Vadim Cherny, Nikolay Bondarchuk

[1] In the context of Is 52:7–15, this seemingly refers to the prophecy that a certain messenger would lead Israel from exile. Apparently, not enough people did believe.

That the man is not named may denote the sect’s leader, since sectarians often refrained from naming their leaders; mainstream Jews, whose views are reflected in Tanakh, have no problem with naming names.

[2] Whom in this phrase has the same antecedent, people, as who in the previous one, the preposition mi being used twice. However, while the answer to the first question is none, to the second, it is all. People suffered divine retribution for not following the man whom the prophet presented as the messenger. Grammatically, the verse may equally well relate to the man.

[3] That is, before God. Rose quickly and powerfully. The rise was probably social, related to the man’s messianic aspirations.

             Rose is a keyword negating the common association with weakness. The shoot or suckling rises because it is strong. No one would say he rose up because he was weak: while such examples of the contrarian behavior do exist, they are not embedded in the psychological association.

Suckling has connotation of moving, playful, active.

[4] He was strong and hard. While the desert seems a desolate place to a modern reader, the ancient Hebrews made their home there. Being born there (“as a plant”) was not regrettable, certainly not humiliating. In modern Israel, native Jews are called Sabra, after the Hebrew word for “prickly pear,” a thorny desert plant. Only a powerful root can thrive in the desert.

Plant and root commonly refer to the root of Jesse, a messiah. Dry land is usually a metaphor of the nation without understanding (cf. Isaiah 41:18, 20).

[5] Ascetic type, strong without external beauty. There is no derogatory connotation. Plants grow in parched land. Far from weak, they are stronger than domestic plants, as anyone who deals with weeds knows. Yet despite inner strength, desert plants are not usually beautiful.

[6] when we later realize his importance.

We does not include the author and perhaps means only a few; but the author, also a Jew, identifies with them. Some, at least, acknowledged the man as a leader.

[7] 1Sam 10:27 similarly describes King Saul. Also, he "was as [the] one silent," reminiscent of Isaiah 53:7. The DSS scribes thought that mention so significant that they interpolated a whole new story into their copy, 4Qsam, to change the meaning of that pericope.

[8] The recent attempts to relate the suffering man to either the confessing monarch or the human scapegoat of the Babylonian New Year festival fail to account for such items in the Isaiah 53’ context as illness or arm of God.

[9] He had either visible illness or sinful behavior, or both, deviating from orthodox following of the law. In antiquity, absent effective medical treatment, serious illnesses were generally short. This illness was lengthy and visible, possibly a physical defect or leprosy.

[10] People with visible illnesses covered their faces. The Isaiah plays on the second meaning of illness: sinfulness (violation or odd interpretation of the law), cf. vs. 4. The man covered his face because of sickness, but it was interpreted as though he did it because of shame. Still another meaning, modeled upon the application of this idiom to God, which was certainly on the Isaiah’s mind, is that the man turned his face from the people, abandoning them because of their sins.

[11] Meaning that he partook of the sins, as in Lev 24:15. The man indulged in common (our) sin, related to religious transgressions. Illnesses refers to involuntary guiltless sins of honest delusion. The consecutive text also mentions crimes, but those could hardly be likened to innocent illnesses. That Jews generally not considered illnesses a divine punishment may be inferred from their acceptance of healing, say, of leprosy, which act would have otherwise constituted an opposition to God. The Isaiah’s lenient attitude to the man may be modeled upon Isaiah 33:24, which asserts that iniquities committed during sickness are automatically forgiven. Likening iniquities to illnesses thus serves to prove that the man should not have been punished for his transgressions.

[12] The idea is of one who carries something heavy. Because the man is presented both as very concerned about sins and sinful himself, or concerned with observance yet nonobservant, he might be a sectarian professing a peculiar doctrine, thus viewing others as transgressors and seen by them as a transgressor himself.

[13] A possible reference to sectarian factions among the Israelites.

[14] Was not a determined nation, serving one God one way. While sheep roam about, people choose their own way and follow it—which agrees with our interpretation: Abandoning orthodoxy, people embraced (staggered, losing firm ground) various sectarian heresies (ways).

[15] The common sin entered the man, and he began to go astray like everyone else. Sin is literally deviation, transgression, detour, or delusion [from truth], not necessarily idolatry; sectarianism also qualifies. The man became a sectarian but could have fought the sin and gotten rid of it, as is confirmed later in the suggestion that he should have repented.

Most Jews did not attach themselves to any particular sect, except the Essenes and in a sense the Samaritans. Only priests and teachers worried about minute interpretation. Initially a mainstream Jew, the subject of Isaiah 53 at some point turned sectarian. The historical analogy is Judah the Galilean, who started as a military leader of mainstream religious views and seemingly only later created a sect.

God, a focus of righteousness, cannot make a person sinful. This was not a sin, but rather a sectarian delusion. The metaphor of sheep confirms the reading; leaving the common path is not sin, since the law does not bind animals. Sheep and goats are not a good metaphor for transgression. Possibly the Isaiah thought there were too many sects, since each person turns his own way.

Later the evangelist John wrote, “And from that time the devil entered Judas.” Now perhaps we would say that fate brought him to an encounter with sin which he accepted. The ancient Jews, rejecting fate or the devil as an active antidivine power, attributed everything, to God. The Jewish tradition holds that God acquiesced even in the temptation of Eve.

Of us all should not be taken literally; it implies commonness only. The author does not include himself among the straying sectarians. The same identification we, us is encountered in Isaiah 59:9–10, where the author obviously does not include himself among the spiritually blind.

 Although the singular sin may refer to a multitude of sins, the literal meaning makes sufficient sense.

[16] In the sense of someone stricken continuously from every side who cannot fight back especially with a multitude of blows pressing him.

[17] In this context, both meanings are much the same: the man’s actions brought about a crushing rejoinder; he was not accepted.

[18] Ancient people had hardly any compassion for a sheared lamb or a kid killed for food. Proverbs 7:22 ridicules a man who “goes like an ox to the slaughter.”  Accordingly, we may assume that the Isaiah had limited compassion for his subject. Although Isaiah 66:3 is compassionate to ox, lamb, and dog, the Isaiah is probably concerned with unreasonable harshness, like breaking the dog’s neck, which is illegal under the laws of Torah. Isaiah 56:10 mentions dumb dogs clearly in a negative sense. Possibly, the Isaiah is not approving of the man’s silence.

[19] Will not preach anymore. Will not open his mouth occurs twice, perhaps a reference to double shock, both physical like a kid slaughtered and psychological like a sheep sheared.

[20] Was taken, not freed, so for execution.

[21] Curiously, the author specifically mentions the present generation, therefore current events or the recent past.

[22] The man’s departure leaves no one with authority to argue with this generation about its sins. Probably his sect was an attempt to rectify their sins, but he went too far or went off on a wrong path of his own.

[23] That is, executed, not died from vague oppression or illness, or exiled similarly to scapegoat.

[24] The author evidently means the current generation, not future people. Possibly, the Jews’ heresies or their idolatry mean they cannot be God’s people. The crime does not seem to be the subject’s execution, because the author later suggests he should have repented and therefore the author considered the execution legal.

[25] Not the two particular robbers but my nation, the people who committed the crime mentioned in v. 6

[26] The man did not just abstain from violence, but he was also doing something else—without violence, presumably teaching. The Isaiah means that although the man was charged with [religious] deceit and violence, he committed none.

[27] to make him repent, since later in the same verse the will of God  points to repentance, attainable through dejection. Nothing implies that God wanted to create a suffering servant, inflicting suffering for its own sake.

[28] Here the author starts relating the words of God, evidenced by the later address “my slave.” Since these words were pronounced before the demise, in justification of the inflicted chastisement, the prophecy is related to the past: had the man behaved differently and repented, he would have achieved major results and fulfilled his role, as previously predicted by the prophet. These words have no bearing on future events; they ceased to be relevant with the death of the man. The author sought to substantiate his earlier message of the man’s status (such as in 52:13–15) with divine authority.

The phrase may be also treated as in conjunctive mood. Future tense is employed instead of the standard (for conjunctive mood) past to denote that repentance would have changed events in the Isaiah’s time (future for the past  message to the hero that he was being offered a choice of repentance or death).

[29] Guilt is a conscious misdeed, persisting in the straying from the true observance; it requires an expiatory offering. When the man deluded himself only, his sin was passive; when he started teaching heresy, he knew guilt. Secular law also recognizes unintentional crimes.

[30] The guilt offering of the soul is repentance, which is further evidenced by the hard mental work, mentioned in v. 11. The man was given a chance to repent of what was said to be his delusion.

[31] God’s will was that he repent through dejection, probably returning to orthodoxy.

[32] The man’s hand

[33] The word means hard mental work. Considering the recently mentioned guilt offering of the soul, the work of the soul is repentance.

[34] A reference to spiritual vision. The Qumran manuscripts of this Isaiah 53 specifically refer to the vision of light. Recanting his sinful delusion, he could have learned the truth.

[35] As one stands patiently and firmly under a burden [of evil] without being broken (without going along with that evil). Perhaps, disregard.

[36] Meaning, gambled his life. Even though the man was already on trial, he could have saved himself and received every promised gain by his repentance.

[37] The man was called criminal, since courts presumably condemn only such people. Even in our times, when publicizing wrongful sentences is fashionable, public opinion is generally negative to convicts.

[38] The transition from the past tense in the previous phrase to the future is of significance: because of his past actions, future generations would think of him as a criminal since he was condemned.

[i] Tanakh universally uses hand (יד) of God with one meaning, the crushing power of God. Nowhere does it benefit the object of application.  The arm is not retributive, which would have been denoted by the Hebrew preposition ב  (the arm entering a person), but causes bitterness, as denoted by the preposition על (the arm being laid on a person). This may mean suffering of the nation without its destruction. The meaning of the word זר׀ע arm is wider, additionally denoting other kinds of overwhelming divine power. However, it does not seem to have an established figurative meaning, especially with the preposition on (על), referring to unusual abilities acquired by the people as a result of its application. Isaiah tends to use arm זר׀ע instead of the more common hand (יד) synonym when speaking of God; in this Isaiah 53, too, he reserves hand (יד) as a metaphor for the means of human action. Thus, i Isaiah likely employed arm זר׀ע in this verse in the established sense of heavy arm of God, his crushing power.

The positive references to יד אלהי  in Neh 2:8 and 18 are probably a mistranslation. Both verses praise the king. Therefore, אלהי  probably also refers to him, not to God. In any case, Nehemiah is careful to specify in both entries the good hand (טּוֹבָה יד), distinguishing it from the "normal" hand. Nehemiah also lacks Isaiah’s revealed נִגְלָתָה, which makes the reference even stronger; השמ  נִגְלָתָה is now a standard metaphor for punishment.

The common translation of to whom instead of on whom is implausible, since the preposition על in this context of hand or arm means on.

[ii] The word base suck (ינק) is often encountered as either robbing Gentiles of their wealth (cf. Isaiah 60:16), or partaking in the glory of the nation (cf. Isaiah 66:11), or denoting a child or childish behavior; the first two meanings are relevant to our translation.

[iii] Qumranic scroll has it as our, so before us or in our presence, making it still more clear that the narration is of past events.

[iv] The construction encountered throughout the Isaiah 53 is curious. Unlike the common poetic parallelism, here the first phrase creates an ambiguity—suckling or shoot, kid or lamb—and the second clarifies it. Perhaps, seemingly parallel words actually have different meanings: the one sharing the glory of the nation, and messiah who creates this glory, killed as he-goat and humbled as lamb, etc.

[v] The preposition translated with adverb not is לא. If the Isaiah wanted to say there was nothing at all, he would probably have used אינ. Accordingly, לא implies there is not vividness but something else, possibly the desert plant’s inner strength.

[vi] The future tense here is a common literary device. The narration is of past events. We would look at him—as we would later recall him, and see nothing worthwhile.

[vii] This term, translating מרא, refers to how the object looks as distinguished from not vividness, which is taken as something not good enough to talk about.

[viii] This passage and others demonstrate that the common position that the text refers to the Hebrew nation is questionable.

[ix] Some or most men did not accept him. Rejected by men is commonly understood as an idiom, meaning paltry.

[x] Men is used here instead of the typical people or human being, perhaps alluding to a male-only group, such as the priesthood. The word translated rejected has connotations of squeezed to the last drop, the one who ceases, abandoned.

The translation of men as others is totally unwarranted.

[xi] Literally, by being sick; the Isaiah is stressing the general, overall condition, not any particular illness.

[xii] This usage recalls Job 11:15, raise his face to demonstrate one’s innocence, and Isaiah 50:6 and Genesis 38:14 implying that face could be covered out of shame for transgression. In that phrase, Job, like the author of Isaiah in the next verse, also employs תשא in the sense of raised. By analogy, to cover one’s face is to recognize oneself as guilty, or at least as condemned.

[xiii] The turn פנימ מסתר is normally employed when speaking of God to demonstrate his abandoning the people, certainly here with qualification from us. The man was so important that his behavior is described in the terms usually applied to God. There is multilayered wordplay, with other meanings: as if God hides his face from him, and, he hides his face from us as God does (his covering his face is symbolic of God’s turning away from the people).

Contra The common translation causing us to cover faces from him is implausible. In the usually cited example of Isaiah 59:2,מִכֶּם ּ פָנִים הִסְתִּירו וְחַטֹּאותֵיכֶם this verb refers to they: your sins, they covered his face from you, not caused me to cover my face, since there is no me in the phrase.

If, however, we are to accept the causative, the meaning is, As if deliberately making people disregard him. Probably the Isaiah continues the wordplay on the double meaning of illness with the second sense: sinning grossly (interpreting the law so oddly) as if to violate the law deliberately. Possibly people customarily turned their faces from a sick person.

[xiv] The term נשא ע׀נ is also employed as a technical term to describe bearing of responsibility for transgression. Thus, the high priest brings offerings on behalf of all people, since he is shares responsibility for their sins. However, because the modern ethical concept of responsibility without actually sinning did not exist yet, the priest precisely shared in the people’s iniquities, perhaps because he did not prevent the congregation from sinning. Similarly, sins and iniquities of the congregation were laid on scapegoat without it actually sinning. Possibly, the Isaiah considered the man equal to the high priest and implied the same kind of sharing, not the man actually transgressing, but this suggestion is not supported by the text; on the contrary, his execution implies some kind of transgression; the author does not question the court sentence.

[xv] This meaning of נשא is established in Isaiah 42:2 possibly about the same man

[xvi] Although the meaning forgave [the sin] is grammatically possible, cf. Gen 50:17, forgiveness is the prerogative of God, and so the reading is highly unlikely. In Genesis, Joseph is urged to forgive his brothers the evil they did to him specifically, not their sins in general. Isaiah could not imagine a human being forgiving sins. Such a concept was simply nonexistent in his time. Besides, unlike crime פשע, guiltless iniquity ע׀נ just did not require forgiveness or expiation.

The common interpretation as took away or took from us and laid on himself, thus relieving the people of sins, is completely unwarranted by the Tanakhic use of the word elsewhere.

[xvii] The commonly assigned sense of  סבל as endured is an interpretation, not translation. Even if an interpretation is required, the meaning from Exodus 1:11, to wear out is a better match.

[xviii] The root meaning of נגע  is strike; in relation to God it is torture, plague, or execution. This meaning parallels הפגיע, here “violently touch” or “attach,” and נגש, here “suppressed.

[xix] מענה is semantically close to נענה. We chose pressed upon vs. shuttered because the first verb is used more commonly to denote the ceremonial fasting and so the translation must avoid the connotation of finality.

[xx] The derivation of מחלל from the rootח׀ל  (to spin) fits all entries. Thus, Job 26:13: His hand makes running (wriggling) serpent tremble; Job 26:5: Rephaim will tremble [in Sheol]; Ps 29:9: The voice of God makes does (female deer) tremble and strips forests bare; Prov 26:10: Like a master who makes all tremble is the one who hires a fool or a passerby; Is 51:9: Are you not the one who . . . made the crocodile (pharaoh) tremble? Is 44:25: make the diviners tremble.

The common translations wounded, cut through, or killed are incorrect. Killed would have also been illogical, since the next verb in Isaiah’s phrase refers to a live person.

[xxi] Isaiah’s use is modeled upon Job 26:13, “His hand ח׀ללה the serpent.” Serpent here is נחש, copper-colored snake, the tempter, with no implication of the mythical monsters Tiamat or Leviathan. Isaiah 27:1 tells the same story in the same words, distinguishing נחש from the sea serpent. After successfully tempting Eve, the serpent was cursed, deprived of the covenant God gave to living beings. The serpent’s life was made miserable, and he was emptied. Isaiah 51:9 “Are not you [the arm of God] the one cutting the monster [Egypt], מחללת the crocodile [pharaoh]?” The next verse clarifies the meaning by mentioning the passing through the Reed Sea. The Torah is explicit that Pharaoh did not die pursuing the Israelites. He was what could be described as emptied, losing his chariots: the cream of his army.

Cutting is also incorrect, since the word has a positive, creative connotation, like hewing stone, but not destruction. The correct meaning is made the one who cut the stone [made the pyramids], showing that God can give power to the pharaoh and empty him of it.

In Proverbs 26:10, the rendering of מחלל as killed is wrong. The proverb compares someone who hires a criminal or a passerby with רַב מְחוֹלֵל-כל. The correct sense of the latter phrase is not archer who kills everyone (which does not have immediate relation to the hire of a passerby), but possibly master who empties all, presumably by foolish management. The correct translation, therefore, is, Like a master who empties everything is he who hires a criminal or passerby, meaning that such an employer would soon be emptied of his wealth.

In Ezekiel 32:26, the word in question is מחֻלל , not מחוֹלל, as in Isaiah 53. The difference is of importance, since מחֻלל  is constructed from the whole root חלל, while מחוֹלל is made up of the עע (empty) or ח׀ל (to spin) root.

The suggestion of Isaiah’s מחוֹלל being a פוֹעל form of the same root employed by Ezekiel in פוּעל relies on the existence of the פוֹעל form, which is hypothetical in the first place and likely just represents a subcategory (גזרה) of פוּעל for עע or ע”׀ (weak) roots. So far, no independent semantics was established for the פוֹעל form, and the same roots do not exist in both פוּעל and פוֹעל forms, thus negating the equation of מחוֹלל and מחֻלל, which should have different roots.

Even supposing that Ezekiel’s מחֻלל means the same as Isaiah’s מחוֹלל, מחלל  in Ezekiel is not exactly killed, because killed is denoted everywhere in Ez 32 with חלל . Emptied מחֻלל by the sword regarding Meshech and Tubal parallels killed, fallen by the sword regarding Asshur and Elam. Thus, at any rate מחֻלל has wider meaning than חלל, incorporating also the sense of fallen.

The difference is also evidenced in that מחלל is employed only toward Meshech and Tubal, the only two tribes in the list not described as dead anywhere in Tanakh; Isaiah 66:19 mentions Tubal as alive. Ezekiel is clear about them in v. 27: “and they would not lie with the heroes, fallen out from [outstanding among] the uncircumcised,” these nations are not like the other Gentiles. This view is further supported by the fact that the prophecy about Meshech and Tubal follows the prediction of the fate of Egypt; both refer to the future. Possibly of significance is that Job 26:13 also employs חללה about the future action toward the serpent.

The attempts to relate מחוֹלל to חלל derive from the preconception that חלל may be rendered as pierced, thus providing a basis for the gospel’s narration. The common justifications are the חלל entries with heart or sword. However, pierced heart is a modern metaphor with no evidence of an ancient origin; kill (empty, open wide) the heart [with pain] is perfectly plausible. The same is true for the other example: kill (open wide) with a sword is a meaningful concept. Given the root meaning of חלל as empty or open, there is no grammatical reason to choose the pierced translation over the killed.

The very rare word מחלל may be related to חלה, illness of vs. 4, which is not far from emptiness, a lack of proper relation to the covenantal well being, a spiritual or material illness, perhaps also trembling. Whatever is the relation of these roots etymologically, they were written and probably pronounced the same at the time of composition, and the Isaiah had every reason to think of them as related.

[xxii]An established meaning of ע׀נ is guiltless transgression—a delusion (deviation from truth). In this sense, ע׀נ is contrasted to פשע—a guilt sin, for which an expiatory offering is due. The difference was very important in that time of sacrifices. Guiltless iniquity (ע׀נ) could lead to sin (פשע) as in Lev 19:8, where lax observance of the food-purity laws leads to profaning the offering with severe consequences for the offender. Because of this causative relationship, the words become almost synonymic, as in Lev 20:17 where the sexual iniquity brings punishment for the sinful shame. However, the author of Isaiah 53 seems to distinguish carefully between the two.

[xxiii] Ps 41:10

[xxiv] The word for community may be vocalized and translated as wife, חברה. In Mal 2:14, it is equated not just with wife, but specifically with wife of youth, a metaphor for true Judaism untainted by syncretism. The subject did not embrace sectarianism from the beginning. Thus, the phrase makes sense as in the wife of his youth [orthodoxy] is our relief.

חבּרה (bruise), to which the translations usually relate Isaiah’s חברה, is normally employed in conjunction with wound (פצע), distinguishing between kinds of bruises. פצע does not appear in Isaiah 53 53.

The vocalization of hataf-patah under ח in Isaiah’s חברה (this is why there is vet, not bet) evidences shortening from kamatz, which is encountered in חבר, friend—thus, girlfriend. In חבּרה (bruise), patah under ח has to be a model vowel, not elongation of hataf, in order to elicit strong dagesh in vet, making it into bet. In the telling example of Isaiah 1:23, havrei, although elongated from hataf to patah, still did not produce dagesh in vet. In other words, strong dagesh in חבּרה and its absence in חברה testify to their being different words, although stemming from the same root חבר (join). The common translation of חבּרה (bruise) in the plural is questionable; it is grammatically singular. But the author would hardly have suggested that a single livid spot, something of little significance, healed the entire nation.

[xxv] The tradition calls sectarians “shepherds (watchers, herdsmen) of sheep and goats” (Avodah Zarah 26).

[xxvi] The root relates to faces.

[xxvii] The common rendering, laid on him, is implausible. Many forms of this root allude to various modes of clash (from hit to modern demonstration by a mob). The same word חפגיע in Isaiah 59:16, where it lacks political sensitivity, is usually more or less correctly translated to intercede. The proper meaning is to clash with an unacceptable situation. Jeremiah 36:25: “Even when [they] urged the king not to burn the scroll” may be translated, “Even when [they] clashed with the king [on the issue of] not burning the scroll.” The same is true in Jeremiah 15:11.

The preposition ב refers to entering, while English on is commonly denoted by the Hebrew preposition על. Therefore, the sin entered the man (and became a natural part of him), not was laid on him (as an unwelcome burden).

The like meaning of ב חפגיע  is encountered in Judges 8:21, Joshua 2:16: to kill (enter a sword into a person). Commentators are often deluded by an already incorrect translation of these two books, employing euphemisms for killing, like “fall upon you,” and erroneously adduce them as proof that preposition ב in this verse does not imply entering the person.

The same translators do not refuse the commonsense translation of ב in neutral cases, as in Isaiah 45:14 where this word denotes, God is in you.

[xxviii] Reading of the preposition ב as governing the instrumental case would render the phrase, And God pushed (stirred up) by him the deviation of us all.

[xxix] The common translation of נגש  as oppressed has quite a different connotation. The man’s life was not made miserable purposely, like that of the Israelites oppressed by the pharaoh. He was hard pressed by impersonal circumstances. Thus, Ex 3:7: נגש, taskmaster, the one who hits. So is נגש as animal-driver.

[xxx] Possibly, sheep here and in v.6 may mean the man was one of us.

[xxxi] Lamb is preferable, since the Isaiah commonly employs the poetic repetition (e.g., vs.2,3) where the first use of a word with ambiguous meaning is explained by the second use in the next clause, which may be the case here. But we may also consider the metaphor of goats and sheep, evil and good parts of the whole nation. Kid may also be plausible, since ancient people usually ate young he-goats, which are useless, but not young rams, sheep. The mention of sheep in the following verse may also indicate another animal here. There could be also a parallel with scapegoat here.

[xxxii] Both allegories are odd, since kids and sheep bleat when they are mistreated. Possibly, the reference is to the absence of meaningful speech: as a kid or a lamb cannot convince the butcher, so was the man unable to change people’s religious convictions. He either stopped teaching, or silence refers to the futility of his teaching. He received a rejoinder and could say nothing more—which explains why the following sentence asks, who would talk with his generation?

[xxxiii] The translation, By oppression and by judgment he was taken away, relies on extremely irregular use of the preposition min as governing an instrumental case. There are hardly any such certain Tanakhic uses of Hebrew preposition, and even their translation as instrumentals mostly reflects the English convention, not their Hebrew meaning. The same Aramaic preposition governs the instrumental case a few times in Tanakh; but here the preposition is Hebrew.

 Although, He was taken from jail and court—is clearly for execution, Taken by oppression and by judgment is unclear; it presupposes the same subject oppressed and took the man. If the subject is the people, then oppression is not an instrument of execution. If the subject is God, then we would have to presume he deliberately oppressed the man, not a welcome thought for many, and then took him from this world in the manner of Enoch or Elijah, which presumption is too high-flown for the very constrained praise of the man by the Isaiah. Further, this reading is not congruent with his soul was exposed to death.

[xxxiv] The word is rare, only thrice encountered in Tanakh, and all three times with unclear meaning. The root relates to closeness, limitation. Thus, one other entry relates to pressure and yjr yjord—to closeness. Other words from this root have connotations of stateship and public meeting.

The translation as oppression is unwarranted. The word is also usually translated thus in Psalm 107:39, which is wrong in relation to the princes mentioned there. Rulers can be pressed (surrounded and wander in wastes) but not oppressed; tortures applied to the deposed rulers of antiquity are no oppression, either. Even supposing that the word relates to the commoners mentioned before, still evil and sorrow are more in line with the pressure (of circumstances) than of oppression, of which there is no indication in the context whatsoever. In the only other instance, Proverbs 30:16, the same word refers to barren [womb] or the one closed and causing birth pangs, thus a closed place, confinement.

The translation as perversion or protection is unwarranted.

The root may be related by the two-letter cell to the strong of v. 12. In the meaning of hard circumstances, it is semantically related to his work of v. 11, which also has that connotation.

[xxxv] The subject was tried after a considerable imprisonment, long enough to mention, since ancient trial was short. Perhaps this unusual, worth mention, length of the man’s confinement indicates that he was not condemned for a normal crime but for some act whose criminality was ambiguous, like improper teaching. In such a case, he would have been kept not in a jail but rather in a fortress or some similar place. There is a specific word for jail in Hebrew; the English confinement suggests a surrounded place.

[xxxvi] Disaster certainly relates to the people, not to the man. In Tanakh, the word למ׀, to it, refers to the collective image (singular form of multitude, such as nation). The appropriate noun is always nearby, usually one word from למ׀, as is the nation here. Syntactically, למ׀ cannot be emphatic preposition, since no object follows it.

[xxxvii] The Qumranic manuscript has it, they gave, which has about the same meaning, considering that the man was executed by the people whom the Isaiah calls criminals; Qumranites switched responsibility from the man to the people.

[xxxviii] The verb is in the past, since prefix ׀ signals the tense reversal. While there are examples in Tanakh to the contrary, their ratio among all verbs prefixed with ׀ does not exceed the statistics for erroneous usage of other verb forms, and therefore where ׀ makes semantic sense as a tense-reversal device, it should be considered to be employed thus.

The attempts to adduce the hypothetical “prophetic perfect” (supposedly the prophets occasionally employed a past tense either to present the prophecy as surely done, or to demonstrate the continuity of the prophesied events) tense implicitly require a major assumption—namely, that the text in question was written as a prophecy. This not only turns translation into doctrinally charged exegesis, but represents a case of circular logic, since the future tense is then used to “prove” that the text is actually a prophecy, and thus could be applied to a certain later figure.

The verb is in the third person singular masculine While this form is sometimes employed as an impersonal verb “someone gave,” such reading is unusual, and Isaiah is not fond of it—even to the extent of excessive clarification, as in the verse 3: [despised] by men. In our rendering, he gave and his tomb have the same antecedent, while an impersonal verb reading requires two different antecedents in one phrase—and both unnamed, which is highly unlikely. And even then, “someone gave” is not easily stretched to the common “they gave;” in Ezek32:25, they gave [her a grave] is correctly expressed with נתנ׀.

Still another problem with the “they gave” translation is the suffix ׀, meaning his [tomb]; [gave] him would have been denoted with the preposition ל׀ instead.

Possibly, here is wordplay on the double meaning of נתנ, to give and to let. The man gave (left) his tomb, i.e., died, and he let (could not stop) the rich from using high burials. The urgency of the issue of these burials is evident from Isaiah 22:16 where the Isaiah harshly criticizes a royal servant Shebna for this transgression.

A curious interpretation suggests that the man let the rich use high places (perhaps excarnation, leaving the body exposed for birds and other scavengers to pick the flash off the bones) for burial, a practice Samuel accepted but which the purist Ezekiel condemned later. That and other dilutions of the tradition may have led to God’s desire to have him suppressed, and he was executed. That interpretation, however, raises a grammatical issue: while the rich (collective) got [permission for] high burial grounds (plural), commoners got only a single tomb. Such a correlation of singular and plural is improbable.

[xxxix] There is no need for the dative case preposition ל in this and the next phrase because of the dative shift, where the noun in the dative directly follows the verb. Isaiah 50:4 and Prov 13:21 contain exactly the same syntax.

[xl] Parallelism in this verse is only superficial, since rich are not synonymous with wicked in ancient literature. The Tanakhic Isaiahs criticize the unrighteous gain, or unethical behavior of some of the rich and powerful, but never the wealth per se. When rarely all rich are called evil, so are all other people, as in Mic 6:12, disproving the specific association of rich with wicked. Accordingly, במה  is likely different from קבר  , not synonymous in parallel verses, and therefore a different (but related) meaning of altars and tomb is plausible. The assumption of strict parallelism in this pericope would lead us to believe that the man did not leave anything to the commoners, but only to the wicked rich, which is rather unlikely. (While wicked and rich may be equaled if they are certain foreigners, e.g., Assyrians, there is no clear evidence in the Isaiah 53 that the man was executed by the conquerors. It is possible to envisage a connection between עשר for rich, רשע  for wicked and אשר for Assyrians.)

[xli] The author employs a wordplay: the word base for malefactors is reish-shin-ayn, and for the rich—ayn-shin-reish. This is why rich is in the singular: the plural ending -im would destroy a near-perfect transposition RShAim—AShR, making it into RShAim—AShRim.

[xlii] The usual translation of high burials as tomb or death is impossible, since the word is in the plural, which cannot point here to intensity. The only example usually advanced on application of the word deaths to a single person is Ezek 28:10, “You will die [the] deaths of [the] uncircumcised.” However, while singular you nominally applies to the ruler of Tyre, it actually refers to the whole nation. The verse continues, “by hand of aliens.” Clearly, aliens in plural are needed to kill not a single person, but multitude of the city dwellers. Ezek 27 addresses Tyre as a nation. Likewise, Ezek 28 does to the people of Sidon, addressing them as collective plural, akin to you in the commandments.

Certainly, the plural of deaths cannot be meaningfully compared, as some do, with life or water. These words are almost exclusively employed in the plural (because a moment of life or a piece of water cannot be singled out), while death is employed in the singular as often as any other word.

Moreover, evidently in order to comply with the gospel narration, מ׀ת was usually translated not death, but tomb.  Although there exists at least one labored reference to an intensive plural of deaths in Ezekiel, there is not a single instance of מ׀ת with the meaning of tomb used as an intensive plural. Therefore, it could be only tombs.

Still more, in order to read high burials or altars as death or tomb, the translations usually disregard ב.  If not part of the word base במת (altars), it could be only a prefix, meaning in, which does not fit in the phrase without a considerable semantic stretching. Besides, the term נתנ ב    (he gave in smth or, even more so,  someone gave in smth) is highly unusual in Hebrew.

Also consider the poetic parallelism with transposition; the standard wording would be, לרשעימ    במת׀ את עשראת קבר׀, ל leaving no room for ב as a preposition in את – ל, את- ל structure.

[xliii] Even accepting for a moment the prophetic perfect and the intensive plural, we still need to twist the meaning to make any sense of the phrase. Let’s look at several translations.

New International Version: He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death. But the term “assigned in his death” is nonexistent in Hebrew. Absence of the metaphorical meaning makes the phrase senseless.

New King James Version: And they made his grave with the wicked, but with the rich at his death. Besides previous objections, the Hebrew phrase mentions two different objects, not one grave.

Holman Christian Standard Bible: He was buried like a criminal; he was put in a rich man's grave. But even Ezekiel’s intensive plural, usually cited as an example, refers to death, not to grave. Also, grave is his, not the rich man's. And rich is obviously a collective plural, parallel to the wicked, not one man. The translation of preposition את as like is extremely irregular. The translation is also meaningless, since criminals were not buried in rich men’s graves; even if we refuse to apply the later Mishnaic law to those times, such defiling burial likely would be objected to by the owners of neighboring plots.

New Revised Standard Version: They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich. Here the preposition ב (in) is simply omitted.

American Standard Version: His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet he was with a rich man in his death. The Hebrew text does not contain he was.

New Living Translation: He was buried like a criminal; he was put in a rich man's grave. Here was put is invented, and the translation of ׀יתנ (he gave) as was buried is indefensible. The grave is his, not the rich man’s.

Overall, the phrase is clear and readable, not significantly different from how an Israeli newspaper would have written today: he gave… his altars. Choosing the common reading, they will make his tomb, requires seven significant changes or nonstandard assumptions in two Hebrew words.

[xliv] His death gave everyone a place to worship him: the rich at the places of sacrifice, the commoners (wicked), for whom offering is too expensive, his burial place; every stratum of society was guilty of idolatry directed at him. Perhaps only the nobles who sentenced the man where the exception.

A less plausible possibility is that the court (the rich) condemned the man because of popular pressure from wicked commoners, who got him dead, but the rich people (supposedly more knowledgeable) worshipped him at altars. The Isaiah could not be sympathetic to such worship.

Altars in plural may also relate to introducing new deities or, rather, new values—the crime Socrates was charged with in similar circumstances.

[xlv] The usual translation of תשימ as you made [his life an offering for sin] is grammatically implausible since the verb we translated as brought or laid is feminine third person or masculine second person singular future tense. The soul (f.) brings something. To have something done to the soul, other translations presuppose a masculine personage, a man or the nation. In standard Hebrew, however, verbs with pronoun features relate to a nearby noun, not to a presupposed object. Indeed, there is a number of occurrences in Isaiah, as in 57:15–19, when the pronoun’s subject is undefined, but we believe that these occurrences were purposely made cryptic, just like Isaiah 53 53. Besides, the reading, If you (masculine singular) would give a ransom for his life, presupposes two undefined and different antecedents in a phrase, which is highly unlikely. As we translated it, the phrase is grammatically perfect, with the verb תשימ (she would give) referring to the soul, and the next verb, יראה (he would see)—to the male pronoun suffix ׀ in נפש׀  (his soul).

Another possible argument is based on poetic transposition. The literal text is, If would bring a guilt offering his soul; therefore, the correct order is, If his soul would bring an offering, which makes clear that it is the soul which should do something, not that something is to be done for her benefit.

A suggestion of an external action, like ransoming, is also refuted by the hard mental work required of the man in the following verse.

[xlvi] Translations commonly drop in result of, completely changing the meaning. Better attempts read out of his anguish, which is a farfetched interpretation and not the proper translation of the words.

[xlvii] Possibly, in the Isaiah’s view, the man had only to pretend repenting. That dishonesty was not outright condemned is evident from the Christian parable of the unfaithful steward, and Greeks often praised it, especially when it was directed against barbarians. Similarly, the man could have lied to the others, i.e., not his followers.

[xlviii] Here is wordplay: righteous is also someone acquitted in court. Having repented, the man would have been acquitted by court and thus justified himself before a multitude of Jews, proving himself righteous.

Righteous may denote a king, as in Isaiah 49:24, or perhaps the leader or founder of a sect, as with the Essenes. In both cases, צדיק is a title, probably referring to the man.

[xlix] Not necessarily the same subject as the righteous, possibly a common metaphor of Israel. This title was not of major importance: Isaiah called thus the nation, himself, Cyrus, and even a royal official Eliakim ben Hilkiyahu.

[l] The translation Justify the Jews (righteous) before many (nations) is less plausible, since the next phrase refers to their (multitude) deviations, a term, which the author could hardly have applied to Gentiles who are not bound by Judaic law.

The translation the righteous shall make many righteous is impossible, since it ignores the preposition ל: to, for, or before many.

[li] The usage of רבמ, many, as a noun is nonstandard in Hebrew

[lii] Here is wordplay: the same verb סבל has the sense of to share in v. 4

[liii] Allot opposes cut from the land of the living. His life would have been preserved.

The Isaiah might have envisaged a relationship between the root חלק here, ח׀ל for shocked, חלה  for illness, and חלא for ill, alluding to the sense of the חל  cell, division—drawing the attention to the sectarian division of the nation.

[liv] The man will be recognized as leader.

[lv] To the ancient mind, one who has many (subjects, riches, soldiers, etc.) is great.

[lvi] There is dative shift; preposition  את refers to the booty, not to the strong.

[lvii] Ex 15:9, Gen 49:7 are better translated take away then allot or divide, which words presume the object of division being partially left with its previous owner, but allot is the only choice of translation in the previous phrase. Supposing a different meaning of the same verb  חלק in the two verses, we may translate, he will take away the captives of the strong—lead Jews from exile, cf. Isaiah 49:25.

[lviii] Although the modern meaning of עצ׀מימ is strong, in antiquity strength was generally a matter of being many. The connotation differs considerably: the man would have been on equal footing either with all Jews or specifically with the leaders, the strong. The author chose a word other than רבימ (multitude) since that word occurs already three times in the previous two verses.

[lix] Gain is the result of his work, as in Prov 31:11, of his repentance. The man would have become an important member of society, and Jews at large would have benefited from his repentance, perhaps as he taught and turned them to righteousness.

[lx] There are other common meanings of the term תחת אשר, translated as even though: instead of what [he risked his life and was considered a criminal] or because [he exposed himself to death, he is reckoned among criminals].

[lxi] A person condemned to stoning was stripped (uncovered), presumably in order to aim correctly. Perhaps the author alludes to his execution for blasphemy.

[lxii] A punishable misdeed, usually inadvertent or not recognized by the perpetrator as sinful. The Isaiah possibly contrasts the sinful delusion of us all with offense of many. This can be resolved by suggesting that the man shared the offense of founding a sect.

[lxiii] The translation of הפגיע as attached is justified grammatically. The Hebrew הפעיל form denotes action done to elicit action by another person (causation). The root meaning of פגע is to touch painfully. יפגיע means caused the touching, namely that he would cause [criminals] to touch [him], or he would be attached to criminals . Joshua 19:11, and 22 bear this meaning out, where the word appears in the simple active form, פעל. The Even-Shoshannah dictionary equates הפעיל with פעל in this case, although the development is noted only in post-Tanakhic times. This development is only natural, since to touch is a reflective verb and to touch someone is the same as to cause him to touch you. Besides the parallel to vs. 6, the Isaiah has another good reason to employ the causative: to relate that the attachment to criminals was a byproduct, caused by the man’s actions.

Considering that the root letter פ is nonessential here, we may also consider הגיע, to arrive. The meaning of הפגיע is to cause someone to arrive somewhere and be attached to something, so that the something would touch him.

Another argument is that the word is in the future tense, while the previous verb is in the past. Although the Tanakhic use of tenses is loose, such a switch from past to future is probably meaningful: would be attached [to criminals] by [future] popular opinion.

The preposition ל used here also appears in Joshua 19:11 in the form אל to describe attachment (of territory to a river) without actually entering (the river). In the same Isaiah 53, when one territory borders another, the preposition is ב. Similarly, the man is attached to criminals, but he is as different from them as land from river, not similar as one land to another.

The translation superficially has a problem of the absent object or subject of the causative will attach, יפגיע. Both are present in the similar structure in vs. 6. The subject here is God. He suggested to the man a path of repentance. Because the man did not follow it, but chose to continue in the common sin, חֵטְא-רַבִּים, God will attach יפגיע him to criminals in the same manner God earlier pushed הפגיע the delusion into the man.

[lxiii]  Although him would be usually rendered in Hebrew as את׀, in this phrase the first pronoun he ה׀א   is just as acceptable.

If, however, we are to seek the object explicitly stated nearby, the only plausible reading is, And the offense of many he has lifted and will attach it [the offense] to criminals. This phrase does not immediately make sense. Many may be those (people in general) before whom the righteous (the man) should have been justified in vs. 11, and therefore the offense referred to is their rejection or conviction of him. Lifted may be interpreted as upheld, supported with his behavior. Criminals (פשעימ) may be those because of whose crimes (מפשענ׀) the man was shocked in vs. 5. And the overall meaning is, By his refusal to repent, he supported the claims of many accusers, and attached the blame of their rejection to the members of his group. However, this interpretation runs into the problem of he was reckoned among criminals (פשעימ): if we take פשעימ as a self-humiliating term for the sectarians, the man was attached to this group only because of the execution. It is possible to read the phrase as, He caused the sin of many (who convicted him) to be attached to the whole nation (פשעימ), but this reading plainly retrojects the views of the evangelists onto the text of Isaiah. The concept of collective responsibility is alien to Judaism where only the guilty ones bear their sins, and even the family members are generally not responsible for sins of other members. This absence of the collective responsibility should not be confused with acceptance of the collateral damage, such as intended drowning of Jonah’s ship.

The preposition does not support a possible translation, was smiting or in order to smite. To smite (in פעל) is always used with the preposition ב, and never with ל, as in the present case.

The preposition denies the common translation, to intercede. Everywhere in Tanakh, when the meaning is intercession, the preposition ב occurs, meaning intercession before someone, and there is a clear definition of the goal of the intercession, such as not to burn the scroll of the Torah. Intercession is never objectless.

In Is 53:12 there is no phrase relating to whom the purported intercession is addressed. Hebrew does not routinely employ structures without antecedents. Therefore, probably the meaning is not interceded, but another word, which does not require another preposition besides ל. And this meaning is "to be attached," which also makes sense as the poetic repetition of the earlier “reckoned among criminals.”

Isaiah 59:16 אינ מפגיע without prepositions is usually rendered as no intercessor, but the context refers to military affairs or, at any rate, use of force, and so, There was no man, no one to stand against. There is hardly any inference to intercession in the sense of pleading. Another possibility is that a reference to intercessor was deliberately planted in Isaiah 59 to create continuity for the theme of Isaiah 53 53.

Isaiah 47:3, וְלֹא אֶפְגַּע אָדָם (without ב or ל), usually translated, And I will let no man intercede, is actually, And I will not strike a man [who does this to you]; let intercede is two verbs, not one as אפגע.

In Job 36:32, מפגיע, [gives lightning a charge that] it strike the mark has the same meaning of attached, touch the mark, not actually punch it, and certainly not intercede.

The general meaning of touch, attached is borne by the semantic relation. Vs. 6: God הִפגיע(pushed) sin into him, and as a result, vs. 12, he יפגע (will be attached) to criminals.

[lxiv] The word מרא cannot plausibly be a noun, since this would make six nouns in a row, highly atypically of Hebrew. The construction כנ – כ, translated here as just as—so, is causation by analogy (e.g., just as you will give—so you will you receive), and therefore requires a verb in each part of the causative structure. The only word which can be a verb is מרא.

[lxv] Here is the dative shift, with dative case preposition ל missing before the first noun

[lxvi] The common translation of משחת  as marred is grammatically impossible because of the vocalization; the word is a noun. The attempts to render distortion are not supported by other uses of this word. Besides, the notion of ugliness is foreign to the context.

[lxvii] The attempts to render נזה  startle are pure conjecture, based neither on the root meaning, nor on the established usage of the word.

[lxviii] While this rendering of the last two verses is not certain, the common one is grammatically impossible. These verses certainly have to do with anointment, and most probably—by sprinkling, i.e., with water. The prophet whom God addresses, and who performs this rite, is described in 20:2 as naked and barefoot, a familiar image. Just see how the Isaiah attempted to embed the words anointment and sprinkle under innocent words, superficially read as marred and startled. While baptism is called immersion in Hebrew, unction is as good a description, especially when joined with sprinkle. It is not an error that the Qumran scroll has the anointment in plural: many people were baptized. The turn, anointment from man is the same used in Matthew 21:23–26, which is hardly a coincidence. The Jews expect baptism from Elijah when he would return from heaven, and certainly were astonished by baptism from a common man. (The relations between the person whom God addresses as you, and the man, mentioned here in the third person, are too much like those depicted between John the Baptist and Jesus.)

[lxix] evidenced by  ס and פ marks in Masoretic edition