Passage

Isaiah 53.5

Book: Isaiah · NASB95

Verse

"But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed." (Isaiah 53:5, NASB95)

Immediate context (±2 verses)

NASB95 (NASB95)

"He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried; yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted."

"But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed."

"All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth." (Isaiah 53:3-7, NASB95)

Setting

Speaker: Isaiah the prophet, in the voice of repentant Israel ("we ourselves... we are healed"), a corporate confession that the Servant suffered for the speakers, not for His own sins.
Audience: 8th-century BC Judah at the immediate level; the prophetic Servant Songs (42:1-9, 49:1-13, 50:4-11, 52:13-53:12) speak past the immediate audience to a future suffering figure.
Location: Jerusalem / Judah.
Time period: Isaiah's ministry c. 740-686 BC. Conservative scholarship maintains unitary Isaianic authorship; critical scholarship places this Song in "Second Isaiah" (chs. 40-55, c. exilic, 6th c. BC). The text itself is preserved in the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) at Qumran, dated paleographically to c. 125 BC, predating Christ by a century, settling any post-Christian-retrojection objection.

Theological reading

The Servant Song (Isaiah 52:13-53:12) is Christianity's master Old Testament atonement text and the conceptual foundation for penal substitutionary atonement (PSA).

Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho 13, 32, c. AD 160) cites Isaiah 53 as the keystone Christological prophecy against Jewish denial, the suffering, dying, and reproach of Christ are not stumbling blocks but the very content of what was foretold.
Tertullian (Adversus Judaeos 10, c. AD 200) deploys the verse to argue that the Messiah's suffering was prophesied, not improvised; Jewish expectation of a triumphal-only Messiah misreads its own Scripture.
Origen (Contra Celsum 1.55, c. AD 248) records Jewish interlocutors offering a corporate-Israel reading of the Servant; he argues from the singular pronouns and the substitutionary structure ("for our transgressions") that an individual is in view.
Eusebius (Demonstratio Evangelica 3.2, c. AD 312) makes Isaiah 53 the foundational text in his case from prophecy.
Athanasius and the Cappadocians read the Servant's suffering as the act of the eternal Son in the assumed humanity, sustaining both the reality of the suffering (against docetism) and the deity of the Sufferer (against Arianism).

The verse is quoted explicitly in 1 Peter 2:24 ("by His wounds you were healed") and applied to physical healing in Matthew 8:17 (citing v. 4), the dual reference (spiritual healing primarily, physical healing derivatively in the atonement) is settled patristic and Reformed-evangelical reading.

The substitutionary preposition structure is grammatically airtight: every clause has a "we / our" beneficiary and a "He / His" sufferer. Pronouns alone defeat the corporate-Israel reading.

Key words (Hebrew)

pierced through, מְחֹלָל / mecholal, polal participle of chalal (H2490): violent piercing or ritual desecration. The polal stem intensifies and passivizes, "thoroughly pierced through."
crushed, מְדֻכָּא / meduka, pual participle of daka (H1792): covenant-curse language; the same root describes Yahweh "crushing" Egypt (Ps 89:10) and the Servant being "crushed" by Yahweh's will (53:10). The pual is decisively passive, the Servant is crushed by another, not self-destroyed.
chastening for our well-being, מוּסַר שְׁלוֹמֵנוּ / musar shelomenu: shalom (H7965), comprehensive well-being / covenant peace, is what the Servant's discipline secures for us. The genitive is genitive of purpose: chastening aimed at our peace.
by His scourging we are healed, וּבַחֲבֻרָתוֹ נִרְפָּא־לָנוּ: chaburah "stripe / wound" (H2250); rapha "heal" (H7495). Healing is corporate ("we are healed"); stripes are individual ("His"). The grammar enforces substitution.

Cross-references

2 Corinthians 5.21, "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf"
1 Peter 2.24, direct NT citation; "by His wounds you were healed"
Romans 3.25, hilastērion / propitiation language extending the Servant's atoning work
Matthew 8.17, citation of Isaiah 53:4 on physical healing in the atonement
Acts 8.32-35, Philip explains Isaiah 53 as Christological to the Ethiopian eunuch
John 1.29, "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (Servant-imagery)