What Does Isaiah 53:5 Mean in the King James?
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The wound that exposes our rupture is also where healing reaches us.
THE MEANING
The verse names the rebellion and crookedness that fracture us, and says the burden that opens wholeness rests on him. His wound is where healing reaches us now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that your brokenness makes healing unreachable: the verse locates healing in the one who bears the wound, before you become unbroken.
THE ROOT
נִרְפָּא
nirpa
GROWS FROM
רפא
To heal, restore health.
“healed” in this verse is nirpa. The verse says healing reaches us through the wound borne for us; it is received, not something we manufacture. The opening consonants echo רָפָה (raphah, release; let your hands drop), though its final letter differs, so healing resonates with release without being the same Hebrew root.
ALSO GROWS
rofe: Healer
רֹפֵא
The one who heals shares the same root as the healing received here.
refu'ah: Healing, remedy
רְפוּאָה
The word for healing itself grows from the root used in “we are healed.”
פְּשָׁעֵינוּ
pesha'einu
GROWS FROM
פשע
To rebel, break away.
Pesha names rebellion or breaking away, giving “transgressions” the force of a real rupture. The verse does not make that rupture harmless; it places it beside the wound borne for us.
ALSO GROWS
pesha: Rebellion, breaking away
פֶּשַׁע
This is the singular form of the word translated “transgressions.”
poshea: One who rebels
פֹּשֵׁעַ
The root names both the breakaway and the one enacting it.
שְׁלוֹמֵנוּ
shelomenu
GROWS FROM
שלם
To be whole, complete, intact.
The phrase rendered “the chastisement of our peace” contains shelomenu, “our wholeness.” This root also carries the sense of making restitution, tying wholeness to what answers a rupture rather than pretending it never happened.
ALSO GROWS
shalem: Whole, complete
שָׁלֵם
It makes clear that the “peace” named here has the sense of wholeness.
shillem: Make restitution, repay
שִׁלֵּם
This branch links the root’s wholeness to making good what has been broken.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names wounds openly and joins them to healing, binding, or restoration.
He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.THE THREAD
Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases;Isaiah’s words for “iniquities” and “healed” grow from the Hebrew roots avon (crookedness) and rapha (heal); Psalm 103:3 brings those same roots together. The shared roots join the naming of crookedness with healing.
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