how do you meter it in English? How do you show the two ke and ken as setting up a parallel between the horror they inflicted ON Him, because He's BETTER than them; and the horror (disesteem, maxed) they had OF Him? That last clause, "wuh-toaro mi-beniy adam" is circular, and says many things -- this is the shape of the WH in YH: The Man, the Story of His Incarnation, the shape of man's evil against Him -- even as He is BEYOND man (Deity), so also man will torture Him beyond human endurance and resemblance. So God (52:13) will vehemently glorify Him above all mankind! All this meaning, running with the 'main' meaning layer, the One Incarnated, Born -- Beaten beyond Human Resemblance by those He was Born to save. The LXX writers came up with their own poetic, circular ending to show the tie back to 52:13: "apo anthropwn to eidos sou" (out from men, Your Incarnation, anarthrous+monadic), "kai he doxza sou apo twn anthropwn" (in fact your Glory [Shekinah, Incarnating, inter alia] from [the abuse by] all mankind). [If you don't count the "kai" in metering, you can see the translation matches to the Hebrew syllables.] The two "apo" parallels are a play on birthing, too. All THAT is running under the main meaning in the words: that because He is God-Man, we will hate Him for it and beat Him up beyond all human semblance. Because, we are hateful.. animals.
How, above all, do you communicate that "alayká" is soundalike for Eloheka, Your God? Preposition "al" is always graphic, visual; even as a preposition it means to rise, to go up, above, Most High; and always has the connotation of the smell of the burnt offering RISING-to-God, because soundalike ola means just that. Every lexicographer recognizes that it is a soundalike play on "El", which means "God", most ancient form of The Name, and used often as a prefix or suffix, and sounds exactly the same (ayin is used in 'al, but the sound is nearly the same). So this is an EMBEDDED sound meaning on How He is God and Man. Then, how do you show in English, the fact that "ke'asher" is an embedded soundalike for "kasher", which means Pure and Upright One (which term will be repeated later in the Chapter in several ways)? How do you play on "maraayhu" as sounding like "marah", bitter, illustrating that Who we saw (maraayhu) was bitter to our sight (marah)? You can't say all that in a translation. You don't know it's grief being expressed (the meter), you don't even know it's poetry (though the translations all try to reflect that), and you surely don't know the stress on min (birthing) preposition (birthing our salvation, a repeated sounding, since it's the theme of the chapter), compared to how we see Him -- and we are appalled, aghast, ashamed OF Him? Him, the "kasher" (English "kosher" comes from this), the Pure and Upright One? Our hypocrisy, His heheli (lovesickness, used in 53:11). You just can't make a translation reflect even the main elements of what the original is saying, without distorting meaning in the translated verse. The original is a live movie, fully-dimensioned; you can SEE the hatred, anger, beating on Him, with others who want to help, shrinking back, afraid to defend Him, ashamed of their brethren, themselves. This Pure Person reviled. Very graphic. No translation can convey it all, but the translators of commercially-published Bibles feel constrained to strip out even more of the meaning, lest the reader be offended. Yeah, shamaymu maaraayhu, even to this day.
So ON the Cross, He went to the true hell of separation (judicial separation, not soul separation, which made the experience far far worse); and yet He endured it all, never once sinning Himself. So that sin joined and was converted in Him, into DDNA (explained at length in the First Aspect of DDNA.htm, link at pagetop). So the hell that does and will exist as a separate universe, post-time (aka "Lake of Fire"), is but Another Expression Of God's Outstretched Hands. For Love never coerces, but love never ever rejects, either, 1Cor13. So those IN hell keep on rejecting; God never rejects. And doesn't have to, because The Cross Paid For All Injustice to God. "Thinking" series on Home page ("Transmuting Plan, Origin" link at pagetop), is a comprehensive and epic examination of this question (subtheme of series). [Nerd note: it's far harder to be separated from Who/what you love and endure it Connected, than to be separated and DISconnected. If you were in Iraq and you didn't have any contact with your family, you'd be hurting, but the bittersweet dimension of frequent Contact (and hence contrast with where you are) would be missing. So it's easier, not harder. But if you had frequent phone calls or letters, count on it -- it would be much harder to go out into the streets, far more boring to do all those patrols and miniscule weapons cleanings, etc. -- all the while, never knowing if a car bomb would maim you. Spiritual Growth creates this latter problem. It's very hard to live in this body once you've gotten used to feasting on Scripture, no matter how nice or awful your earthly life.]
It's also and most separating, when incompatibility stands between persons in a relationship. Incompatibility means the differences are agonizing. We all have such relationships, and we breathe sighs of relief when we GET a physical separation. For when together, there's always this jockeying, gritting the teeth, trying to listen and not speak out one's agony. So imagine what God hears all the time! How, being Omniscient AND Omnipotent, does He stand it, forever hearing all the extreme willful ignorance, me-ness and pettiness which characterises human thought? So imagine what a RELIEF this true Hell of the Cross was and remains forever! to Christ Who Knew He Would Counter-think, so Father can justify all that extreme pettiness -- without which, our very soul births could not be justified?
So the preposition AL (aleph lamed), a soundalike on God's Own Name (EL suffix, for Elohim, also aleph lamed), means up-ness. Going up, like a burnt offering (ola is a burnt offering, a sin offering for the whole nation, and of course sounds just like ala and al). Highness: EL, High One. Most High, Most Up, Uppermost.. God.
NoWombLife.htm explains more on that topic, in its "Don't Abort My Word" table, which shows how the normal published translation of Ps139:11-17, blasphemes God, totally the reverse of what God had David write. Bear in mind, this travesty continues today, even as you read this page: for every seminary requires that a) you recognize "min" is separatist, never never never "in" -- yet no translation ever translates it properly when "womb" is around (beten, rechem and their concepts). But b), you're then required to translate the preposition as "from" -- even though that's wrong in English (should at least be, "out from"). How sad. Especially, since min is used as a shorthand way of talking about birth, thousands of times -- and is thus key to understanding John 3's "born again" and all its OT synonymal rubrics! Louis Segond better recognizes the proper usage of min as a "birthing", from among the translations in BibleWorks which I have.
Would that the Pleroma of eternity were solely from these the scholars and pastors. That's heaven, baby, to have so informed a group, be the kings. I know my pastor is among that group, but I wish every Bible scholar and teacher anywhere anytime were in that group. For they have the worst jobs, staring at us cows, talking to us cows, who so dully want the Word...
So scholars don't recognize that the first clause has to do with Him being imputed (the plages) with sin, and God purifying via suneisis in v.11 (hence an RNA-like conversion of sin to DDNA thinking) -- so that He Becomes A Living Propitiation, Himself -- not what He does, but The Result Of What Happened To Him. What He BECAME. The Being (Exo3:14) BECAME a Being in His Humanity, too, YH+WH! The Lord plays on this meaning of His Future Becoming and Begetting, when He so wittily talks about how the woman forgets all about her labor pains after the birth has occurred, John 16:21. In a Chapter which is all about the Birthing metaphor (which metaphor runs from Chapter 14 through the end of Chap17, hence the Vine and Branches metaphor). John has no end of wordplay to expend on that metaphor; Paul too, in Romans 5-11 (esp. Chapters 5-8).
Hence, He can be replicated IN us -- which meaning you derive from the absence of prepositions and direct objects, in Isa53:10-11 (they are reserved for v.12). That 'absence' too, is a rhetorical style in Greek Drama, emphasizing the all-sufficiency of Divine Action -- see 1Jn4:19, Romans 5:5, Romans 8:28.
With respect to the second clause (deixzai autwi phws in Isa53:11), since He is Finite in His Humanity, LIGHT (the Word) being completed in Him, even to the point of Converting All Sin In Him To That Same Light, Means He Is Light, Even In His Humanity. For God is Infinite, and even Christ as Human, was not Fully Light as God Himself is Light: until the Cross completed Him. How horrible a life He had down here, then: being God, the differential between His Godness and His however-perfect Finite Humanity must have been excruciating to live out; shoulda killed Him, frankly. But as Isa52:13 makes clear, The Word Sustained Him -- sakal in the Hebrew, sunesis in Greek -- so His Thinking fluency and mastery carried Him through it all. Awesome. Simply awesome, this Legacy from Christ!
So now this Light is EXHIBITED (Heb12:2 ties here) to Him and In Him and through Him out to and into.. US. (And only if the prepositions are absent, can you read all of them into the text, via the mere dative case ending, since the dative is a conduit case.)
That's what's being said in verses 10-11: that the PURIFY and PLUNDER produce the three other sweeping infinitives to complete the conversion: EXHIBIT, SCULPT, JUSTIFY. So these Isaiah LXX verses do not say Christ sinned (the scholarly mistake in the first clause, katharísai autòn tes plages); do not say that He is not God (the scholarly mistake in the second clause, deixzai autwi phws). They are talking about what happened to His Humanity, and hence why He is the Pattern for son-making. See how simple it is? How deft the writing of those two clauses?
So now you see exactly, strand-by-strand, line-by-line, accounting-item-by-accounting-item, how God accomplished our so-great salvation, what it is, and what is to happen to us: Rom12:1-3, every second, ideally. Of course, that passage is mistranslated also (esp. 12:1), see Rom121-3.htm.
Mechanism: We have thoughts. We learn Bible in God's System. As a result, our thoughts change gradually into His, and we are choosing that change, because we BELIEVE what we are learning (assuming we are learning correctly). That's the "Purify" "Plunder" "Exhibit" "Sculpt" and "Justify" five-infinitive TRANSMUTATION of Isa53:10-11 LXX, working in us. Akin to, Atonement Propitiation Reconciliation and Redemption, as our thoughts change. See, it's not about sin, but about the sinner. Sinner gets saved. Sin got converted already on the Cross, else we'd not even be eligible to get salvation, capisce? So over time, we become more like Him in our own thinking, which is what a soul, does. Soul gets saved. Thinking got transformed. So when we lose this unable-to-learn-anything-body (Rom8:10), well.. then we get a compatible body to go with our transformed soul. That's heaven, baby. Now compatible with God functionally, not merely the salvation structural 'floor' (see 1Cor3, 1Cor15). No longer separated, in body or in mind!
It's real important to note that God didn't inflict physical pain on Him, but people did. Hence you can see yet another layer of logic proving His Physical Death didn't pay for sin (man doesn't help God, ever). The abuse man inflicted on Him is very graphically portrayed, depicting how we all really hate God, and piously fool ourselves otherwise.
So His Deaths (plural, 53:9, Hebrew) were two, one of which paid for sin; and the other, which was due to man's abuse of Him (but physical death is a victory, 53:9b). My pastor has taught this for decades, always explaining the two deaths in Gen2:17 being 'answered' with two deaths on the Cross; but little did I know how blatant the proof was of the two deaths, until searching moth-tamuth in the OT (to see the parallels to Gen2:17, esp. in the sacrifices); and, until translating this chapter in Isaiah for its related webseries. It's embarrassing, to keep seeing how we all don't actually read Bible, yet pass on anti-Biblical information.. even, in seminaries. So no one checks what's said with the Bible, either. Apathy toward the Word is thus demonstrated, and no Christian can claim innocence: we're all in this together. But there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus, Rom8:1, so we needn't go condemning anyone else, either: never attractive, for a pot to call a kettle, Black! "Grail" link in Grail.htm (or, via "Divine DNA" link at pagetop) will further explain and refute the common and blasphemous idea that physical anything ever pays God even a farthing! The first problem is the Dichotomy Between Infinity And Finity, which is why Christ exists. Sin only complicated the problem, creating soul rubble. Which rubble, translates into a body, legalistic spin on Bible. So of course the common idea is that physical death -- a NON-thinking mass of biology -- could pay for IMMATERIAL soul sins. Common idea, no common sense. Thus you see the soul rubble commonly in peasanty Christianity. We should be ashamed for about 90 seconds, and then get cracking in God's System learning this Gorgeous Thinking Legated to us from the Cross!
Christians constantly disbelieve God; the more erudite the Christian, the more he disbelieves. For the scholars argue on the most inane topics, proving they wouldn't know 1Jn1:9 if it bit them. They argue over how long a "day" is in Genesis 1, as if Genesis were about the origin of the universe ("Genesis" in Greek means Origin Of Man, not the universe, which any scholar should know); they are blind to how Adam is not a hunter-gatherer, therefore. They argue whether the Gospels were compiled from other extant humans (you know, that stupid "Q" thingy), for crying out loud! They treat the Holy Spirit's Power as an emotional thing, or a human-intellectual thing, priding themselves on their flashcard knowledge. So they spend millions of hours pouring over this-or-that theologian's tome, which focuses on the banal -- kinda like obsessing over whether you wear hats or long hair; all these, just like the Talmudic conundrum, how blue the thread must be at sundown -- Jewish pil-pul, but Christendom has many of its own such insanities, piously dressed up in 'holy' voices and prose. Never occurs to them, to just save time and look at what the Word says. So they argue over variant aspects of denominational history and doctrines, instead of peering closely at the original-language texts of Scripture: for after all, that's just a book, but here are all these souls! So they don't believe that God can save the heathen in isolation; they don't believe that they should leave things alone, but instead crusade for money, and in politics. So when they read we are to become "sons of God", they nod -- but don't really believe it. For if we really believed this Word, we'd be so avidly studying it to Learn And Live On Him, we'd have no time for sin!
Disbelief is the prime directive of our fallen bodies, in Adam. We give into that disbelief sometime during childhood, when we (not knowing any better) give into irritation, anger, etc. So it comes to dominate the life, in ever-wider span of thought and activity, as we age: that's why we're so miserable! That's why we long for those childhood days! For what made childhood pleasant, was belief! Back then, we weren't so permeated with disbelief, as we are now. The only counter to such progressive ennui of disbelief as one ages, is Salvation.. and then, Scripture. God knew all this. God doesn't hate us, nor does He seek to condemn us, Rom8:1. This, this, this is our so-great salvation: despite all we are, repugnant the most in our righteousnesses, He saves us, and makes us the very sons of God. For the sake of Himself, and of His Son! And can you imagine: it's Infinitely JURIDICALLY VALID to do this?!! For here in Isa53, we see WHY. Awesome!
That takes the Holy Spirit's Power, which is why Christ relied on it. You see this most clearly in Isa53:10-11, which uses the frequent Triplet rhetorical device: "LORD" doesn't say WHICH God is in view, but differentiates Them by repetition and by function. So there are two "bouletai" clauses, which denote Father's Order, Spirit's Function; then the last three infinitives of 53:11 are only the infinitives of the second "bouletai" -- each, with the clear understanding "God" the Holy Spirit Is Doing This Per The Contract: and you know that it's God the Holy Spirit, for the functions the infinitives designate are identified with Him elsewhere in Bible, especially in the NT (but also everywhere in the OT, using foundational/etymological nuances of the Hebrew). Moreover, Hebrew "soul" in 53:10-12 each have the Spirit embedded in them in soundplay on "breathing", phphphph'ing. [Item #17 in NoWombLife.htm shows another example, but there are hundreds, in the OT: think of the sound of "nephesh", and "aneph" (meaning nostril, anger, sound of it), and you can begin to see how a phph'ing sound will be a frequent rhetorical device!] So via His Holy Breath, we too learn to breathe spiritually, so to throw away our utterly-useless humanity as He did -- by relying on the Spirit, living in God's System, getting the five sweeping infinitives of Isa53:10-11 LXX: from Him doing them IN us. As Isaiah is so privileged to recount, in the following Chapter 53...
Important note: Hebrew "rabbim" means "people", but is often translated "the many" in English Bibles. A better modern term would be "the masses". Denotes a whole. So don't buy into the bad Hebrew-language scholarship of some, claiming that because "rabbim" is used, Christ somehow didn't pay for all sin. Even logic would tell you this, not to mention, absolute verses like Isa53:10-11, 1Jn2:2, John 3:16. Sin is an offense to God. ALL of it must be paid for TO God. Romans 6, 2Cor5:14-21, Eph1 go to some trouble to explain you that the Propitiation must LIVE forever, so that the payment to GOD is ongoing. So the payment was From Christ, and is Housed In Christ, and that Propitiates Father (which Isa53:5-6 literally say). So ALL sin got paid for; so those who think it didn't, unintentionally blaspheme the Righteousness of God and the Efficacy of the Cross. Who decides to believe in Him and thus be saved, of course, is quite another matter.
Here are some Youtube videos showing the Hebrew and translations which might help as you peruse this section. Hit the "menu" button and then keep your mouse in the lower row of video icons to see each title; then select the one you prefer. It will auto-play from Isaiah 52:13 if you choose; just click the play button. If you want to see the full video description, just click on the video itself: a new window in Youtube will open up on that video, and the right-hand side (shaded gray, just below my "brainouty" Sisyphus avatar) will contain the video description.
Isa 52:13, Masoretic/LXX text "Look! He will be caused to master Divine Thinking and thus prosper [in it]; hence THE Son-Servant of Mine will be exalted, raised, on high; even lifted up, carried off, leading off, heading up; and then wholly-and-vehemently glorified!" [The entire first clause is just two words in either the BHS or the LXX, but it takes all those English words to translate properly -- especially, since Isaiah closes the point with the selfsame words, in the crescendo passage of 53:10-12. The "hence" in English needs to be supplied, though in Heb/Greek due to the CAUSAL parallelism being made, one needn't use a similar word. Note also how many related meanings (indicated by slashes or multiple verbs/nouns/adjectives are in each following word: verse is short, only 7 words in Heb and 10 (really 9) words in Greek -- but each word is so multilayered, given later text in passage, so you have to see all these meanings right up front. Wow, what a Bible! Look! When Bible stops using direct objects, it enters Highest Drama, denoting sweeping, all-conclusive results. This is a feature of both (main) inspired Biblical languages. So Isaiah takes off UPWARD, using 'lift' as his theme, since it's a play on the brass serpent being lifted up in the wilderness, a prototype Gospel message to Israel while in the wilderness (see Numbers and Deuteronomy). Also, Bible's Hebrew soundplay and wordplay works often by taking a letter in a word and then grafting it (or its sound) to another word, to show the relationship between the two, and depending on reader 'getting' the wit due to the etymology of all the syllables. So that's being done here, with "ab", right from the start -- since it's "ab", FATHER, Who's Talking, in this introduction of His Son: Abba gabah meod abad, Father vehemently! exalts His SlaveSon -- the Most High Father exalts the Most High Son, John 1 -- get it? Heh. So there's Hebrew soundplay between "abedi", My Slave, and gabah meod, "wholly..glorified" which can't be translated, idea of Him being 'fathered' and 'fathering' glory, by being a Slaveson, awesome Divine Wit -- the Most High (gabah!) becomes [adds Humanity], Yah+Wah; thus becomes an abedi for Ab, so becomes gabah meod, thus Rum Nasi (Most-High Prince-over-Many) forever, because Nissa Rum, was carried off due to the sins of the many (rum/rab, wordplay in Isa53)! Oh, what Wit! Next, "meod" itself is soundplay on l'moed, the appointed time to be at the Tabernacle for worship (Sabbath) -- very significant, in Isa53:11, later on. Heb "meod" has a FORCE and VIOLENCE connotation, hence "vehemently" should be used, not the tame "exceedingly" (wow, English is a wimpy language). Meod also has a connotation of WHOLENESS, completely -- vital to translate this nuance, to show the completeness of the propitiation -- so of course it's never translated, though found in any decent lexicon! More, in this context (which continues through at least Isa55), the 'fathering' is again played on with the "me" of "meod", since "me" is Hebrew birthing preposition "min". The etymological origin of "meod" isn't from "min", but Isa uses the "me" sound FOR "min" throughout the three (or more) chapters. Watch how he grafts "me" sounds, how he uses rising-connotation words, carrying words, etc. So deft!
In fact, the English word "skill" comes from Hebrew sakal (most modern Western languages derive from either Heb or Greek, sorry). This phrase "caused.. in it" is the KEY to Isa53:11 in both Hebrew and Greek texts, so you have to study sakal and suniemi here deeply. Else you'll never understand how Isa53:11 is so climactic and foundational, nor how it's the heart of both how salvation was accomplished, and Christ's Legacy for each of us. Capital "THE" is to stress HIM, in both texts: Heb does it by leaving out the "ha", and Greek by making "the" monadic (signifying uniqueness of person, as is done in 2Cor13:14 and many other verses). Nerd note: just making these brief observations in the verse took over three hours (well, subtract the 30 minutes I ran around my flat screaming with happiness over the wordplay, probably disturbing my neighbors). See why we need pastors doing this? See why translated Bibles are at best a watered-down, tasteless and thoroughly anthropocentric mess?]
Paul references all this in Rom5:5-8, Phili2:5ff; and Hebrews references it all in Heb2,4,12. Next, the phrase, "caused to master Divine Thinking and thus prosper in it" is much closer to the meaning of each single verb sakal (Heb) and suniemi (LXX), which are used (for each other) in the inspired texts; but no English equivalent exists: "caused to be wise" is blasphemously vague, and to limit the meaning to "prosper" like the NASB does, is even worse. Hebrew chokma is a state of being skilled in Divine thinking, whereas sakal and suniemi denote ACTIVE DISCERNING, á la Heb4:12's 'sword' usage: Deft Skill Which Is Active, Conquering All Opposition. In Greek, a "sun" prefixed verb always and only denotes Divine Production, i.e., in Rom8:28 and Jas2:22 -- translations always cut out the Divine Actor, making it look like a mere human is doing all that good stuff! Yet this "sun" prefix meaning is easily found in typical scholarly lexicons, like Thayer (i.e., see how Thayer covers sunergew -- forget Strong's, which is WAY too weak). Published translations of Isa52:13 are completely pathetic, all of them, in any language I can read in BibleWorks, completely missing the point of sakal and suniemi! Travesty! Yeah, Satan's so clever to surgically strike, the surgical-strike Thinking Skill which Isa is talking about, using sakal (and which LXX translators 'preserved' by using Greek suniemi)!
Isa 52:14, Masoretic/LXX text "For that very reason [v.13], the many are utterly appalled, horrified up-at You, Whose very Appearance/Glory and Incarnation, is [born] OUT FROM the sons of men; so [for that very reason] You, the most disfigured, tortured, debased beyond human semblance: BY men!" ["For that very reason" construction is used to show the parallelism in the original-language texts made between 52:14-15, and 53:12. Overall, translation attempts to reflect better the dramatic ellipsis and matching parallelism in the original Hebrew, which translations always wash out. Point of this verse is to show God's love being rejected, so the One Who Became Human, yet is Beyond Human, is for That Very Reason.. beaten up Beyond Human Recognition, BY humans. Verse is brutal, deliberately. Makes the Holocaust look like a picnic (which is a deliberate point in the verse, for there have been and would be many holocausts against the Jews -- for, the term means BURNT OFFERING). So "Incarnation" is Hebrew toar, and Greek eidos, which I think is the real intent of the text: "form" for "toar/eidos is not a good translation, imo -- should be translated by its meaning, not the mere superficial vocabulary 'form' (pun intended). In the BHS text, Hebrew preposition "al" is put smack dab in the conceptual middle of the sentence, so would not have to be repeated in Hebrew (or the Greek), especially since the lifting/rising concept was introduced in v.13; but English requires it, to see the wordplay. Next, Heb verb shamem has a wider range of meanings than its LXX counterpart of exzistemi -- the latter focuses on the mental attitude of crazy upset -- but shamem includes the idea of shame, and will be repeated in Isa54:1 for the 'desolate' sterile 'woman' (believer). LXX in that verse doesn't use exzistemi again, so here in Isa 52:14, wordplay on being ashamed of/ appalled at HIM is uppermost, and the LXX picked that up. The LXX translation uses adoxew (combo of doxza+dokew, reversed by alpha privative negative) parallelled with "doxza" rather than "raah" (glory, rather than seeing) to make a play on the Shekinah Glory, which Israel could see: which Glory was a demonstration of the future promise of Him taking on Humanity. Clever translation, frankly. No wonder the Lord and the apostles used the LXX so much, in the NT. "beyond all human resemblance" is how I'm translating ken mishat me ish, but my pastor has taught that meaning in this verse for many years -- I'm just guessing at which Hebrew words he uses to get the translation. The "whose..[Incarnation]" clause is markedly different from all extant translations; but it seems the more intended meaning, especially given context and LXX rendering. LXX makes a play on two "apo" prepositions, painful and poignant -- here the One Born from mankind to save it, is from/by mankind the most reviled and abused; the double entendre is also in the Hebrew (using preposition min), but this three-way meaning requires three statements about "man" or "mankind" in English, to show it. The torture clause is summarized by adoxzew (utterly abase), in parallel to doxza. In Greek drama, nouns are the more dramatic: so often verbs are substituted with nouns, verbal nouns, infinitives or participles.]
Isa 52:15, Masoretic/LXX text "For that very reason [v.13-14], He will [also] be caused to atone (lit., 'sprinkle', over HOH Mercy Seat) for the many goyim (clever wordplay, puts Israel in with them); on account of Him, even [goyim] kings will utterly shut their mouths [in amazement]; because Who/what had not been recounted/accounted to them, they will see/perceive; Who/what they had not heard (of), listened to, obeyed, they will be caused to intensively discern/understand." [The "Who/what" is multiple entendre in both Heb and LXX text -- notably plural, in the latter, meaning more than one Person (i.e., Trinity), more than one item to hear/understand. Heb text doesn't have to distinguish between singular and plural via the relative pronoun marker, but Greek does. Next, LXX uses suniemi here, so parallel between His Mastery of Divine Thinking and their being given that Same Thinking is deliberately predicted, counterpart to Israel's seeing and not perceiving, hearing but not understanding, Isa6:9, quoted 4 times in the NT. Also, wordplay between nissa in v.13 and naza here -- the latter is apocopated, designating His being cut off to cut our salvation covenant, same wordplay as in Dan9:25-26. Same usage of al+person as in Isa 52:14, smack dab in the conceptual middle of the verse.] Isa 53:1, Masoretic/{LXX} text "{Oh Lord!} Who was caused to believe in our caused-from-God-communication, report? And [arising, rising] up to whom was the Arm, the Strength, the SECURITY LOVE of YHWH uncovered, revealed, disclosed?" [There's something like an aposiopesis between Isa52:15 and 53:1, a silence of consternation; the expected waw or ki doesn't begin 53:1 in either inspired text. Niphal perfect of galah is usually translated has been revealed, but this chapter stresses the EFFECT of what He has done, and is dramatic: so in English, "is" better denotes that, imo. Next item: "rising" is my attempt to translate the wordplay in Heb prep/conjunction "Ael" (pronounced like "ale", the beer); which is critical to passage; words playing on it will be italicized. Oh, the mi-soundplay and wordplay in Hebrew of al-mi can't be translated -- both plays are critical to interpretation of the whole Messiah prophecy: Isa thus uses soundplay of pregnancy/labor, from the very beginning. No doubt about it: YHWH is a concatenation of two verbs, to be+to become, the heart of the Hypostatic Union, God-man! Look up substantives associated with the prep/conjunction "al" (ayin+lamed), esp. the ones which are the names of God and burnt offering, ascent, stairway (ties to subjective and objective genitive in Romans 5:5, and to Rom5:8); ma+al="What [Quality, Character] is God?", and soundplay of ma/mi with preposition min. Then, see in Isa53:11, "me amal" (see how min+al are replayed?), ammi, idea of God making sons. Incredible genius! Note the wordplay between "rising" and "born" and "rise again" and "born again" throughout the next three Chapters (Isa53-55). See the Lord reference and claim this verse in John 17:6-21, esp. v.20. Really, all of John 17 is about it -- note the use of reveal, manifest, disclose-the-glory concepts.)
Isa53:2a, Masoretic/{LXX} text "{(report content follows) We reported, announced, disclosed, declared, proclaimed, taught that} in [the court case before] His [Father's] 'Eyes'/Presence, the-One-to-be-cut-off, become a Burnt Offering grew up, arose, rose; [for Son's Humanity was] caused [to grow] like a 'sapling' [from infancy] abundantly nourished, despite all opposition:" ["Al" and apocopation of alah, w/ola soundplay. Term for 'sapling' in Hebrew (root ynq) per TWOT, has this underlying meaning of ABUNDANCE and HONOR due to NOURISHINGNESS; happy, well-nourished, thriving. Idea of THRUSTING STRONGLY UPWARD -- upwardness being a major sound/wordplay concept in this chapter -- idea of thrusting strongly upward in the sterile, enemy 'soil'. So, growing in honor (i.e., in the Truth, so those seeing Him admire Him more and more as He grows -- Father, Spirit, elect angels); so, growing in the ABILITY to nourish all others. Masoretic and LXX "enantion" show it's a court case, this Infant growing: Idiom "before Him". Next item: Heb "ki" has so many meanings, with CAUSE and GENESIS paramount among them, so "caused to" is needed in English. Him, even as Infant, continually on Trial, being approved facing Father; but opposed, in the face of/by everyone else. So to say "like a tender shoot" is way too tame, and doesn't reference the causal nature of "ki", here: especially, since it's paired with another "ki" in the next clause. Father's or Spirit's testimony, sounds like. You gotta look at the wordplay with panim, "Face" (with dagesh), all its related root meanings of inner, turning.. awesome! So in the next verselet I use "p" words in English to show the panting, pining, prosecuting, parching parchment-making of Him Who is our very Prosperity/Peace. If you investigate those aspects of the original texts, the reason for this translation will be seen. Oh, and for another bizillion dollars, look how John dramatically plays off wordplay with panim, and LXX's aNangellw in Isa53:2 -- in 1John 1:2, with aPangellw! Both terms are usually translated to proclaim or give-a-message/report: but there's a big difference in the 1Jn passage, simply by changing one letter in the word. In Isa53, Greek particle Ana, 'again', idea of carrying back a report, sorta second-hand; but in 1Jn1:2, apo, idea of reporting DIRECTLY from the SOURCE, the Son/Holy Spirit (varies with context) -- it's a blanket term. Oh: "gg" in Greek is pronounced "ng" (i.e., aggelos=angelos, the angels).]
Isa53:2b, Masoretic/{LXX} text "the-One-caused-to-be-the-Prosperously-Upright-Source, like a Root [was] {stuck/planted in} born out from the pining, Parched-with-thirst Promised Land, the world." [Heb/Greek text is elliptical, extremely dramatic and poetic. They didn't have punctuation, so to show drama in English you put in punctuation instead of translate. Seems wakashóresh is a waw conversive, given the contrast -- but I'm not sure how to explain all that. The waw conversive was used in the restoration of the earth and in the creation of Adam and in reference to his fall, so you have to refer to such uses in Genesis' inspired texts. See your pastor. Typical (doubled) "and like" in translations of this verse seems way too wimpy, because ki+root idea are doubled, even as He is double-Essenced; soundplay of ki+shoresh is "kashoresh", so with yanaq+kashoresh, you get soundplay on KASHER and YASHAR, Holy, Prosperous (kasher also means to prosper) and Upright, taking root -- which no one can uproot (play on Heb verb sharash): hence "caused-to-be-Prosperously-Upright" precedes "Root" in the translation above -- so God's not talking of mere similitude, here. Shoresh means the root of all existence. TWOT significantly observed that the parallelism between yoneq and shoresh is that humans felt the sapling was suckling nourishment off the main stalk (them), so cut Him off. No tame idea, that. So "and like", the baby/basic meaning of "ki", is not the point; rather, CAUSE, GENESIS. Next item: pining/parched/thirsty are meanings covered by the word in Heb or Greek. Negative concept of no-Word-in-them is included, but emphasis is on the NEED for the 'rain' of Him. Heb "ha eretz" (Greek: ge, pronounced "gay") usually means the Promised Land, but it's wordplay: earth, what Adam's body was made from; emeth, the Truth; earth, the entire planet, all on which need salvation; earth, the womb of life, without which man can derive no sustenance; earth, a Real Body so a BODY is made against all opposition, to become a Burnt Offering... Next item: Min preposition is birthing, and it's a running sound theme, so is translated "born"; dramatic text substitutes verbal nouns for verbs, prepositions -- in short, whatever 'normal' syntax you seek, won't be there. Here, for the most Abnormal Person in History, Who grew from infancy! against all opposition, pleasing Father!]
Isa53:2c, Masoretic/{LXX} text "Yet by human standards we regarded His Incarnation as NEITHER comely NOR [Shekinah] Glory; and His Appearance did NOT delight us {we considered His Incarnation no good at all}." [This is an awesome verse! It ties first to the Incarnation itself, due to wordplay of raah, toar and marah/mareh; but also, back to Isa52:14, on how He was beaten up beyond all recognition, horrible to look upon. The translations are way too tame: overall, Isaiah makes comparison between Him rising up to save us, becoming a sweet savor rising to Father; and our putting Him down, abusing Him, deriding Him. But how to convey so many layers of meaning? I can't figure out how to translate all the meaning with raah-mareh-marah. Wordplay is awesome, still sticking to the m-birthing-sounds. Heb raah stresses From-Godness (i.e., a seer); and mirror, the exact image of God, the Glory; and marah, bitter (in sound, marah= mirror and (different root), bitter, dried-up soul, Num11:6 and other passages). Look up how Mirror and reflection is used in the NT -- awesome stuff. Then there's the soundplay between hadar, glory (human-standards' type), and hamad (human delight, veneration/admiration). We didn't see his plain hadar, so we had no hamad for Him. In Isa53:2c, Heb text gets real elliptical. Greek text helps you see what's meant, and the NO stress repeated is.. kinda embarrassing. Idea that here He is, veiled Shekinah Glory, but still how could we MISS how Gorgeous He is? Not from outward appearance (human-glory words are used in Heb, but in the Greek text, "doxza" is used), but from INNER THINKING. "we judged Him NO good" is a better translation in the context of the court case, and prophecy of His being judged in court as no good, esp. considering every verse after this one, is about that 'verdict', topped off by Father judging our sins on Him. So that LXX text probably ought to be put in the Masoretic, or at least included in translations. Greek verb "echo" then was used in offical rulership/judgement decisions; legal connotation of "holding" or "held" even remains in jurisprudence, today.]
Isa53:3, Masoretic text "So He was despised, disdained, held in contempt; wholly forsaken by all mankind, the Man of Sorrows, intimately knowing sickness-of-grief, the One Who 'causes' people to hide, turning away their faces in contempt; and we reckoned Him of NO account." [Wordplay between hadar (splendor) hamad (delight) in previous verse and hadel (forsaken, adj.) in this verse: instead of hamad, He got hadel, even though He was hadar, more than all mankind put together! Jadah is to thoroughly and intimately know a thing/person; verb is frequently used as a euphemism for the sex act (wordplay on davaq) throughout Bible, and starting right away, in Gen4:1; Bible uses this in wry wordplay for how Israel is unfaithful, 'knowing' everything and everybody BUT the Lord; NT carries that analogy into the Husband and Wife metaphor of Christ and Church. See LvS4a.htm if you don't know how Church derives its spiritual precedence (but that webpage is long). So it's downright blasphemous to translate it "acquainted", imo! There is so much wordplay here on 'face' (prep lipneh, usu. translated "before Him", with TURNING concept referenced) in v.2a, and on mareh/marah in 2c with masetar here in 3a, I'll have to write about it later. A pastor should be paid a bizillion dollars a year. Takes hours just to think out a few layers of meaning! "turn..contempt" is min+baza in the niphal participle, and more closely follows the min-birthing idea Isaiah started earlier, since he is working up to a crescendo in v. 11. There's a lot of wordplay on Incarnation, Face, Appearing, Appearance, too!]
Isa53:6, Masoretic {LXX} text "We all/completely have wandered astray [from God, see Ps23], like sheep; each one turns to his own way; but the LORD [Tetragrammaton, Father] caused Him to be lacerated with our punishment due for all/completely/for everyone/once-and-for-all:"[Verse in Hebrew starts and ends with Soundplay between kol ("all", whole of a quantity), and kalal, a verb for completing-to-perfection. So a parallel is drawn between the completeness of His Payment, and the completeness of our sins. You need to know that, to get the crescendo of the next six verses, because that meaning is repeated in them. You also have to know that sheep are stubborn and flighty, prone to wander; that Isa is reminding the audience of Psalm 23; so when Isaiah uses the term pagaa in the hipfil, it's consummate wordplay. The verb has a whole range of meanings from laying-a-burden to intercession/entreaty, but a hitting is the action; like hitting an animal to keep it from going a certain way. Idea being, all those meanings got completed ON Him, and FOR us. So I translated it as "lacerated" to go with the verbal idea of the javelins hitting Him. Finally, "Iniquity" is really a bad, fuzzy translation for the Hebrew noun, "awon" (pronounced ahh-WOHN). "Guilt", and specifically the punishment due for being guilty, is its technical meaning in the Mosaic Law. Hence "punishment due" is the translation here. The tense-switching between imperfect and perfect in the Hebrew, between the verses, is hugely important for showing completion. Oh: in the LXX, the verb for "wandered astray" here is the same one Paul uses in Eph4:14, planaw, so Paul's alluding to Isa53:6, in Eph4:14, especially since he's tracking Isa53 in all of Ephesians, paralleling it with "Ion", a play by Euripedes, and then using both to show God's Superior Begetting. LordvSatan1's "Fit Bride" table has a brief on that tracking.]
Isa53:7, Masoretic {LXX} text "and so He, [publicly] Oppressed-as-a-slave! He, Humiliated-as-a-woman-beaten-and-raped! Yet He does not open His mouth [to protest, cry for help]; like a lamb He is carried to the slaughtering; like a ewe facing/during shearing, He is bound and made silent; so He does not even open His Mouth."[It's really hard to translate anah's many meanings, but they all signify PUBLIC ENJOYMENT Of Someone Being Shamed; the verb has an everyone-busy-raping quality, PUBLIC shaming and forcing of submission as would occur after a town has been raided. We saw this verb back in Isa53:4 (ma'aneh, there). "Afflicted", the usual translation, is blasphemously tame. Same with the LXX Greek verb kakow: here it's used to cover Hebrew anah; but also refs back to v.4's Hebrew verbs naga, nakah and anah; in 53:4 the cognate kakwsis is used, so v.7 points back to that in v.4 as well. Verb kakow and its cognates always have a sexual-abuse connotation. The sexual-abuse analogy here is not literal (the Lord was not sexually abused) -- but Our Sins On Him is worse than the vilest of sexual abuse, and that's the point Isaiah keeps stressing, so we won't miss the violence of what happened to Him. But then who'd publish a Bible if knowing its real, sometimes-X-rated words? Rest of this verse's words are simple and should not be mistranslated, but they are: e.g., "ewe" should be the translation, not "sheep", since Isaiah is continuing the sexual metaphor of raping, forced-submission. No excuse for mistranslations. Especially not in THIS passage, the very mechanics of our salvation, sheesh! Aren't we grownups, now?]
Isa53:8, Masoretic {LXX} text "OUT FROM the source of barren barracading, and OUT FROM the source of governmental condemnation, He was seized-and-carried-off [like booty]; so concerning his progeny, who can [even after searching one's recollections] recount them, being as He was [violently and unfairly] snatched up/cut off OUT FROM the Land, The Life! Born(e) from/due to the revolting transgressions of My people, whose due molesting rape.. struck Him {resulting in His [substitutionary spiritual] death}?"[The first two out-froms reference what would be Jewish and later Roman judgements, the six Trials, my pastor teaches (as do many others). Notice well that the verdict came after, stressing the injustice of the governmental condemnation. It's really obvious Isaiah treats these Trials as birthpangs, for Isaiah really piles up the birthing preposition "min" in this verse (rendered here "OUT.." in caps), to begin a crescendo: Father's fathering purpose being realized. Thus he ties back to Isa53:2's growing up out of parched ground, Israel, and 53:5's pile ups of m-sounds with min. Wry soundplay on oser/eser with preposition min, because otser/etser essentially means being shut up, whether womb or prison (soundplay with yatser and yasher, too). Then there's laqakh (pronounced lah-KAAKH, the ending rhymes with "plaque"), to snatch/carry off; Isaiah ties back to the lamb/ewe being carried off to slaughter/shearing; Isaiah also ties forward to how He'll carry off our sins and us as booty (verses 10-12). Verb laqakh always has the seizing-female-booty connotation (result of a raid). Greek LXX equivalents make the same wordplays. next, "concerning his progeny", oh, the double-entendre, setting up the crescendo of Isa54:1! Here He is, Himself having no natural progeny (big point in the verse), but -- heh, just as promised AbRAHam, who will be able to count His Descendants! LOL! All those who believe in Him, whose sins He would pay for, THEY become his spiritual kids, v.10-12! So Isaiah is making an advance pun, I love it! Greek LXX really picks up on the punning, using the fully-listed-report verb, diageomai; Acts 8:33 interpretatively quotes this Isa53:8 from the LXX; also by using en and apo for min. And again airw is used, just as it was in v.4 and will be used again punningly, in vv10-12. Oh, what Rich wit! Ergo the double-entendre meaning of the Hebrew verb, shiach: WHO among these future kids sought justice from Father, to save their spiritual father (get the soundplay on Yeshua HaMaShiach)! And who has, ever since? For we've all crucified Him. Verses 5-6 made that all too plain. The significance of thanatos in the LXX text is picked up all over the place by NT writers, when they differentiate between the type of death which paid for sins, and the type of victory OUT FROM among the dead ones, that His Physical Death represented. What buried treasure is this Bible -- oh, You'll want to research that use of thanatos, or else read the "Grail" link in DDNA.htm if you lack the time. Also pay close attention to how Daniel 9:26's karat references back to gazar here in Isa53:8: the latter term means to cut off, cut down, divide, snatch, with a root meaning of APPORTION (see also v.12); but also, to Decree (setting a rule in stone); and karat, refers to the cutting of a covenant, a kind of ratification of something previously decreed; so when the angel talks to Daniel using the term karat, he's also referring to the fulfillment of Isa53:8 -- now there will be progeny to 'remember', to 'tally'. Judaism is real big on tallying progeny, as the begats and kings books show: all because they lead to and descend from, Messiah-to-Come, thus fulfilling the promise to Abram that his descendants couldn't be counted (which promise Isa53:8 is playing on). Oh: because preposition min is yet again used with gazar, it means the cutting off is violent, says TWOT. Noun nega refs back to nagaa in v.4 and the combined referencing in v.7, so "molest" is still the theme. As for "land of the Living", which is used in all the published translations, it isn't "of the living", because it's an appositive -- He is the Way the Truth and the Life. I bet it's to be translated properly as denoted above; LXX translates it the same way as here (which is how I was alerted to it). Much more sensible, much more dramatic, especially since in 53:2 the world is depicted as dead, thirsty for the Water of the Word -- but He IS the Word. It's used as a plural for ONE man, Adam in Gen2:7; it's plural for two types of life, spiritual and soul, as my pastor taught so often over the decades. 85 hits in BibleWorks 5 on hayyim to review. It's not necessarily an adjective, especially given its position in the sentence, and the themes of this Chapter.]
Isa53:9, Masoretic {LXX} text "So He {I} displaced the [same] wicked ones for His burying-place, and the wealthy {men -- or -- "riches"} for His Deaths {spiritual death}; up-to-God, for He did no violence, nor was there {found} treachery/deceit in His Mouth."[There's some reason to suspect that the LXX is supposed to be added or goes in front of the Hebrew text, given the common Hebrew pattern of interrupting testimony, contract acceptance, and antiphony (I - He speaking structures, Father and Son talking back and forth). All of Romans 6 is based on Heb53:9. "Give" should be "displaced", because it's a substitution, and because the LXX uses anti to denote that. So to say "with a rich man" is not at all correct. It's replacing them. Christ instead of them. Next item: The word "found" in the LXX brings out the judicial meaning in the Hebrew -- God's Judgement is that no deceit (etc). English "up-to-God, for" is our friend "al", but the syllables for "up-no-wrong" sound out Elohim -- I've seen David and Isaiah embed the Names before, and here's an example. Resurrection, Ascension in soundplay. Lexicons tell you to watch out for this with respect to 'al preposition (TWOT does); so another upwardness is stated -- and here, the normal Hebrew preposition for "because" should be ki, not al, so you know the sound embedding is deliberate. Sometimes 'al is used as a substantive or substantive-like adjective, and here yet another soundplay is on the verb's sound, "alah", to rise up [specifically, the smell of the burnt offering to God] -- and to use 'al alone, stresses that He's God as well, since that's often how the short Name of God is used. Hebrew embedded soundalikes are always important, and always employed in salvation or God-essence passages, especially in this one, where rising/carrying up/off is a central rhetorical theme. So the typical translation, "because" is not right, too truncated -- you need the upwardness and to-God As God connotation, too. How deftly the tiny preposition 'al shows Resurrection, going up to God as an Offering, then going up to God to sit at His Right Hand. Only God Is This Smart In The Use Of Words!
Wordplay on His Substitutionary Spiritual Death AND Physical Death, is communicated so deftly by a displacing appointment for His two Burials, one on the Cross (the spiritual death, thinking through it which paid for sins), and one in the grave (physical death). You have to use the English "displaced" to convey nathan/dosw. Hebrew is bald that what belonged to the wicked and the rich is given to Him, instead. Greek uses the preposition anti in wordplay (prep will be used in v.12 as well), showing instead of, against. So to make sure English doesn't mislead (it's not just a prediction of Him being between criminals and being in a rich tomb, ok?) -- you need "displaced". We were displaced from Hell, He IN our place, so now He is IN our place in both substitutionary death, and physical burial. He was buried with our sins on the Cross, Romans 6. He didn't die physically for our sins. See Grail link in DDNA.htm.
Yet "displaced" as a translation in English still isn't good enough. Isaiah is making wordplay in this verse to set up the Hebrew "tahat" (tah-HAT) in 53:12. That preposition/particle is first about restitution, in the Mosaic Law: the eye-for-eye, SUBSTITIONARY PAYMENT, an EXCHANGE. So God is making a wry setup statement (in the LXX, the verb "to give" is in the first person), showing His [Father's] Decree of Contract Completion. I have to think more about what English word(s) would better include both the restitution/exchange concept as well as the displacement concept. Displacement is first in order of concepts: the cutting-out, then grafting in nature of God's Salvation, Making Sons Plan which He first announced in Gen3:22, making witty use of the min preposition as the legal basis for cutting Adam and the woman out of the Garden.
Also, it's very interesting that the Hebrew word "hamas" means wrongful violence. Hebrew asah means to make something out of something; note that mirmah, from which we probably get the English "murmur", is a mouthed deceit/treachery/talk of rebellion. This verse is typically pronounced fulfilled in the way He was crucified with the two thieves, and in His body being buried in Joseph of Arithemea's tomb. It's significant that two types of dying events are depicted here in either text, which might explain why "death" is in the singular in the LXX. It's not just a location association per event. This is not a figurative depiction, but two real deaths. So He gets truly buried while on the Cross [though that manner of death wasn't yet depicted here]; next, His body is truly buried in place of the rich man. Greek plural adjectives are to be translated as substantives, so the normal meaning is multiple rich 'men'. But note the play on words here: multiple riches are substantival, too. "True Riches" is a PLUNDER theme in the NT, referring back to this Isaiah passage, through 53:12. So that's a more accurate interpretation of the plural plousious, here, since it's what the NT uses (note how Christ stresses "true riches" in the Gospels, for example). So note the wordplay in 53:12, how We Become Rich 'Men' (great ones), because the True Riches got IN us -- a major theme throughout the NT (see how Christ uses the term "true riches", and Paul's refrain about "riches", and how merizw/meros in 53:12 is refrained in the NT. Astonishing Genius: God's. Ack! Emphatically true! See how important it is to research Bible keywords? This is how a good lawyer drafts any contract/agreement to make it airtight in meaning.]
Isa53:10, Masoretic text "Therefore the LORD [Father] greatly delighted to crush Him; He made Him sick-with-Love's-grief; since [due to eternity-past contract with Father] appointed in 'her' place as a guilt offering, His Soul.. will see [as first-born, play on Reuben's lost inheritance] seed/offspring [which is] caused to be long-lived; therefore the Great Delight of the LORD [Father] will prosper [as per 52:13] in His [Son's] Hand [Humanity]."[Here the equality and agreement of Son and Father are stressed (since both qualify as "Lord", see). Such deft economy of words! Putting His Soul as Guilt Offering smack dab in the middle of the verse, so the Object becomes the Subject of the next clause! So the inspired Hebrew and Greek texts don't need to tell you which "him" is in view, because you are presumed to already know from the activity in a sentence. Because the Equality and Agreement is something foundational to Their Nature, the fact of it is repeated in a foundational manner, by not naming (idea of the Sacred Name). So a pronoun is often used instead to denote their Sacred Equality and Agreement. Of course, Isaiah has been using that pronomial structure throughout this passage, but here he reaches a crescendo. Next comment: "Crush" is dakah, again, tying back to v.5. Then there's the mind-blowing, "appoint": which is Hebrew verb sim, and is a Temple keyword meaning to put, place, appoint, set, set aside -- as a SUBSTITUTE for whatever else. Hence Appointed times set aside, at the Tabernacle/Temple; hence appointed sacrifices set aside, for appointed times; hence appointed blessings, due to those set-asides. And one of the most important appointed sacrifices, was the red heifer offering for the sins of ALL the people. So to decline "sim" suddenly in the active voice, with a female suffix, and then couple it with the Hebrew Temple word asham (=guilt offering, see also Isa52:14 and 54:1 which use the cognate verb), means HE makes SUBSTITUTIONARY atonement for 'her'! What deft Hebrew! So He becomes a 'she' for purposes of this atonement, the living Red Heifer Forever! Hence all the marital/rape/pregnancy language in this passage. Awesome! So of course the shallow translations don't reference that important gender switch, but should. In English, you have to unfortunately convert "appoint" to passive voice, thereby missing the stress on how it's HER fault HE becomes a substitute -- or, you have to add an entire clause to accomplish the intended Hebrew stress, as was done here (well, it still sounds somewhat passive, in English). Considering the marital/rape/pregnancy analogy throughout, and how heheli is used also for lovesickness, this deft gender change is awesomely consistent. Hebrew verb halah means to become sick, weak, diseased, grieved, but is often used for lovesickness, unrequited love. Its soundplay ties back to hadar (human glory), hamad (delight) in 53:2. But the LORD haphetz's His Son (soundplay of the fff's denotes more intense delight, based on the intrinsic qualities of His Son) here in v.10. The placement of nephesh in the sentence makes Him both the Object [His SOUL, notice, not His Body] Who is sacrificed for 'her' [mankind]; and He's thus simultaneously the Subject Who sees His endlessly-living seed/offspring ("caused to be long" is the literal Hebrew, and "yom" makes for the never-ending meaning), the fruit of his Soul's substitutionary labor (v.11). So note again the tie to the sarcasm in 53:8, "who shall recount of His Descendants, since He was cut off from the land, The Life?!" Well, GOD IS MAKING SONS! Right here. Right now. Due to the contract, at the appointed time, with the appointed Substitute!]
In English we have no exact equivalents, so I tried to translate using English Drama -- not good enough, I'm afraid! So you are to understand that "purify" means simultaneously that the Hero (Son's Humanity) buys it all for 'her', and that He Himself is made the Temple -- for "purify" is a cultic word in the OT, and in 1Jn1:9, for Purifying The Temple. And the Wife is the Temple of the Husband, get it? So He Sanctifies Her. So "tes plages" (pronounced TAYSS play-GAYSS, the "e" is an eta), which appears in the LXX in 53:3,4, and here in 10; here, in the instrumental genitive, focusing on the in-His-Soul meaning, versus the action done TO Him, en plague, v.3 and 4; and of course it's a feminine noun, lol! First meaning is whipping, beating, striking, and the wounding thus resulting. This graphic verbal noun is like watching Mel Gibson's "The Passion", the scenes where He is struck with the Roman stone-and-bone lash, emphasis on the beating itself, happening. Rape is like that, but I shouldn't describe in a public webpage the phallic (and mental) activity which "plages" also signifies. In sum, plages signifies total plunder/devastation with extreme hostile, beating force; so it's a raping like the Rape of the Sabine, the Rape of Nanking -- all happening to One Person, and all-at-once! Gibson's movie was actually too tame, and he wanted to show more graphically what Isaiah was talking about: I remember hearing him and Caviezal talk about it on TBN or the i channel, as promo for the movie. So of course he himself was beaten up for telling more of the truth. Well, the Hebrew and Greek exonerate him from the charges levied; the verses themselves would be banned by 'moral' (read: hypocritical) 'Christians' in any published translations. So no wonder they are euphemised, else no Bibles could be sold. Only half-truths and outright lies, sell. Just as Isaiah explains in this Chapter.
Surrounding context has so many synonyms of this raping activity in both Hebrew and Greek -- after all, the entire Chapter depicts the Raped One Without His Own Descendants Who birthed Eternal Life for the same "many" who Raped Him on the Cross! -- the meaning here must stress the raping significance. The noun for rape itself was used earlier in the passage, 53:4 (associated with kakwsis, a deserved-rapine noun); then verb-converted (traumatizw) with a like-dramatic noun (molopi) in v.5; the noun plage itself is used in other Isaiah passages like Isa10:24, :26, 30:26. When you check out the almost-100 uses of plages in Bible, you'll realize it depicts a total calamity, not a few bonks on the head. Here, the calamity is the plundering after a raid, theme since 52:13, so means in the feminine 'side', sword-slaughter (cutting throats, really) and rapine. So that is why Greek infinitive of purpose, aphairew is used. Many carrying/bearing/pregnancy nuances. Here, the verb lays stress on PLUNDERING, pillaging; and always, RAPE. The defeated town's women were carted off and forced to be wives (well, that's euphemistic). Prior carrying verbs were phero in v.4, ago in v.7-8, airw in v.8; all these carryings lead to Him carrying us off as plunder, by the end of v.12, thus realizing the predicted purpose of Isa52:13.]
I'm not crusading on the mistake of deleting Isa53:10-11 in the LXX from published translations. Forget the never-ending politics of trying to get public recognition on this or any other kind of mistake -- people just make up and then use the politics, for their fifteen minutes of ego-stroking, so will never learn anything. To them, "God" and "Bible" and "scholarship" are badges to wear to make self feel important -- who cares, what's the truth? They want the temptations of Matt4, but the Lord turned that junk down flat. So, you can, too: test and grab the riches, for yourself. That's what they're there for; that's what the Lord counseled in His "true riches" comments. (I live on these two verses because they are a mini-Bible, encompassing virtually every other verse. Makes it real easy to defeat temptation, figure out how to think, etc. Life is far more enjoyable on-the-ground, due to these Divine-nucleotide verses. Everything gets re-engineered around them, in the thinking. And it's flawless, the connection!)
Ok, now to the Hebrew notes: "me amal" begins this verse, and it's climactic. That's our preposition min, and "amal" is for PREGNANCY LABOR pains, as you can prove if you search the word in the OT. Da'ath is translated "Mastery of Divine Thinking" as explained in 52:13's notes. There is no direct object after the hipfil of tsadeq (the verb), meaning a sweeping justification was made; the Righteous One is the one making the many righteous, but that is not directly stated, either -- higher drama, so the obvious meaning need not be stated. Rather, the FULFILLMENT of the Son-Servant's 'end' of the contract, IS stated: notice how the verse thus begins and ends with the pregnancy of bearing all sins; hence the bearing of children from His SOUL, is to be fulfilled in the same manner, by the mastery of His Divine Thinking, written on our hearts and minds. This is the meaning of "Light" in the OT, and it was specifically identified with God's 'Face', the idea of Seeing Him. I can't read the Scroll well enough in that verse to tell if "or" (spelled as aleph waw resh) is in the verse, though the translation Fred P. Miller makes of it, claims it is there. If so, then we at least know more of the verse here, belonged in that verse, though I doubt the placement of "or" should be after "He sees". The syntactical fit seems obvious, given the BHS and LXX texts we have. We need merely to fit them together.
Hebrew sabea and sheba, respectively satisfied and seven/promise, are being soundplayed in this verse. The first verb means to be happily full from a meal, so comes to mean being in a state of rest -- which of course is what the seventh day was for, and the promise being fulfilled was to bring rest (wordplay used in Book of Hebrews). The Word is rest (ibid). We are progeny of the Word, and that is how we get rest (ibid). So it then makes sense to see this promise of manufacturing His Thinking in the next clause, with the stress on tsadeq being the 'fruit' of it, which ties back to 52:13's purpose, making sons from the Sons by means of His Thinking; since, as even the BHS text here states bluntly, it was His Thinking which paid for sins on the Cross. All the BHS text lacks is the elaboration from v.10 in the LXX, and elaboration from v.11 in the LXX. So "justify..make righteous" is one thing, One Whole Result. In the Bible, the concept denoted by the Hebrew tsadeq (and tsedekah, the verb's cognate noun) do not divide Righteousness and Justice. Same for the Greek dikaiow (dikaiosune). So if a whole, there's nothing you can add to it, huh...]
This is a very graphic verse, switching to verbal nouns; when a preposition is deliberately missing, as here (the prepositions are 'saved' for v.12), you have to add them in English. (Well, you miss the Greek multiple-entendre by inserting prepositions, but in English you need them first for sense.) So, this verse elaborates on the contract functions and their results. Every word in here is technical, Bible-defined. So the main verbs of each clause are capitalized, so you can see the outline better. It's significant that tei sunesei is in the dative -- So God Uses His Son's Thinking-In-His-Humanity, To Make Righteous. Why lexicons seem to think this LXX verse is spurious, makes zero sense -- this verse is the reason why we have salvation, and have a Bible to learn. Else there'd be no Romans 8 and the entire Book of Hebrews, which center on this Mind to be written on us (well, throw out 1Cor, since that's its main theme, too). Oh well. So it couldn't be more dramatic than for Infinite Truth To Get Written Into Our Finite, Sinner Minds (hence the need for the Holy Spirit). Hence the verbal nouns, dropped (really reserved) prepositions (watch how they pile up in v.12). So with this verse included, the entire flow of 52:13, means a CIRCLE of thinking from God, to man, and back to God, finally compatible. No wonder He wanted to carry our sins! Note the ending 'carrying' metaphor: there, the verb is anaphero, and is a technical offering-to-God verb. So He was plundered, and now His Thinking IS the plunder, just as 52:13 purposed! So now we can become worthy AS plunder, for God. So now v.12 flows perfectly, the next conclusion: Shall Not The One Who Paid And Got Plundered, Get All Plunder Made Out From Him, To Fulfill The Promise Of Long-Lived Seed; To Fulfill The Promise In 52:13 Of His Mastery Of Thinking Prospering? Heh.]
The great ones are both OT and NT, but the NT running explanations of these "great ones" usually has the word plerow, pleroma, teleios or telos or teleiow, somewhere nearby, and use the LXX keywords to tie back to this passage. Verse is not properly translated in any Bible I can read. Which is weird, since the LXX faithfully translates it. Note how "HIS SOUL" has been strategically placed in the center of the verse, throughout this Isa52:13ff passage. Bible uses word order to convey centrality a lot, so look for it in any verse you examine. Translations (sometimes unavoidably) change the word order, so you MISS what Bible says. Here's proof all by itself God doesn't want us to learn Bible in translation (except as an adjunct). For practice, look at the word-order-centrality of God, Christ, in verses like Hebrews 11:1 (where "hupostasis" means CHRIST, always mistranslated -- but see Heb1:3 so you know Heb11:1 means "Christ"); Romans 8:28, Eph2:10, pretty much any verse in Peter, and in the first 18 verses (which are but one Greek sentence) in Eph1:1-18. Greek has many different ways to use word order to emphasize, and each way tells you something essential.]
So here's a working poetic translation of Isaiah 52:13 through 54:1, where the poem logically ends. 54:1 doubles as the first line for the next chapter, as well: but you can't see how Isa54:1 comes to BE there in translation, because all the birthing wordplay rife in Isa53, is stripped out from translations. Hence it ends the chapter here, too. As always, some introductory notes are needed before you view the translation, else it won't be meaningful.
Meter matters altogether, here. If you load up ISA53.RTF and download the BibleWorks Hebrew and Greek fonts (first link in that rtf doc), you can put both this page and that doc side-by-side, to see how the poetic translation below apes Isaiah's meter, clause for clause. Or, you can see the meter count in the Exegetical Notes section below the poetic translation 'brochure' table which follows. Poetry in Hebrew isn't like English: meter, not rhyme, specialized vocabulary, not evened rhythm, characterise it. So for English, the objective is to make the translation 'sound' as it does in Hebrew, using the same meter and cadence, both of which a Bible writer choses due to DOCTRINAL significance. For God exploits every nuance in the original languages, including meter, soundplay, wordplay, and cadence -- to TEACH. For example, 9-syllable clauses are used by Isaiah to denote Unilateral Divine Action; 8 syllables, to denote either God's action toward/for mankind, or mankind's attitude toward God's action. Next, 7 syllables, is used to denote Trinity and the God-man nature of Christ Himself. Really bald, the way Isaiah parses his text. Can't miss Trinity, for example, when you have so many 9's, and all the seven-syllable clauses, are trebled together.
LXX apes Isaiah's style; but since Greek requires almost twice as many syllables to convey the same Hebrew meaning, in the LXX you find clauses cast in multiples of the Hebrew syllable structure. Also, Greek has its own drama and poetic style, and this is likewise used. For example, in Isa52:13, LXX rather dramatically and cleverly 'reserves' Hebrew yarum, subsuming it into upsow (verb after first kai).
Next, the LXX's 'read' on the Hebrew will be more closely referenced here in translation. After all, these were Alexandrian Jews, Christ hadn't come yet, so you can't accuse the text of 'Christian' bias. Lots closer to Attic, too. So when there's doubt about how a word should be interpreted, I'll go with the LXX 'interpretation', since clearly those guys would know better.
Hierarchy in translation: real meaning first, then Hebrew word order (so you can follow along in the Hebrew/Greek); then, word- and sound-play; then meter, cadence and sound. If there is a good English idiom which conveys sufficiently the same meaning, I'll use it. Also, Bible conveys many layers of meaning at once. That's why people mistake it for ambiguity. By short and pithy word choices, you get an omnidirectional branching of meaning. So, Bible writers specialize in pithy words. Hebrew verbs and nouns are created from certain consonantal stems, thus when you see one word which sounds like another, God means you to TIE those similar meanings together, too. Greek is not so economical as Hebrew, but it has the same feature. So look for what seems like ambiguity, and recognize instead, that multiple, branching layers of meaning are intended -- as in a building of multiple storeys.
Thus you get closer to what meaning was heard by Isaiah's audience, and what God meant them to know. No translation can be as good as the original. Language features just don't wholly port over in translation, as any professional translator can tell you. Best to learn it in the original. That's true with all Scripture: the controversy in Christendom is about 99.75% due to people not using the original-language text, or not properly using the original-language text. Go By The Language Rules To Interpret Bible, Within Its Own Definitions In Its Own Text: that's what Peter meant, when penning 2Pet1:20-21. Of course, you cannot do that with Bible, unless 1Jn1:9 is breathed as needed -- and only a believer can use 1Jn1:9; so first 'do' John 3:16 if you don't remember ever 'doing' it, and then use 1Jn1:9 as needed.
Again, here's the 'key' to Isaiah's meter: he probably uses the same meter in other Chapters, but I've not had time to vet that idea.
However, I can't always get the English meter to exactly match Hebrew without sacrificing meaning, especially before 53:1, and in verses 10-11. So the longer clauses you see, DO match his Hebrew meter; but short clauses of one or two syllables, didn't fit in English. So, they are set off as separate 'lines', but remain words Isaiah actually uses. Thus you can get the flavor of the real meter in the longer clauses, without sacrificing meaning. So for example in 52:13, Hebrew hinneh is actually part of the first 9-syllable clause, but I couldn't make the rest of it fit in English; so I set off the interjectory hinneh, as a first clause.
Alternatively, when the English meter requires more than two extra syllables, I instead follow the LXX translation convention. In the LXX, you'll see they first tried to match Isaiah's meter; failing that, they doubled or added the number of two of his metric choices together, to create one clause in Greek (usually 7+8, 7+4, or 10+7=9+8). (Greek requires many more syllables than Hebrew for the same words, and sometimes the translation is explanatory, rather than word-for-word.) Or, like Isaiah does himself in 53:2 and :4, taking what would be an 8-meter 'whole' clause, but dividing it into dismissive-sounding, 4-syllable clauses, showing how people despised Him. So the LXX apes that, sometimes dividing the verse's meter into shorter clauses which in composite equal a whole meter Isaiah uses. This multiplying or dividing of meter wasn't intended to tally to Isaiah's total number of syllables; but rather, to provide the same rhythmic flow. So that's what I did, too. For example, 52:14's last Hebrew clause is 9 syllables. In English I needed 14, to show the same wordplay Isaiah makes. So I broke it out into 5, then 5, then 4 syllables ("His Incarnation.. sons of men!" clause). Thus the double-entendre of sons of men (4 syllables) ties as it should to EITHER "His Incarnation" or "Beyond, born out from" (the latter doesn't even 'cost' a syllable in the Hebrew, but is appended preposition min). Another example: 53:10's first Hebrew clause is only nine syllables, but in English required 14. So that one Hebrew clause is divided in English, into three 'lines' of 5, then 4, then 5 syllables. So when you add any two 'lines', you still get nine syllables. (The other three clauses in verse 10 exactly match Isaiah's meter, per 'line'.)
In the Exegetical Notes following below the poetic translation is a header denoting each verse and its Hebrew meter, so you can compare to the English rendering.
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Through God-Caused Thinking, My SlaveSon, Raised! Promoted, Glorified -- utterly! Isa52:14 Even as Many contort, shamed up-at You Even so He, Beyond-Human Mashed-up Sight His Incarnation Beyond, born out from -- the sons of men!" Isa52:15 Thus He sprinkles the Gentiles in Him. Amazed kings even shut their mouths. He Who was not recounted, they see! He Who was not heard of, they well know!
Isa53:1 Whosoever believed our report?! | Our heartbreaking sins -- HE bore them! And we ourselves, we esteemed Him Struck down, Smited by God, Abased?!! Isa53:5 He, stabbed (born) by revolting sins: ours. He, Stone-crushed (born) by twisting sins: ours. Discipline to Him, reconciles.. us. For in His Wounds, are sewn up, healed.. us! Isa53:6 Like sheep who wander astray: us. Each turning to his own way: us. Yet God shot ALL twistings in Him: ours!
Isa53:7 And He, though Oppressed, Abased:
Isa53:9 "So He shall give the wicked, His Grave; | To Stone-Crush Him, Cause Him Lovesick Grief: "If He Appoints as Shame, His Soul, He Will See Progeny Long of Days; The LORD'S Pleasure By His Hand, Succeeds." Isa53:10b So the LORD is Pleased to Purify by striking Him: "If You Substitute for Sin, Your Soul" "He will see Long-Lived Progeny." So the LORD, Pleased to remove, Plunder Isa53:11 Born from His Soul's Labor, to show Light; He will see, be satisfied to Sculpt Caused through His Thinking, to Justify. "My Righteous SlaveSon, For Many: For their twisting sins, HE will bear."
Isa53:12 "I thus Decree them as His Plunder:
Isa54:1"Whoop for joy, You-Barren-Never-Birthed! |
Hebrew "hinneh" means Attention! Look! Look at this! Look here! and is a kind of command to someone you know well: intimate, not distant; friendly, not unfriendly; good news, generally. Hebrew yaskil emphasizes this happened TO Him (hiphil "ya" prefix plays on God-caused) the skill of Divine Thinking causes prosperity. See TWOT on the meaning of sakal: its synonyms are bin and chochma, but sakal stresses the knowledge of the reason, not flashcard knowledge. Fluent motivation, therefore, due to fluent understanding of the whole. Two "mutual flanks" (my pastor's term): 1) Love for the Reason behind 2) Truth: not at all a chore on Sunday to get human approbation. So really should be translated "Through God-Caused Thinking SKILLS" -- God's Own, running in His Humanity. I wish I could render this in more poetic English, but to do so robs meaning and requires more syllables than the nine allotted, and misses Isaiah's cadence. For example, "Via" would be much better than "Through", especially since it means "Way", "road", as well; it has precisely the required double-entendre of He Himself becoming the Conduit for the building of that Thinking (upcoming in verse 11, Hebrew bedato, see how LXX translates that clause). But "Via" is two syllables, and messes up the cadence. English "By" fits the cadence but is too vague, in English; you'd not know it was IN Him, the Thinking Skills. I can't think of a better English term than "thinking", to stress the active process which sakal depicts. "Thought" is too static, and synonyms for thinking are all too limited. "Genius" would be a great translation, because it means a thinking process which masters a whole subject, and the word itself connotes from Divine Enablement -- but few readers of English know that meaning, and would mistake it for His Godness doing the thinking -- which we know is not true, here (doctrine of kenosis is embedded in the hiphil). Paul refers back to this incessantly in his letters (i.e., Eph4:13, the goal, Eph3:15-19, played on by John in 1Jn4:12-17, 1Cor2:16). Peter's dying letter ends with a command to get the same knowledge, 2Pet3:18. LXX translates yaskil with sunesis, which has the same meaning in Greek: a MASTERY of knowledge which results in a fluency of thinking (Word, here). It's a keyword in the NT, used by all the writers.
Hebrew "abadi" means both a slave and a son (the "i" means "my"), and in LXX is translated with that duality. God-caused nature of the three verbs translated here raised (which also plays on the "yah" sound in Hebrew), promoted, glorified are thus translated in LXX as well, and are in parallel. Hebrew meod is usually translated "exceedingly", but "utterly" works better as a translation. This verse is parallelled in 53:11, to make the sons: His God-Caused Thinking will be sculpted in us (hiphil of tsadeq, LXX translated maybe with plasai to reflect the hiphil). That's why the prosperity result of His Thinking is here Decreed, and reiterated as a success in 53:10 (end of verse).
Hebrew naza means "sprinkles", and is the specialized Hebrew term for what's done over the Mercy Seat on the Day of Atonement: that's the parallel day in Ethanim, to the Lamb Set Aside Date in Nisan. It depicts the Cross, Messiah paying for sins. That's why the Levitical sacrifices all involved blood. As we saw in 52:13, this 'blood' is thinking, so Isaiah refers the reader back to how He gets glorified. Blood is used for thinking throughout the Bible, even as heart is used for the believing-part of your soul where you do your thinking, Prov 23:7 being the quintessential example ("soul" is the literal translation, but to translate it "heart" conforms to the other uses of "heart" in Bible). Next, Isaiah has had as a running theme, the prophecy of God 'coming' to the Gentiles. Jews knew they had superior knowledge, so often didn't go out to 'share' God with the Gentiles. That uppity attitude is censured in this verse, and Paul plays on it in Romans Chaps 2, 4, 9-11, and in Galatians. Idea that the hated goyim will be seeing Him, but not the Jews who reject Him. It's pretty insulting.
The wordplay on "who" in verse 15 is here double-entendre. First, stress is on how almost no one believes, and also on how anyone who believes, receives the results of seeing, knowing well, and the Strength/Love/Protection of the Lord. So to show that stress I used "whosoever" and a ?! punctuation. There's also a clever soundplay on preposition min's birthing meaning. In Hebrew, "asher" would be the way to express the relative pronoun "who", whereas the interrogative form is "mi". By pairing "mi" with Hebrew verb aman (he'emin, hiphil stem used), you are reminded of the birthing which takes place due to belief in that very report. Cute. In the seconding clause, al-mi plays on upness-to-God in sound -- To Whom All Goes, of course. So it goes up to God, and God responds with revealing Himself to whomever believes. Again, that's cute. So on the surface level, mi is "who?" and al-mi is "to whom?" but underneath that surface is all this embedded up-ness, deliverance, salvation meaning, which of course is the main theme of the chapter. "Report" is literally a proclamation, a type of official news from a king; Greek word for this is euangelion, which in English is semi-transliterated, "Gospel". But here in the LXX, the legal contract term akoe is used, which plays on the shemah (i.e., Deut 6:4) in Hebrew, pretty much everywhere in the OT (akoe is used 24 times, beginning at Exo15:26, but see especially Deut 11:13) and NT.
The first 4-syllable Hebrew clause I had to 'multiply' the way the LXX does, to keep to meter: Hebrew is "lo toar lo", but the second "lo" is the preposition le coupled with 3rd sing masc suffix. It's colloquial speech, depicting how 'drily' He was received; so I had to use eight syllables, "Yet Incarnate? Oh no, not Him" to capture the negativity. (The "Yet" comes from the waw attached to hadar in the next clause, which is also their reaction, that He is not the Glory by THEIR standards.)
Content of the report to believe starts here. LXX explicitly says, "we repeat-the-report that" -- which John plays on three times, adding himself to the list of the God-appointed reporters, in 1Jn1:1-5. (John is very bald about this, changing anangellw to apangellw and then back to anangellw again, can't miss it in the Greek.) "On Trial" is the LXX rendition of lepanayw in Hebrew, which is a Trial preposition (enantion in Greek). When you go 'before' a judge or court, that kind of "before". Son, "before" Father in the 'court' of the world. Hence opposed. Hebrew preposition min is translated here "born from", because that's what it means, even though it's a preposition. Hebrew prepositions are often used as verbs in this chapter, as elsewhere in OT. So Isaiah switches to a live-action cameraman kind of mode. So in the first two clauses you have the Divine View live from Heaven; in the last two clauses -- which Isaiah divides into five subclauses @four syllables each -- you see the human reaction. So you're watching live TV in split-screen, here; the typical translations don't pick up on Trial in the first half of the verse, so they also don't catch onto the head-wagging going on, in the last half of the verse. So I translated the Hebrew into what would be the equivalent idiomatic English, which really doesn't differ that much from the literal Hebrew. People never change, lol. (First 4-syllable Hebrew clause begins at "Yet" and ends at the first "oh no" in English translation here. The rest of the English clauses tally to the Hebrew syllabification exactly, and the same look-back-look-forward nature of the four-syllable clauses is also preserved in English, hence not punctuated.)
This latter is a play on the famous "seeing, they don't see" (originally in Deut 29:3ff, see also Isa6:9-10, 28:10-12, 42:18-20, 43:8, 44:18, Hebrews 5:11-12 ("nothros" wit), 6:1-6,12, usually mistranslated). Contrast between the true Sight of Him and the blindedness we choose. So Isaiah breaks meter into 4's at the end of the verse, showing our soundbyte attention and outright hostility toward Him at His First Advent, with a suddenly-bobbing Hebrew cadence. Tsav latsav, baby: you'll see it again in verse 4, so parallels with verse 4. That meter is captured here in English, so you can 'feel' the flavor of the crowd's reaction. So 53:2 is split-screen: how Christ looks to Father in Heaven, versus how He appears to us on earth. Everywhere you see "the Land" in Hebrew after Israel's founding, the term means the PROMISED Land, Israel. So should almost always be translated that way. So is translated that way, here and in v.8.
Isaiah changes style here, starts to repeat the same word or words, and assumes a beating, striking rhythm. Thus you 'feel' something of what happens to Him Who Will Be Beaten Up for Our Sins. Here, Isaiah commences the beating rhythm with Hebrew verb baza -- to despise, disdain, hold in contempt, here in the niphal participle -- and he bookends the verb twice. Isaiah will similarly bookend other words in the following verses, continuing the rhythm, increasing the repetition. By verse 6, you feel the blows: in English, US US US US will be the repeated ending in verses 5-6, seven times. So to show this striking repetition, I'll repeat the word in translation like Isaiah does in the original, though the original has more meanings (so look up the Hebrew word). Back here in verse 3, English "abandoned" is a better choice for translation than either the typical "rejected" or "forsaken" in translation, because "abandoned" is more all-encompassing, closer to the Hebrew hadal. The idea of hadal is that people either never believed in Him, or once they believed, they stopped; or, became lukewarm, especially under pressure. English "rejected" or "forsaken" are good translations of hadal, but they are too narrow in perceived scope. Here, it's the fault of the reader, not the translator. For to the average reader, "rejected" doesn't include a previous acceptance, and "forsaken" doesn't include an initial rejection. For example, the average Christian contends that if you commit some big sin "you're not saved!" blissfully ignorant of David's being after God's Own Heart, though everyone caws about his sins. So here in 53:3, to translate Hebrew hadal as "abandoned", seems to better include the whole range of reaction.
And here we see the fourth demonstration of how THINKING pays for sins. In 52:13, we are flat told the Decree that by God-Caused Thinking He will be raised, so the success of the Cross was bought by that Thinking; verse 11's bedato yasdiq will echo back to 52:13, confirming it got done. In 52:14, we see Him live, beat up beyond Human resemblance -- got to be Thinking Toward God (Ps22:1ff) to stay sinless, in that state. Obviously the third Thinking is Him on Trial, in v.2's "Sapling" clause, paired with the Root (of Jesse), despite the want-of-Word-Water in the Land. So fourth, here in 5:3, we see "The Heartbreak Man": that's really a better translation than "Man of Sorrows" -- though I like that translation a bunch -- because "holi" is a kind of LOVEsickness, not merely body sickness (i.e., used by Solomon, and earlier by David's son as a ruse to rape Tamar). Isaiah will repeat Him carrying our holi in the next verse; will repeat His Own holi caused by FATHER, in verse 10; so this begins the setup toward verse 10. From verse 3 onward, the Soul-Paying Meaning of the Cross is repeated often, with a crescendoing repetition of "His Soul" by the time you get to verses 10-12. I counted 21 of His Soul functions depicted throughout the chapter; you might find more. Can be no doubt whatsoever that His Thinking paid for sins, just as the Decree of 52:13 states. Now I understand why my pastor repeated over and over that THINKING is the spiritual life. Didn't used to understand his stressing that so much, the congregation wanted to vomit: but now I do understand. We really don't get it about what happened on the Cross; and for a long time, I didn't get it, either. No excuse, really.
The "Faces 'shelter'" clause is a group of nouns making a TV picture in Isaiah: visual play on how He is the Rock, Our Refuge of salvation -- being sheltered away from, ironic use of birthing preposition min. 'Picture of rejection, people turning their faces away from Him. Again, Isaiah takes advantage of sound: panim is a singular noun with a plural ending because a face has many expressions. Also doubles as more than one face. Root idea is visual, a face you see is turned toward you: panah means to turn. So here, you get this double-entendre, graphic picture of faces turning away from His Face, one by one. Hebrew seter means a hiding place or refuge -- a place you hide something valuable, or go for protection; so by using "mas'ter", Isaiah draws a picture of The Refuge being refused, folk hiding away from Him, rather than in Him.
Again, preposition min is used like a verb, idea of separation, beyond-and-awayness. Here, turning away from the One Whose Birth will give them spiritual birth -- but they don't want it. This mode of expression really matters, for it's a Hebrew aphorism about how Moses' face shone when seeing God face-to-face. The common Jewish blessing of "May His Face shine upon you", the quintessential wish that you learn Torah so well you see God face-to-face -- is here evoked by Isaiah (see the end of Num6:22ff for the origin of that blessing, context of Nazirite vow of dedication/separation to study the Law). So all that mouthing and dreaming about SEEING Him face to face, well.. Here He is! You're SEEING Him face-to-face now! yet everyone turns away?! We don't change much over the centuries, do we...
LXX stresses all that, converting both min and the verbs into passives -- what He receives -- and translating the Hebrew "keh" not as "like", but as a "ki" (because, using hoti in Greek). LXX spends an extra clause to slow the action, so you can ponder Him who was not given another thought by those who would see Him (ouk elogisthe, last two words in the LXX). So while the conventional English translation of this clause is okay, it's not graphic enough. No doubt that the Jews translating Isaiah into the LXX, knew what would happen. Again, you can't accuse Christians of rendering this chapter -- even today, we Christians have but a kindergarten-like understanding of it, thinking His Physical death paid for sins! The Jews who knew the LXX had no such ignorance, that's for sure.
I wish I could say "The Heartbreak Man well knows Lovesick Grief" because Hebrew yadah is an intimate knowledge -- yadah is euphemistic for the sex act in OT, not a mere acquaintance -- but that extra "well" is too many syllables. So "knows" ends up being finessed, quiet -- which someone in truly deep grief, really is. (Isaiah uses 8 syllables per clause in this verse.) Deep grief is silent, too deep for words -- Paul will play on this verse in Romans 8:26 (context starts in 8:11, picture of a woman in pregnancy labor, evoking Isa53:11). Isaiah is also parallelling the "bin" (intensive understanding), last word in 52:15 (hitbonanu), with the intimate knowledge of our rejecting Him (and of our sins, per the LXX stress). Because He knew Grief, we get to know Him, is the idea: The Man 'knew' His Wife on the Cross, so that she could come to know Him (Pauline concept-play in Ephesians 5). So Isaiah begins to use terms of rapine and pillaging, beginning with the next verse. Euphemisms will be used.
The repetition of the "US" beating on Him, begins in earnest, now, but the us-ness isn't metered at set intervals until the next two verses. So here, Isaiah just starts the repetition of us-ness in each clause. Yeah, because we're so full of ourselves! You probably should pull up ISA53.rtf now, to see how the rhythm of the clauses have this overhand-beating sound, quickening pace by the end of the verse. Here in verse 4, each clause ends on an upward beat. Verses 5 and 6 will end each clause on downward beats, 'feel of the stabbing, hitting in Him.
So here in Isa53:4, Isaiah begins a new parallel analogy again with nasa: this time, to 'booty carried-off', a theme which dominates the rest of the chapter; verb is used yet again in the princely sense of lifting us up with Him, still as His Booty (paired with paga), in verse 12. So here, one must use the word "lifted" for nasa, to see the wordplay on "promoted", and on the upcoming synonyms Isaiah will use for plunder. Idea of Him being treated by us as no more than booty, a toy to abuse; but in the end He gets ALL of us as booty, one way or another (we believe and are booty in heaven, or never believe and are forever reviling Him in hell). So, like barbaric attackers coming into a town, stealing everything they can, killing all the men, raping and capturing all the women. So here in v.4, "lifted" is better wordplay, fitting the Hebrew, having the same dual-entendre in English. Writer of Hebrews will be referencing this section of Isa53 using the same wordplay (and even the same LXX infinitives in verse 10, i.e., aphairew), especially in Hebrews 10. Idea that what you bear burdens you, and is also your PRIZE. Clearly, what we become post-death is nothing like we are now, or we wouldn't be a prize worth a tinker's dam.
Isaiah's cadence is now like a sewing needle's steady up-down; each clause ending with a "u" sound, signifying US; same, in verse 6. Notice how in the English here of vv5-6, each clause ends with a STRIKE. That's how it 'feels' in the Hebrew, too. It's pretty graphic. This verse is horribly blanded out in published Bible translations, thus belittling what He went through. Worse, translations typically dignify by vague euphemisms, the shocking horribleness of OUR rejections and sins. No one intends to do this: our sin nature is easily tapped by Satan&Co., no matter how credentialed we are. After all, there's a Trial going on. So Bible obfuscation in translation is a major satanic strategic goal. We can't but fail.
Isaiah continues the beating "us" ending of each clause as he did in verse 5. Here, the bookending word is "kollanu": all of us. Isaiah also slows down, here: so you must drawl the syllables of the first two clauses to add one syllable per clause, to keep to the meter; then, you have to swallow two syllables in the last clause, to keep to the meter. Slow down, wander off, speed up like an arrow -- bullseye! In Him forever! When sewing, you'll notice there are moments in the stitch when you have to slow down, 'wander' as it were from the fabric, moving the threaded needle away from it. Then, zoom! In goes that closing stitch, circle completed! And to think, like every other prophet this Divinely witty information just came out of his mouth, perfect the first time!
TWOT lexicon (which is bundled in BibleWorks) brings out a meaning of this verse I hadn't thought about before: it's a type of 1Jn1:9 usage, admitting one has sinned. You'll see the prophets do this a lot, admitting sin on behalf of the whole nation (see also Daniel 9, verses patterned on Psalm 32:5 and 66:18, frequent refrains in the prophets, really). That's pretty ironic, since many Christians today pooh-pooh 1Jn1:9 and its many refrains in the NT. You're spiritually comatose, without it. Bible can't be read properly, without it. So to see it again here in Isa53:6, is pretty important, and reminds the reader to admit he's sinned also, lest the rest of the chapter become tsav latsav, gobbledygook in his head. Now you know why Israel, the prize people who received this Precious Word, only mouth it on the sabbath, understanding nothing. We should beware, for we do the same dang thing, for kollanu ka'tson, ta'inu.
Hebrew tainu, paninu and the Greek planaw all connote wandering off a known path, one you're supposed to be on, in favor of one you prefer -- but calling the path you prefer, the 'right' one. "Way" means "road", as in "the way to Mandalay". Or, more famously, "The Way, the Truth, and the Life". Hebrew word is derek, and Greek word is odos. So there is an objective road going to a destination in life we need to be on (Eph4:12-13), but we choose to wander off it, pretending we're on a 'better' or the 'right' road (Eph4:14). So "wander astray" is used rather than either one alone or "go astray", because LXX uses planaw, which has this connotation of wanting to wander off into what's bad for you, being an easy dupe of any ol' claimant as shepherd. LXX repeats planaw twice, first for Hebrew tainu, and then for Hebrew paninu. It matters to know all this, because the NT constantly plays on the right and wrong way; because planaw here is often referred back to (i.e., in Eph4:14 and many other verses, search the Greek to see them all). Of course, everyone knows that "sheep" metaphor is constantly referenced in the NT.
Hebrew paga -- pronounced pah-GAAH -- ending ayin -- to rhyme with the "a" in "lab" -- is generally mistranslated. One should not translate paga as "lay" or "intercede", for paga means something HITTING at the intended place. Something that hits the mark and thus joins; hitting paydirt, hitting a bullseye, going exactly where intended, are the concepts behind the 'hit' of paga. Thus creating a unity, and that means Substitution; so the English verb "shot" is most appropriate, and correctly connotes both violence and AIM. The LXX stresses this fact by using paradidomi here and twice in the climactic verse 12 (which also uses paga, there also translated "shot"). Yes, paga is in the hiphil: and if you look in TWOT or other lexicon you find "make intercession" as the first meaning listed for the hiphil, so that's how translators translate paga. But in English, that's not what's meant here or in verse 12. Isaiah is using all meanings of the verb, starting with the meanings in the qal, ending with the success of it being Substitution for us; the LXX reflects that range, by using paradidomi in the aorist indicative. Moreover, English to "make intercession" is inaccurate, because in English that action merely denotes a plea, whether or not accepted; but here in both the Hebrew and Greek, you're flat told it's a His Substitution That Succeeds in wrapping us up in Him: the Substitution Contract, comes up in verses 10-11. So "make intercession" in English is misleading, at best; at worst, it belies the efficaciousness of the Cross. Now you know why billions who call themselves Christian think we can either lose our salvation, or that Christ's Payment on the Cross only made us 'eligible' in some way, so we must add works or getting wet, to be saved; thus unwittingly deem the Cross Payment a mere "intercession", a kind of bribe?! So here in translation we wander off the Road, proving by it Isaiah's use of awon, twisting everywhere -- versus being united in Him. See how we sheep twist Scripture, 'translating' His Work on the Cross as mere "intercession" for us?!!!! Yuck!
So in the last clause of verse 6, awon -- translated here as "twisting sins", verse 5 -- is truncated to "twistings", to also encompass our wandering off. Isaiah means that, in context, sewing metaphor. (All thread is made by twisting fibers, in case you didn't know.) So English has a handy way to render what Isaiah means, by using "twistings" here in verse 6. You can see the tie to twisting sins, easily enough. Thus God threads ALL our salvation IN Him!
This is a verse you really have to view in the Hebrew, because the last clause deliberately UNcouples parts of speech normally appended together; to fit the meter in speech, you have to ellide two syllables. Visually, you see preposition beh stand on its own, no verb, only appended with "Him" -- thus sounding like Hebrew verb "bo", GOING TO Him; the particle 'et (denoting the next word as a direct object) stands alone, no Hebrew 'hyphen'; so, awon (twisting sin, singular, denoting nature, collectively) stands alone; kullanu ("all of us") stands alone, bookending the verse. Thus Isaiah visually stresses the sewing of v.5 completing in verse 6, all these separate 'pieces' hitting and thus joined in HIM. Parallel verse is 2Cor5:21. Get the irony? In the Hebrew, properly you should slow down and enunciate each syllable, they are separated, conceptually and actually -- but instead you must speed up, to close the stitch, to keep to the meter, join what shouldn't be joined! Can't translate that wit!
Thus again we see the Real Divine Decree to Create: Him. Thus the Calvinist conundrum is answered. No, God did not have to put on a blindfold, as it were, ignoring what He knows about us to Elect; for, He Sovereignly Elected Christ. As a result, He can justify creating, in the FIRST place. Surely no one in his right mind thinks we'd have a right to be born, even if we never sinned. Any creation is still insufferably finite, never mind being perfect; after all, even a perfect child is but a child, SHORT of the Parent, 2nd prong of Rom3:23. So by Electing Christ, creation can be decreed in Him, by Him, for Him, everything -- Him. Then, the problem of sins gets handled also -- in Him. So, God Elects Anyone Who Believes In Him To Be Saved, John 3:16. Knowing who that will be, but not based on anything we are -- but Based On Christ, John 16:9. See? Perfect Sovereign Solution, never ignoring what God knows. Only a liar ignores truth. God is no liar.
Same is true from our end. Think: is life really worth having in the first place, if it only means you engage in animal functions and seek/get the approbation of other humans? Then you die? Whatever for?! Don't we all find ourselves wondering, "is this all there is?" like the famous Peggy Lee song? Well: is it worthwhile, by contrast, to be alive in whatever condition you are or become, in order to learn His Thinking, Psalm 139:17? Which, as you see from Isaiah53, is the very contract for our existence, the Divine Decree? So what satisfies Father, is to beget His Son's Thinking in us. So, He must first Decree His Son to become finite, YH 'joining' WH, haYaH plus haWaH! Now, that's a reason to create! At His End.. and at ours. Even though, we do not deserve to be created, it's still a question of what's worth living for. And it's only worth living for Christ, 2Cor5:14-21. Can't live for Someone Whose Thinking you don't know. Awww, poor baby, cry all the way to the Bible Bank to get your daily deposit of His Thinking, Ps139:17, Eph3:15-19, to get Eph4:13, 2Pet3:18!
In this new poetic paragraph, having seen human attitudes toward Him, we now see Father's View. So Isaiah here switches to 7 syllables to show His Divine Perfection, and the clauses are trebled, depicting Trinity. Last two clauses are nine syllables, depicting Father's Decree and the Trinity's role in it: to be silent, allow the abuse to hit Him. Most of Isaiah's verses are in four clauses. This one is five, and Isa53:12 is six clauses' long. The number of clauses will matter, for text in Isa53:10-11 missing from the Hebrew, is in the Greek and vice versa, so one must estimate how to meter those two verses. The estimate is based on what verses are paralleled. Isa 53:10-11 parallel 52:13, here to 53:7 via 53:9 (beginning of the contract summary, Decree of 52:13-14 elaborated), and ahead to 53:12 (contract delivery terms).
The major mistranslations in this verse are: Hebrew ana is euphemised, and Hebrew rahel means "ewe" (from which we get "Rachel") -- not "sheep". It matters to get the sheep's sex right, considering that sexual words are used throughout Isaiah to denote how He was raped with our sins on the Cross. Not good, to belittle the Cross via euphemism in the name of 'decency'! So the second verb in the sentence, abuse verb "ana", is repeated as a participle: but not from the standpoint of those thinking Him evil (same ana, last verb in verse 4).. but from God's View. This is a parallel verse to 52:14, which of course is the Decree; so 52:13 is realized VIA the abasement, and thus is a promotion -- Paul will point out this parallel in Phili 2:5-10. So again ana is here translated "Abased". LXX subsumes both Hebrew verbs of the first clause, into the quintessential abuse verb kakow. This all-purpose verb denotes the kind of rapine and pillaging which occur when a particularly vicious people plunder a village. Greeks had their moral standards, too -- and kakow signifies that even those far-looser standards, are utterly violated. So when you see this LXX verb, you are to understand inhuman injustice of extreme magnitude, utterly beyond-the-pale, is practiced. Kinda like, skewering babies. "He stays mute" is a better translation of "alam" (which LXX translates with aphonos, so He's not forced to stay quiet). Isaiah is stressing how He chose not to speak, repeating that fact twice in the verse, bookending it. So here you see His Thinking toward Father, stressed. Beyond-human: requires Divine Thinking, to stay mute under so much abuse. Whenever my pastor covers this passage, he stops to remind us that the Lord didn't begin to scream until imputed with our sins (screaming out Psalm 22:1, therefore recalling that whole Psalm while receiving the blows of our sins in His Soul). Beyond-human thinking begets beyond-human stamina, even in The Human. Yet we think the spiritual life is dead-corpuscle stuff? LOL.
Each clause depicts man's raping attitude. Back in verse 7, we saw through God's Eyes. Here in v.8, Isaiah begins a kind of tic-tac-toe, parallelling the first clause in this verse with the first clause in verse 7, to advance the meaning further. (John uses that same rhetorical technique in 1Jn, beginning at 1Jn1:5). So in verse 7, you get a graphic picture of His Arrest and His being abused by authority. Here in verse 8, you hear the abuse-of-justice 'verdict' by those kangaroo courts (6-7, per NT verses, see PassPlot.htm's "Daily Chronology" link).
We still are seeing through God's Eyes, but from the standpoint of what man did TO God's Uniquely-Born Son. The birthing wit in this verse is totally absent from translations. In this climactic verse Isaiah again piles on the "m" sounds, parallelling verse 5, stressing min-birthing. It's super-important to get that birthing wordplay, because every word in this verse is playing on it, all leading up to the Plunder Decree in verse 12. For example, the first word in the verse, Hebrew noun otser, means barren, as in a barren woman; it sounds just like "oppression", too (which is also consonantally ayin tsade resh). So Isaiah 'couples' barren with the birthing preposition min -- anticipating Isa54:1! Not only that, but -- play on mishhat in 52:14 -- "mishpat" here in 53:8, means judgement by a duly-constituted governmental court (translated "Trial" in the LXX and here in English), is also 'coupled' with yet another preposition min! Moreover, the word for "take away" or "led away" is the raping plunder verb, laqach. If my pastor reviewed that verb once, he reviewed it a thousand times. "Laqach" (pronounced "la-KAACHHH", to sorta rhyme with "black", last syllable deep and hard in throat) means you SEIZE a woman after a campaign for your prize, carrying or dragging her off, usually raping her on the spot to 'mark' her. See, after a raid, usually there would be this long collection period after a 'city' was razed or taken, with the goodies and the women and children, all assembled in the center, facing the leader, with the raiding party around them. Then the leader of the raid would apportion all of that booty out, keeping the best for himself. There would always be leftovers, women and children who weren't assigned, who anyone could just grab: laqach. Prior to that, you might have a contest over one of the women or some article, with two or more of the victorious raiding 'soldiers' battling each other over who gets it. Life was brutal. It shouldn't be whitewashed in translation.
So the first clause in the Hebrew, uses brutal language. It explicitly declares a Miscarriage of Justice against Him as 'birthing' His Death. For "otser" is double-entendre: 1) oppression by authority; but also 2) for a woman who is barren or only capable of bearing stillborns. "Miscarriage of Justice" is thus an exact equivalent English translation of otser (barrenness, miscarriage) plus mishpat; but since the LXX renders mishpat as "he krisis", which means Legal Trial Verdict, I use English "Trial" to defer to the LXX: "Verdict" or "Sentence" would be even better, but that's too many syllables (only 9 alloted, in Hebrew); also, to the English reader "Trial Miscarriage" is clearer than "Verdict Miscarriage". (By the way, Christ wasn't born yet for almost three centuries when the LXX was written; you can prove that from the archaic nature of its Greek and its Atticisms. So to translate the more general term mishpat with "he krisis", means they knew in gist what would happen, long beforehand.) Hebrew laqach is translated in English with two verbs, "seized and "borne", because "laqach" means both actions: 1) the booty is seized violently, and then 2) borne/carried off. One English verb would be misleading. So for translation, I opted for soundplay on "born" with "borne", to demonstrate Isaiah's own wordplay using min. Another reason to use two verbs: LXX translates both laqach and gazar in this verse (latter means cut off) as "airw", which does have all the same meanings. So if I use "seize" and then later "snatched" (for gazar) in translation here, you'll see the same synonymal meaning as is conveyed by using the same verb twice in the LXX. Of course, "snatched" in English has sexual overtones, just like it does in the Greek, and when Isaiah uses the Hebrew gazar, he uses it with preposition min -- again, playing on What Gets Birthed due to His Death. LXX will keep on translating min with apo.
See what gets missed when translations euphemize? So now when you see the second clause about "descendants" (which only NIV correctly recognizes) -- it makes sense! [So much for that Da Vinci Code nonsense -- poor Da Vinci must be turning in his grave, to see the mess being made of his Lord and his own reputation. So here you have a verse telling you Christ had no kids. Could He have kids? Sure He could have. Wouldn't have been wrong -- but the fact is, He didn't marry and didn't have kids. Isaiah tells you that He won't, in advance. For, His Kingship is not like a conventional kingdom, but that of Son for Father. Christ Himself Will Always And Only Be The King, It's Not A Dynasty. That's the very promise of Messiah -- He Personally Remains King Forever, 2 Sam 7, Ps110:1. So of course there will be false gospels of a lesser kingship, promoted by Satan&Co. Anything to denigrate Bible: and prove how ignorant we are of it. So ignorant, we can't even properly translate Isa53:8 in any Bible I can read. Sheesh: I've known Christians who "lost their faith" owing to the Holy Blood stories. What nonsense, how little the faith there was to start with, that they didn't even bother to check Isaiah 53. No wonder Satan&Co. burlesque us all so much.]
Now do you see why the second clause of this 53:8 talks about the Lord's Descendants being zero? See the irony setup? If you don't know the Hebrew wordplay, if the English is mistranslated, this comment about descendants comes from nowhere. But all this in Hebrew, leads up to the final climactic verse in 54:1, He Who Had No Descendants, Sires All. But of course, since translators always cover up sexual vocabulary and innuendo, you don't see all this meaning in translation. What a travesty, to in the name of 'decency', mask our so-great salvation mechanics! That's not really the translators' fault, of course. Translation committees have to be concerned with selling the translation, and uptight, ignorant Christians will not tolerate a faithfully-translated Bible when it's frank. So often euphemisms are chosen.
Next, as the LXX reflects faithfully but our translations do not, Hebrew shiah means to memorize-and-recite, here. Its root idea is that you learn something important so you can narrate, retell or reuse it many times. A story you ponder to learn more about -- again, because it's important. But always, the final objective of shiah is to TELL someone, pass the information onto the next generation. So you rehearse, ponder how to present the information, after you've learned it. Memorizing one's descendants is one of those important things you pass down to your children, so it's a "shiah", to narrate. Hebrew noun "dor" means one's descendants, family tree, generations of the family line; so you "shiah" your "dor" as a member of it, like Genesis 5, 11; like Matthew in Matt1, or Luke in Luke 3. Both the latter two genealogies play on this Isa53:8, by narrating His Family Tree for Him -- a cool way to say they are 'children' of the Cross. For only the CHILDREN have the right to recite the generations; it's considered a privilege, to keep your ancestors' memory alive, to remember your origins. That's still a common practice in the Middle East. So here in Isa53:8, Isaiah laments this "shiah" for the Lord Himself: there is no one to recite Him as Parent -- for He has no kids. The English neatly leds itself to this dual-entendre, for "Descendance" and "Descendants" both have the same sound. So who narrates His Descendance, among His Descendants? Answer: no one, because He has no kids to inherit that narration role. The irony runs rife through the OT. Psalm 110:1 and Book of Hebrews are on this prophecy of no natural children, because He begets EVERYONE for Father. Isaiah plays on Psalm 110:1, when he writes this Isa53:8; and Psalm 110:1 is a play on the 2Sam7 promise of a Forever-Reigning Messiah, under Whom all humanity will be His 'children'. Hebrews 2 quotes yet another OT verse, "I and the children You gave Me". Then there's the quip in the Gospels the Lord makes about the "dry tree" -- since that's Who He seems to be. There are a lot of verses like this in both OT and New, but even from these you can see it's a threaded doctrine. See all the Bible ties we miss, simply due translations masking sexual wordplay Isaiah used in this chapter -- continuing Adam's figleaves obsession? Ouch!
Next, Bibles routinely mistranslate the third clause, too. Hebrew verb gazar means to cut off, cut down, snatch -- but also, to decree, allot, cut a COVENANT, idea of separating off one group of assets or people to get those assets. Hebrew verb karat is the circumcision, cut-a-covenant verb in the OT, and TWOT says gazar is used as a synonym for karat. So I need an English verb which signifies both meanings, and I can't think of one. First, the snatching must be referenced in translation, because preposition min is used; per TWOT the violence must be translated in English. But also the second meaning of the decree/allotment must be translated, as it is a main theme of the entire chapter! But my brain is out as to what English verb would naturally include both concepts, drat! In short, gazar means "to snatch out as booty", and "to decree/allot as booty, inheritance". It really matters to put the right English verb in here! Alas, for now, I had to use merely "snatched". Next, Bibles routinely mistranslate this third clause with "the land of the living", for crying out loud. He is The Life. It's Him Who is Life Who is Cut off; Isaiah bookends the clause in Hebrew so you see hayyim=Life, in apposition with Hebrew nigzar (=He is cut off, snatched, decreed as booty). LXX got that right in translation, ingeniously placeming "autou" after "he zoe", to nicely feeds into the next clause like Isaiah does: and to make the Greek meter fit (else it's two syllables short). This is a common rhetorical device in both texts, to place a key phrase or word so it points back to prior clause, yet ahead to the next one. "Ha Eretz" is a technical Hebrew term for the Land Promised Israel, just as it was in verse 2. So this verse 8 'looks back' at verse 2, which showed Him growing like this strong Sapling -- now, Harvested. So here in v.8, He the King, is snatched out from Land Promised, Covenanted to Him. That's the point Isaiah stresses. Next, "out from" is again our friend the preposition min -- Isaiah is not coy. Idea of a man who snatches off a woman in conquest as his booty, his allotment for the raid -- violent. Again, the violence must be translated, due to the preposition min, when gazar is in the niphal, as here (see TWOT lexicon's explanation on gazar in the niphal, how using min affects meaning: it's a standard and respected lexicon, and is bundled in BibleWorks).
Isaiah's fourth use of min in the final clause, attached to pesha ("revolting sins", also in v.5, twice in v.12), again anticipates the climactic 53:10-12, where His being Pregnant with our sins, births our salvation per Divine Contract with Father. LXX is real blunt about this, using thanaton. Hebrew min is attached to pesha, this time in the singular; so really I should translate it "revolt", tying to verse 5. LXX translates pesha as anomia, lawlessness=revolt, revolution, widespread criminality in the form of overthrowing rightful Authority: God's. It's really insulting, for at this time Israel was hyper-legalistic about the Law. So is depicted by "mepesha"="anomia", as a raiding tribe of savages raping Israel, by its miscarriage of Justice, against its Messiah. Isaiah here stresses the NATION's revolt against Him. Isaiah is quoting his contemporary Hosea when he uses "ammi". English Bibles all translate "ammi" as "my people", so I should also. I also must reflect Isaiah's fourth use of min, here. Best way I know to do this yet preserve both the syllable count and the Hebrew word order in English, is "My people's revolt, 'birthed' Him.. Struck?!" For Isaiah also plays on how He is the Messiah BORN FROM the Promised Land. From which Promise, He is snatched away to death by the very people whom He was Promised (play on His Husband Role). Wow. Sometimes English really can convey the dual-entendre in Hebrew, huh. Published Bible translations of this clause often end it with a question mark of shock, how what is NOT due Him, but us.. strikes Him. Hebrew words do show that same kind of shock, for Isaiah separates the usually-attached le preposition, and appends to IT a third person masculine singular suffix, leaving nega as a noun. Isaiah could have opted for an attached construction, le with naga a third-person suffix, instead (which is more normal). That Isaiah separated all these parts of speech, tells the reader to slow down, notice how it's so unfair HE gets struck. Hence the shocked question mark, in English.
As in 52:13-15, 53:2, 53:7, here in :9 we see again Father's Court Order, and it now continues to the end of the chapter. LXX translates this verse 9 using the 1st person, a common rhetorical device in Greek to show the Subject is Father; seems like they do that for clarification of the Hebrew -- so you know WHO is in view.
This time Isaiah reverses the syllabification of verse 7, with a 9-syllable clause first, followed by trebled 7-syllable clauses; he slows down for dramatic effect in the last two clauses, so you have to drawl a syllable per clause, stretching it into two. In the third clause, drawl the "'al" sound, because that represents the sound of God, which is intended, as 'al uncharacteristically stands alone, visually. In the fourth clause, maybe drawl either mir'mah or b'phiw (maybe separately sound out the waw, which represents "His"). The answer is in four clauses, not five; it seems He does this, because the third and fourth clause in verse 7 are two metaphors of the SAME Submission. So Father answers in the same order as verse 7, clause for clause, but concatenates the third and fourth clause of verse 7, into an 'answer' contained in the third clause of verse 9, which is also in 7 syllables. So the "niggas wahu na'ane", first clause of verse 7, is 'answered' by the "wayitten et-resahim qibro" (9 syllables) in the first clause of verse 9, and so on.
Isaiah thus focuses on FATHER's Verdict upon His Son's Sacrifice, 'answering' His Son's being passive and mute in verse 7, despite all the violence done TO Him by mankind. Man had a chance to render verdict upon Him, and that verdict (verse 8) was resoundingly abusive, negative, miscarriage-of-Justice. So now, God talks. That's the pattern in the Bible: first man renders his opinion, and then God 'answers'. That's why often God seems 'silent', waiting for men to decide without any 'influence' from Him.
The wordplay in this verse is so saturated with irony, proper translation is well-nigh impossible. Key to the verse is the use of 'et, a direct object marker which Isaiah simultaneously uses as a substitutionary preposition. LXX catches onto this, by using anti, which is better than huper, in the context (it's not "together with", which in Greek is "meta" preposition). Idea is an EXCHANGE of our hostility and goals in killing Him, for God's goals and results. In Hebrew and Greek as in English, the direct object of a "give" (or decree) verb is the gift itself; Hebrew expresses that with 'et. For the indirect object, the beneficiary, Hebrew uses of le preposition or no preposition, with word placement of the beneficiary, telling you who it is. Greek uses accusative case for the direct object (here, the gift, the wicked themselves); but the indirect object is expressed with prepositions or with the dative case. You can prove these facts in but a few minutes, simply by searching on dosw here in LXX of verse 9, throughout LXX and NT: about 207 uses, so plenty of proof. (Of course, scholars of the past didn't have computers with Bible software like BibleWorks, so it would have taken them maybe a year or more, to plot out all the usages.)
The Recipient of the Decree, is Christ. So no indirect object is directly stated, and actually everyone is affected, Christ first. So the high legal language here, using the sacred He to designate Christ, is all-encompassing. Now you know again why all those "in Him" and "in Christ" verses saturate NT discourse. Of all OT quoting by NT speakers/writers, Isa53:9-12 get referenced the most.
So by verse 8, what man wanted out of Him -- abuse -- is now answered by what God Decrees shall come out of Him INSTEAD, birthing our salvation. Sarcasm is really deft, here. Best way to translate it in English, is double-entendre. So that's what I tried to do here, with the two-way English wording: are the wicked the beneficiaries from God, getting what they want -- or are they really the booty, given over BY God as plunder to Him forever? Answer? Both. And from verse 9 on, you'll see that duality stressed, leading up to the crescendo in verse 12, and Isa54:1. So technically verse 9 reads something more like "So He [Father] shall decree the wicked INSTEAD OF (displacing) His Grave" -- cool way to say He'll be resurrected, and our sins 'die' in Him. So we are the grave; hence the tomb itself, will be empty. The full idea is in two clauses, and would be best rendered in English, "So Father decrees the wicked and the wealthy to replace His Grave, because of His Deaths", so you can see that "His Deaths" is the reason for the Decree. So the world gets the grave for all its trouble, and those who believe in Him, become wealthy in Him. Instead. Can't render that idea in 9 syllables each clause, so I opted for the dual-entendre wording shown. If you can think of a better translation, please email me. This verse is vital.
Notice how the meaning is much higher than the usual shallow interpretation that He'll be crucified alongside guilty men on Calgary, and be buried in a rich man's tomb. It's true He was, and even NT calls attention to the fact. But that's just a surface tie-in to the much larger Decree in the verse. So when folks read 53:9, they nod and remember the mere people at the time He died -- thieves and Joseph -- they win Bible trivia contests, oh boy! So they miss out on the real iimportance of the verse, and keep on fantasizing their body do's and material life (poverty OR wealth) as meaning they are 'spiritual' before God. Empty lives, therefore.
So the second clause is technically, "and the wealthy INSTEAD OF (because of/by means of/ 'in') His Deaths". Hebrew bemotayw really covers both the wicked and wealthy, explaining why they are gifts decreed: His Deaths 'bought' both those who will believe in Him, and those who never will. Unlimited Atonement means ANYONE can be saved. That's true wealth. Again, all Wealth Comes Through His Deaths, so displaces and replaces, all other forms of wealth. This answers the "wa lo hadar" clause in 53:2. All wealth is thus replaced, given over to Him Through Whom we are made Wealthy. So normal "wealth" is displaced, emptied, too. All this wit, by means of a mere 'et usage?! Yeah, only God is this smart! Again, translation misses this much higher meaning by tying the second clause to Joseph of Arimethea. Tradition is more important, see. Never mind how much it obfuscates the Word of God.
So-called 'new' translations of this verse are downright awful, paying even more misplaced attention to tradition, and NOT to what's in the text! Hence four important divergences from typical translations are here, to correct those translations. (I'm sure that if good Bible software was available to folks in the past, they'd not have made these errors. Trouble is, now that we can easily prove the errors, we won't admit them and instead COPY them forward. That's inexcusable. It's completely excusable that there would be translation errors, because it was utterly annoying and impossible to work with the heavy globbing ink, paper, candlewax, musty codices, horrible life people in past centuries, had to deal with. But we since 1950 or so, have no such excuses.) As usual, you can tell where the published translations are amiss, by cross-checking the LXX. So:
Ideally, the phrase would be translated, "to the wealthy, DUE TO His Deaths", but that's too many syllables. So I had to settle for "by". Hebrew preposition beh often means because of, and we know the causal instrumentality of His Deaths makes us rich, from the context. So "by" is the proper way to translate "beh" here, but "because of" or "due to" would be closer. Drat.
Again, this stresses how it's Thinking Which Is The Life Before God Who Has No Body. For, Thinking Pays God, and all doing comes from it. The distinction matters, for when you get to the next verse, you'll find the Agreed-On Price for our sins, is His Soul -- not, His Body. And that matters, for His Soul lives forever. So does hell. So a Living Soul Made Propitiation is Forever Thinking before Father. Thus all that sin-in-hell thinking, keeps on being continually COUNTERED. Now you know why a Royal Priesthood has to exist forever. There will always be sin in hell, and we in heaven will be perfect then, but.. still not as big as He is, the shortfall remains forever. So yeah, He paid for ALL sin on the Cross, past present and future, but that's a present-value calculation. In reality, sin still occurs forever in hell, all those beings shaking their self-righteous fists, priding themselves on their martyrdom like the guy in Luke 16:20ff; and, past present future is all 'one' in Omniscience, anyway. So His Human Soul MUST live forever as the High Priest for Father, and we all rank under Him. Living Propitiation, as the NT constantly stresses (i.e., Paul's long discourse in Romans 6 and 8, 1Jn2, etc).
God is Infinite, Omnipotent, Perfect. So for Him, it's only a question of How He Sovereignly Wants To Use His Power, never whether He can do something. And what He wants, is to make Sons. That's what this chapter is about. Here, we see How He Actually Makes Those Sons: from His Son. The essence of a person, is his soul; the essence of a soul, is thinking. The essence of His Son's Humanity, is His Soul. So to replicate His Son's Soul, means to replicate His Thinking, and thus God makes 'sons'. Mechanism of doing it, is disclosed in the five infinitives I always harp on in my webpages. These are here underlined, so you can see their fit in the verses. These five infinitives, which happened to Him, are the contract actions which are to happen to us, to make the "Long-lived seed" of the contract. Just as what happened to Him was always an offer to which He'd have to consent per thought; so also, we have this Book of His Thinking to which we must consent, each time, to learn via the Spirit in God's System. Same mechanism, as for Him. That's how the contract is fulfilled.
Obviously you'll want to talk to God about this claim, since you can't find but a few pastors, who even teach that Thinking His Thoughts is the spiritual life -- though the idea should make sense to anyone who reads this sentence. What could be more "Christlike", than to THINK the way He does? No one I can yet find, teaches that Isa53:10-12 is a contract to make that thinking, though "me amal.. bedato yasdiq" (v.11, Hebrew) says precisely that. These infinitives, once understood, complete the theology about our post-salvation life, showing it's a thinking thing, DDNA being manufactured by the Spirit in you; it's Paul's main theme in all he writes (especially via his witty megalunw theme in Philippians, and his crafting Ephesians as an 'answer' to Euripedes' "Ion", showing how the Real God Really Begets Spiritual Sons via THE Son's Thinking). That, plus the fact that Love is God's Head Attribute (the ultimate Expression of Sovereignty), completes all theology, and solves all the conundra Christians have been debating amongst and against each other for centuries. Will take a century to prove this paragraph true, because people arrogantly accredit themselves with finding stuff in Bible (why, I can't fathom) -- so will take sides for and against interpretations, not based on the Word, but based on whomever they like or dislike among men. Sheesh. Who has time to go promoting this, and besides, God can save you time by just showing you the proof, just as he did for me and anyone else who ASKS HIM. So save yourself time -- ask God, the meanwhile. He knows if this paragraph came from Him, or is bogus. He won't be shy to answer.
It's possible that all of Verses 10-12 should be ONE block quote, antiphonal, but the LXX switches from third to first person. Hebrew often has God speaking of Himself in the third person masculine singular, as He just did, in verse 9. (Occasionally the Spirit is referenced in the third feminine singular, play on His Mother Hen Role of Gen1:2, see tsalah verses.) Both LXX and Hebrew will suddenly switch to 1st or 2nd Person, denoting another Member of the Godhead speaking with the Other(s). So I'll have to rethink the use of quote marks used in translation, here. I'm not quite satisfied their placement is wholly correct. Meaning is still clear, but it matters to distinguish when God is speaking directly, versus through his herald Isaiah.
The Decree began in 52:13-15; the "report" showing its conveyance, ended at v.8; beginning at verse 9 Father explains why, providing the rest of the Decree information, the Salvation Contract. For the Decree, is about Christ: no one else. Seed, not seeds, as Paul explains in Galatians 3; we MUST be IN Him to be saved at all. So everyone MUST be paid for BY Him, to even be allowed physical birth. Notice the emphasis on Foreknowledge (see last two verses in Rom8). Payment would be inaccurate, else. As in any contract even on earth, a thing promised in advance has terms of agreement, compliance, delivery, and execution. We see them in gist, here. NT spends most of its time explaining this same contract's delivery terms, for CHURCH -- which of course didn't exist until Pentecost, 50 days after that first Easter. (PassPlot.htm's Division #1 explains the proper dating of Pentecost, which even the Jewish calendar's "counting the Omer", still gets wrong.)
So general comments about these three verses are needed. This is an amalgamated translation of both BHS and LXX text. The LXX text is translated in purple font; but I ape Hebrew meter, in English. That all might have to be changed. For as you'll see from page 4ff of ISA53.RTF, a Word.doc, the BHS misses some original text -- and we know it was missing for centuries prior to the Massoreh, as the Isaiah scroll has it missing too -- but so does the Greek miss some of the Hebrew. Still, you can put both texts together, and get the whole passage in translation which fits perfectly. In all events, it's Real Bible text. The (purple) Greek of Isaiah 53:10-11 is heavily requoted throughout the NT by the Lord and every NT writer, via incorporation by reference as keywords: thus, pointing the reader back here. So we know the Greek text is genuine Bible, belonging 'somewhere' within the Hebrew here. I can't find a more-frequently-referenced set of verses than Isa53:10-12. Just take the Greek in Isa53:10-12 and search each verb and noun in it, within the NT. Then, think like a thesaurus and search conceptually. The NT verses you run into tie to many other verses which alike 'look back' using synonyms or synonymal concepts in these three Isaiah verses. Takes months to vet the claim, probably. Takes much longer, if you don't have good original-language Bible searching software. Either way, it's worth the time spent.
Isaiah's meter for verse 10's Hebrew is 9-8-9-9; in verse 11, it's 6-9-8-8 (first clause of verse 11 is off-meter because text is missing, should be nine syllables). So in English I follow that pattern, but halve it like Isaiah does in 53:2, for verse 10. Hence verse 10's first clause of nine syllables is rendered in English as five, four, and five syllables, in both the Hebrew (10a) and Greek (10b): so you still get 9 when you one of the five's, to a four. (I could make it instead two fours and one five, by removing "is", but chose not to, as in English to say "Lord is Pleased" has special, ringing meaning.) The usual Bible translations miss the objective of these verses. NASB for example mistakes the long-lived seed as being HIM. In Haggai 2:10-23, the Lord's Birthdate is foretold, and He will be born via Zerubabbel's bloodline (Haggai2:23, signet ring verse). So "seed" here back two centuries prior in Isaiah 53:10, is important to know, or you miss the later Haggai wordplay on foundation, seed, progenitor, telling you the Lord Will Be Born on the 24th of Chislev, the anniversary of the 2nd Temple's foundation-laying. Of course, that very night becomes the 25th Chislev in Bible's dating system, nights-first accounting: Chanukah, some three centuries after Zerubabbel became the "signet ring".
The back-translated Greek into Hebrew (page 8ff of ISA53.RTF) is in three clauses of 9-syllables, 2nd Alternative of its page 9; it more likely should be two, since verse 12 has a total of six clauses, which would balance to verse 10. (1st alternative in the rtf doc is 9-9-8-9-9, which just inserts the missing Greek verbs using Isaiah's appending "wa" style, same page.) However, I won't use the back-translated material here. Instead, I will only translate the LXX text, which means adopting the LXX as a 53:10b, and only inserting the portion of the dexzai..plasai clause in verse 11 (which the Hebrew we have might and might not, already 'cover' in meaning). For the back-translation was a mere test of plausibility that text is missing from both Hebrew and Greek: that plausibility test passed, because you CAN back-translate yet meet Isaiah's style and meter. However, only the words we have in Bible, are actually translated here.
Quote marks in the text are direct quotes by God, and often these quotes mark off a section of prophecy, attesting to its authenticity. Signature phrase is always something like "thus says the Lord" or "Ani, Adonai" (lit., "I, the Lord" a formal signature phrase both Koran and Book of Mormon often mock, to prove they are NOT from God). Also, God occasionally interrupts a prophet to both authenticate him, and to just plain interrupt (my pastor reminds us of the Holy Spirit's interruption in Heb10:15, and you see the Lord do it to John, often in Revelation). Here in Isaiah 53:10-54:1, there are several quotes and quote-backs: first Father (verse 10a), then Spirit (10b), with "His Hand" referencing the Son's Dual-Nature but stressing His Godness, since "His Hand" is a routine OT phrase of God's OWN Hand. (How any Jew can mistake this blatant Trinity and Hypostatic Union Decree, I'll NEVER understand.) The next quote, all of verse 12, is by Father. Isaiah54:1 is also a direct quote, but it's a kind of chorus. For the recipient of the Ruling to engage in the cultural trilling whooping cries comes also from the Son, the Primary Recipient of the Ruling -- voiced also by Him, to those who believed in Him, and thus themselves were accounted 'barren' or 'shamed' in the eyes of the world, i.e., Israel in the immediate context. See also Hebrews 11, whole chapter.
Hence the translation you see here in purple font is LXX text, called here Isaiah "53:10b". It's patterned as 9-9-8-9 (reverse of 10a) in translation, with the first clause divided up to match the translation from the Hebrew (10a). It's antiphonal: we can tell from Isa53:7 compared to 9, that an antiphonal verse would likely be REversed in meter. Again, Isaiah patterns by the Doctrinal Content Of Each Clause: 9 for Unilateral Divine Action, 8 for Divine Action in concert with His Son; 7 for His Son's Perfect Nature (if alone in focus, as in 53:7).
By contrast, in ISA53.RTF putatively back-translates all of the LXX text into Hebrew of 9-9-9 meter; its middle clause could be ellided into 8 syllables instead of 9, just as is 53:10's known Hebrew, in the same-content second clause. Alternative meters could be used, though. If the LXX text is missing in its entirety -- and in ISA53.RTF pages 4ff you'll see why that's probably true -- then this LXX verse is coming from the Holy Spirit, and is addressed to God the Son, officially. Hence must be nine syllables, not 8. We know it would be from the Holy Spirit because Father has already spoken, we have that in Hebrew. The functions denoted in the LXX, however, are functions throughout the OT and NT, as being attributed to the Holy Spirit (i.e., beginning in Genesis 1, same Greek terms for Hebrew or and yetser, Light and Sculpting, the literal restoration of earth alike depicting how we too get remade by Him upon salvation).
Greek verb aphairew really means to carry off as plunder. It's often used in the NT in that sense, but just like "huper" or "peri", aphairew is always truncated in translation to something like "take" or "take away", thus denuding the translation of an extremely important doctrine: we Church are here to plunder Christ, as we are plunder OF Him -- which of course, points back here to Isa53:10-12. Greek root in aphairew comes from phero, to carry, but this is a particular KIND of carrying: carrying off booty. Taking something someone ELSE owns, for your own. Appropriating it as your own. More often, someone taking away something YOU own, for their own. The verb is therefore used in the OT for sins being REMOVED from you (Hebrew sur is often the verb translated with aphairew.) Hence the verbs "to remove, Plunder" are used in the translation here.
That text is missing here, is long known; you'll even find the NIV telling you that "Light" somewhere follows "see" or "soul", as that's what the Isaiah scroll partly does (still leaving a gap, tho). There are many contemporary quotes of this verse in Greek from the first century, even in 1 Clement. Moreover, there is a gap in the Isaiah scroll found at Qumran and other copies of Isaiah; so you can learn about this Isa53:10-11 gap on the internet. The scribe would leave a gap in the scroll when text was known to be missing, in order to later fill in the missing words, once they were found. The missing Hebrew in this verse is almost certainly "or wa yetser" after the first "naphesho". We know for sure "or" is there, from the Isaiah scroll. So "wa yetser" is almost a no-brainer to add, since the Greek is "plassw", which is almost universally used for yatser in the OT. Hebrew would not place these words in the same order as the Greek.
Hebrew yireh yisba really doesn't directly fit with the text it follows, bedato yasdiq. So something between yisba and bedato is probably missing. Conceptually all four words fit together, but they don't make a single clause, but rather two: either clause alone is off-meter, just as me amal naphesho (an incomplete clause) is off-meter. If you paired me amal naphesho with yireh yisba as Bibles do, it's too many syllables (10, not 9). You could ellide it make it 9 syllables, though. But again, yireh yisba stands alone as a clause, and it's really important, because the clause deliberately looks back to Genesis (purpose of creation), when God the Holy Spirit (re)made Light and said it was good (denoting satisfaction). So something is missing between naphesho and yireh probably, as well. On the other hand, yireh yisbah might be translated in the LXX with dexzai autoi; Hebrew hiphil (causative stem) of tsadeq, used in v.11, might be reflected by the added LXX infinitive of "plasai". So it might turn out that only "phos" is missing in v.11; in which case, the Hebrew word is "or", and it elides nicely in wordplay on naphesho (becomes naphesho'or, and of course His Soul IS Light). That would change the first Hebrew clause in v.11 to seven syllables, which of course is one of the metric patterns, and certainly fits His Nature, even in His Humanity. And we even have "light" in the Isaiah scroll. Trouble is, the 7 stands alone, and Isaiah only trebles 7's in this chapter. So the me amal clause is probably 9 syllables, not 7, denoting what God did TO His Soul. Hence the most probable Hebrew lacuna would be "Or wa yetser" (Light and Body, or Light and To Sculpt), which would fit the meter at 9 syllables; which of course corresponds to the LXX words we actually have. Verse 11's first Hebrew clause is a noun-heavy. LXX would translate such nouns as infinitives, especially since "or wa yetser" would function as purposed results. So to have dexzai and plasai in translation, makes a great deal of sense. But, there are other alternatives. For example, maybe the me amal clause is 7, corrected by adding 'or; maybe the yireh yisba clause is seven (three syllables missing at the end, wayatsar being a good candidate), and the bedato yasdiq clause is really seven (two syllables missing, somehow). So then you'd have trebled sevens, if you knew for sure where the missing text belonged. Were that true, you'd have 7-7-7-8-8 as the meter. Point is, alternatives exist.
LXX translates da'ath here in verse 11 with sunesei, and like the Hebrew, the LXX verse literally means God's purpose is to sculpt (plasai) FROM His Thinking, and THAT's what justifies us. Same suneisis is used in the initial hinneh decree of 52:13. So to show that parallel, since here it's Christ's Thinking Finished being sculpted in us, I translated the clause"Caused through His Thinking". "Caused through" is simultaneously correct due to the hiphil of tsadeq (hiphil stem is causative) and "beh" preposition is means, instrumentality, and hence "through". You could say "by" or "from" or even "in", along with "Caused", but "through" seemed to convey all those meanings. Conduit, Messiah, Mediator, Priest, The One Through Whom all is done for us. I don't know how much more bald God can make it, than to bookend the 52:13-15 Decree like this, in a pregnancy verse (amal is pregnancy labor, poetic term in Job and Psalms). This is how the sons get made, why Paul is addicted to begetting-His-Thinking metaphors (some of them quite crude, like the use of sumbibazw in Eph4:16). Hebrew "yadah" means to intimately know, and is a euphemism for a husband 'knowing' his wife. So it's really apt, here, to have used sakal in 52:13, but 53:11 (context of pregnancy labor, get it) uses yadah's cognate noun, da'ath. So to reflect the LXX using the same term "sunesis" here and in 52:13, I translated da'ath, "Thinking". Technically sakal in 52:13 means MASTERY of thinking, the idea of fluent SKILL in using what you know. Here in 53:12, da'ath stresses the CONTENT of what you know well, intimately. Greek word sunesis is often used in the NT in both ways, and whenever my pastor comes to it, he always stresses the expertness, and that the term references His Thinking in your head, fluently circulating. So that's why the term "Thinking" is used as the translation.
Again, the parallel is drawn here back to Genesis 1:2-3, Numbers 6 benediction (end that chapter). Paul plays with the same parallel in 2Cor3 and 4, quoting his own 1Cor13 on the Love-Word Head of Christ enlightening us, in those 2Cor chapters. We are tohu wa bohu, due to the Fall; Holy Spirit remakes us, just as He remade the earth after Satan&Co. trashed it up. Isaiah 53:10-11 shows the contract for the remaking, a LOVE CONTRACT within the Godhead, God doing it for Each Other Member. We are the result. So Paul plays on his own previous writing on this topic which God gave Him, plays on the Genesis 1:2-3 remaking explicitly, and of course stresses the contract here in Isa53:10-11 as the basis, both explicitly and implicitly. Very deft wit. 1Jn plays on these 1 and 2 Cor clauses, beginning in 1Jn1:5 (threaded theme in 1Jn). Scripture is nothing if not tiqwa, thread so thickly and densely intertwined, you can't break it (used as a metaphor of Word creating God's Integrity in you, Job 4:6).
Next, "to Justify" really means BOTH to "make Righteous" and "to justify", but the meter wouldn't allow me to fit both verbs in there. In both the Hebrew and the Greek, the terms mean both simultaneously. Since in the Hebrew it's in the hiphil, the CAUSING of making Righteous (translated with dikaiow in the same way, in LXX) tipped the scales in favor of "to Justify".
Finally, the two uses of "for" in translation are meant as double-entendre. Isaiah uses preposition le which can have both meanings (beneficial interest and caustion), so it doubles for both clauses.
From verse 12 you see why Israel was hated so much, even had she been faithful. Isaiah 53:12 is probably the most insulting verse in all the OT: Hi, I'm the God of these people, and I'll conquer you all, make you booty for them, because they are MY People. So believe and be part of THEM, or don't believe and get crushed. My SlaveSon will head it all, and parcel you out. And by the way, if you are part of My People and you also don't believe, you'll be cast off as booty too, just as if you were Not My People.. just as Hosea had warned Samaria; just as Moses warned Israel before she entered the Land in Deuteronomy; just as Isaiah is warning here; just as Paul warned the uppity Romans, in Rom11. So believe in My SlaveSon Who is God Himself, Who will pay for ALL of you, and then own you forever. Or Else. Now you know why the Lord made those stern remarks, like "bring them here and slay them before me." He was invoking this verse. It's real, it's not an allegory. It's the future, and the NT is all about how the Church is the replacing Royal Family, over the many goyim for the 1000 years, to fulfill the New Covenant; after that, as a Body Ruling on His Behalf, for eternity. Like it or lump it: and we all lump it, really. It's shocking, and we all wince, for face it: we're ALL guilty, saved and unsaved alike. But you know, our extreme hatred of God warrants no other outcome. He's barely worth a nod on Sunday among believers -- look back at Isa53:2 and :4! So.. shouldn't He administer justice at some point?
Not surprisingly, every Bible I can read in any language gets this verse blasphemously wrong in translation, except the Tanakh (1985 version, JPS). The blasphemy is pretty easy to see: in translation, it looks like the Lord only gets part of the Plunder, lol, instead of being the INHERITOR of it all. (Galatians looks back to 53:12 in its chapter 3, so how could such a blasphemy BE in Isa53:12?) It's a silly error, really. Hebrew halaq takes the preposition beh, which attaches to what is shared. But halaq means to ASSIGN A SHARE to someone, and the WHOLE share is in view. So the Lord gets assigned the whole, not just part, and the LXX recognizes this. Why therefore the translations belittle His share, is obviously an oversight: but over so many centuries, it's not been corrected? That's inexcusable. My pastor translated Isa53:12 many times for us, due to the common, belittling-of-Christ mistranslation.
Next item: Isaiah might have suddenly intended a bunch of six-syllable clauses from "tahat" forward; that would change the rhythm to 9-9-6-6-6-6-6, which maybe parallels 53:2,4,7; except that it's oddly in sixes, the only group of clauses so metered. Then again, doubled-threes, Hypostatic Union is stressed! In five clauses (53:2 uses five clauses for our reaction to Him). Five is the Numerical Doctrine of Profit, in Bible. This can't be an accident. For look at the strident "et" sounding rhythm, below; to use 'et as the rhythmic sound stresses SUBSTITUTION, and the number of man is six, Biblically: so maybe that's why the sudden change. It really looks more right than the normal syllabification Isaiah's been using, a sudden switch due to the climactic nature of the conclusion. So I might need to reparse that section of verse 12: in what's below, I added accents so you can see where the rhythm strikes. (Sidenote: if you ellide the waw in the fourth clause below, "hét" is accented metrically; if you don't ellide the waw, "hú" is accented metrically, and "nasá" is the natural accent which follows.) Notice that any TWO clauses add up to the 12 tribes (Joseph had two half-tribes via his sons). Maybe Isaiah wants to thus remind the reader?
Frankly, it sounds more correct to use this six-syllable structure. The meter is just too strong, especially considering how Isaiah uses 'et in this chapter. So an alternative (and I think more true-to-text) translation would go something like this:
Problem with both this translation and the one in the table, is how to translate "tahat". Its usage as a displacing, a substitution, an EXCHANGE, is paramount, but it also connotes "going low". Paul thus ties back to tahat here, in Phili2:5-10, Eph4:7-9; Peter ties to it in 1Pet3:18, and of course the OT ties to it often, viz., Psalm 40-type references (which Book of Hebrews makes as its main theme, tying back to tahat here, in Hebrews Chaps 2, 4, 5-10, 12). So it's not solely restitution, substitution, exchange: you've also got the "going low" meanings of the Incarnation AND His descent into hell to tell the unbelievers and demons there incarcarated, that He won and the Gospel is forever validated. My pastor calls this latter, the "Victorious Proclamation" doctrine; basic idea is that God always witnesses to everyone, even everyone in hell. 2Pet3:9 is thus illustrated, though I'm not sure if my pastor ties the Victorious Proclamation to 2Pet3:9. So it's important to search on tahat in the OT, so you'll see the LXX words used to translate it. Thus you can, by searching all those verses, see the doctrines for yourself.
I can't explicitly state the going-low meaning for tahat in the syllable "budget" Isaiah uses; so I'm using 'he'era', the pouring-out meaning, to include tahat's going-low significance in translation. That's how LXX handles it. You can tell by the other six-syllable clauses, that Isaiah stresses the going-lowness as the mechanism of substitution and restitution, even as he has since 52:14. LXX shows that stress, but translates tahat with Greek substitution/restitition/displacement preposition, anti. So I basicallly followed the LXX 'philosophy' in translation, in order to keep to the Hebrew meter and cadence. The table does not yet reflect this six-syllable 'beat', and should. It will.
In both Hebrew and Greek, the SOUL 'dies' by means of the last thought (likened to breath, in Greek word psuche and pneuma) while still in a body. So there are always two types of death, soul and body. These are distinct. The latter dies when the former LEAVES. So in both Hebrew and Greek you find different words sometimes used to distinguish between the two types. Greek word nekros is primarily for the death of the body; thanatos, for the departure of the soul. Trace both Greek words throughout Bible to see the distinction, for there's a lot of silly debate going on about this topic. Two deaths are depicted in Gen2:17 and in Isa53:9. First, His Soul -- paying for sins until His Very last thought, "Tetelestai" and the quote of Psalm 31:5 -- and only then, His Body. Physical death did not pay for sins, but His Substitutionary Spiritual Death did: you see that here in Isaiah 53, but also in the NT, if you go pan-Bible searching on each occurrence (including all the morphological forms) of both thanatos versus nekros. Thus in the NT you'll see how the distinction is made.
My pastor translated Hebrew atsumim as "great ones", which isn't that different from the normal published translation of "the strong" ("ones" being correctly implied, even in translation). I opted for "heroes", here. That's the point being made. David's mighty men were all heroes, and anyone who spends much time in the NT sees the same concept constantly stressed. There is a goal post-salvation, Eph4:13. NT keywords for those who reach it are many, and all point back to Isa53:12. Paul and the writer of Hebrews (not the same person, Paul was already dead when Hebrews was written) -- they like "pleroma" and its conceptual synonyms. There's lots of talk about carrying off the promise (literally, the prize award, booty you carry off if you win in competition), about inheriting the kingdom (yeah, because if you reach the "destination" of Eph4:13, you INHERIT one forever AS A KING, yourself). My pastor spent about seven years exegeting Ephesians three times (always disatisfied with his previous teaching), and has a section within it called "Invisible Heroes". That title is patterned after the heroes roster of Hebrews 11, and Hebrews 11:1 in the Greek (never the English) tells you how you get there: "It's about Confidence in Word! Christ's Thinking, On Trial! Evidence Unseen!" So, after that climactic opening, you see a roster of past (OT) heroes who did just that.
Each of us can be a hero. Just live in God's System, day in and day out, keep plugging. It's not a denominational question. It's not about how 'right' you are in your doctrines versus someone else; nor is it about whether you are a Hebrew or Greek geek. It's how you Think Toward Father 24/7 using whatever Bible you know, Heb11:1 and 11:6. So: anything you got wrong about Bible which needs correction; any Hebrew or Greek-geek stuff you need to learn, well.. only God can make all that happen, anyway. So it's not about what you got wrong, it's about what God can make right. It's not about your weakness, it's about His Strength, Rom 5:8, 2Cor12:9ff. So just keep on using 1Jn1:9 so you get God's Brains and thus learn and live on His Book: GodSystem.htm has the details; none of them involve money, religion, or being 'public' (i.e., doing good works). Even the unbeliever can do good deeds, so this is about what God Works In You, not what you work on yourself, Eph2:10. Try living in God's System for a month or two, ask HIM about it, see privately.. for yourself. End commercial message of recruiting for invisible heroes no one but God can ever see.
This is a stark legal-pronouncement verse, so is translated in blunt English. Hebrew is unusual. Just as in 53:7's last clause, in the first clause Isaiah is caused to set off Christ as the Recipient with a hyphenated le preposition suffixed third person. So the actual translation would go, "Thus I Decree as Plunder FOR HIM, the many", but that's too many syllables. So I settled for underlining "His" in translation. There's a kind of double-entendre in the word order, due to the substitution, and SUBSTITUTION is stressed in the last half of this verse by means of heavy "et" sound repetition, as noted above. So here in the first half, the unusual use of le preposition has the connotation of Him being Plundered to pay for us and thus (verses 10-11) make us worthy plunder for Him; so, He is plunder FOR us, even as we are made worthy plunder for Him.
And look: those who didn't mature spiritually are booty for other believers, who did mature?! People being owned forever by other people?! This isn't a democracy, folks. So it's pretty dramatic and upsetting. Won't be upsetting at the Bema, we'll all be too aware of how much we all despised God, down here -- and will be grateful to be owned. But it's pretty upsetting to look at while still down here. So "allot" is not the best translation for the second Hebrew use of halaq; it should be "among" rather than "to", but that's too many syllables. Further, Hebrew shalal should be rendered as "them for plunder", or "them as booty", instead of just "them"; I'm relying on the previous "as plunder" clause, for reader understanding, in translation. Alas, again, not enough syllables (Isaiah only uses 9 syllables). But the meaning is preserved. Oh: you have to drawl out the syllables in the last two clauses, to make them 8 syllables each. That can be justified, considering the dramatic meaning. However, again it looks more like Isaiah intended to syncopate into six-syllable clauses from tahat forward to better show off the 'et (substitution) sound, which means ellision.
Honestly, this verse keeps me up at night, and gets me up in the morning. If there was any burden I never wanted, it's to have charge over people. Why folks think it's some kind of honor or status to be in charge, I'll never understand. It's the worst thing that can happen to you, to rule! To be someone's boss, is my idea of pure hell. Yeah, but My Lord is THE Boss, so guess what? You're only as close to Him, as you yourself become a ruler IN Him. So, stark choice: if I don't grow up in HIM, I won't be CLOSE to Him, which I cannot bear, either. I don't want to spend my life forever on the equivalent of Pluto, hoping to get a glimpse of Him in parade, every few millenia! So I have to mature to Kingship ("pleroma" and "teleios" NT keywords, also "crown", "king", "inherit the kingdom"), else I'm too far away from Him. Forever. This is not a joke or an allegory. It's a real future. Yours. Mine. Our choice, which way it goes. DDNA is a real thing, the reason why you can be sinless forever yet retain free will. That's what happened to Him, and baby, you'll be distant from Him if you don't get His Thinking DDNA'd in you by the Holy Spirit, by learning and living on Bible, in God's System. My pastor taught this for over 50 years, though without the stress on Isaiah and the DDNA concept I'm stating here (though I suspect he knew this, given what he was beginning to say about megalunw in the year 2000). And what could make more sense? We all know we need to be "Christlike." We even make keychains based on the popular aphorism, "What would Jesus Do", WWJD -- and I have one of those keychains, shaped like a mezuza. But it's really, WWJT, What Word Jesus Thought on the Cross, which paid for all sins for all time, Heb10:1-17, invoking Isa52:13-54:1, and Jer31:31-34! Ok, sorry: now YOU get the point, so YOU won't sleep at night, either...
There's a characteristic cry of victory which sounds like a trilling which you sometimes hear from Arab women in movies or documentaries. That's today's version of one of the cry-out-victory commands in this verse. It's a very specific whooping and crying which goes on and on for days following a successful raid or battle. Isaiah seems to break meter in the second clause to 11 syllables, to convey the trilling sound of the whooping command. It MIGHT be truncated to 8 or 9 syllables via ellision. I don't know yet how to translate that sound in English, to convey its flavor. "Ba'al" is here rendered as a transliteration rather than a translation, because Isaiah is making wordplay. "Baal" we all even know from English, is a false god people worshipped. And still people worship false gods. A woman's husband is her lord, her god, and so "ba'al" means "husband" -- the LORD being the First Husband. Again, no way to mistake Trinity in this verse. "Father" is not the "Husband" of Israel. Neither is "Spirit". Those are separate Persons, separately identified as such throughout the OT. So only the Son is the Husband.. the One who Pays the Bride Price.. at the Cross. All those who selected other husbands are thus illegitimate, so those DEEMED illegitimate for choosing the Lord.. get more kids. In the ancient world, a woman was considered blessed if she had lots of kids, and cursed if she were barren. So He Who had No Descendants (verse 8), bears ALL the Children. For Father. That's what this verse is about, as the rest of chapter 54, explains. But for our purposes, we end here, showing via 54:1, that the contract of 53:10-12, gets completed. For Father.
