Isaiah 53: Debunking Missionary Mistranslations

Did you know that several passages in Isaiah 53 are mistranslated in Christian Bibles?

Hi, I’m Rabbi Bentzion Kravitz, founder of Jews for Judaism, speaking from Jerusalem.

Today, I will discuss one of these mistranslations.

Many Christian Bibles translate Isaiah 53:5 as: “He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities.” That’s why missionaries argue that the verse is about a suffering servant who dies for the sins of mankind.

However, in Hebrew, this verse uses the prefix מ (Mem), meaning “from” or “because of,” and not “for.”

To prove my point, here are other verses that use of the letter מ (Mem):

Exodus 20:2 says, “I am the LORD your God, who rescued you from (מ) the land of Egypt,” and Lamentations 1:5 says, “The LORD has brought her grief because of (מ) her many transgressions.”

So, Isaiah 53:5 describes a servant who suffers from someone else’s actions and not for them.

As I demonstrated in previous videos, numerous verses like Judges 20:8 refer to the nation of Israel as a single individual with the words “as one man.” Additionally, several verses like Isaiah 41:8 identify the “servant” as the nation of Israel.

So, a correct translation of Isaiah 53:5 should read:

“He [Israel] was wounded because of our [the nations’] transgressions, bruised from our [the nations’] iniquities.”

In context, the chapter describes events when God will redeem the Jewish people from the final exile, and the nations of the world will be the eyewitnesses. At first, they will be shocked because they thought the Jews suffered because they were “rejected by God.”

Now, the nations will acknowledge that they were responsible for the Jews suffering and perpetrated unwarranted oppression against them, as it says in Isaiah 52:4, “Assyria oppressed them without cause.”

In a future video I will discuss other mistranslations in Isaiah 53.

Thank you for watching.

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