Isa 53:6-12

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Questions

Offering for sin. Although most translations are similar to the KJV for this phrase, others think that "offering" has too much of a sacrifice connotation. The NET suggests translating this verse as follows, "Though the Lord desired to crush him and make him ill, once restitution is made, he will see descendants and enjoy long life, and the Lord’s purpose will be accomplished through him" (empahsis added). Bernd Janowski (see reference below) argues that equating the Servant of this passage with a sacrificial animal (per the guilt offering of Lev 5:14-26 or the scapegoat of Lev 16:10, 20-22) leads to a dead end for the following reasons: there is no mention of blood or a priest official; the terminology in this passage ("to bruise" in particular) is not sacrificial; the scapegoat ritual for the elimination of disaster is not comparable with the Servant's vicarious surrender of life and the scapegoat gets rid of Israel's guilt whereas the Servant bears it. Janowski proposes an alternative interpretation based on "contexts in which—as in Gen 26:10 and 1 Sam 6:3-4, 8, 17, etc.—guilt-incurring encroachments and their reparation are the theme." The idea is that when the we of verse 6 recognize that the Servant is bearing our sins (vv. 4-6), we will be changed and blessed as his seed. (Notice, however, that in Mosiah 14:10 Abinadi's quotation of Isaiah is given with the exact same wording and the "offering of sin" phrase is also used in Mosiah 15:10.)

Bear. Here, the Hebrew word cbl ("bear") is not the same word translated bear in Lev 16:22 (nsa). The connotation in Lev 16:22 seems to be more of a "taking away" sense of bear whereas the connotation of cbl here seems to be more the "carrying a load" sense of bear, which also seems more consistent with verse 4 (Cf. Mosiah 14:4, 11; other suffering and sin contexts for the word bear in modern scripture also seem more consistent with the cbl sense than the nsa sense).

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