This study originated in another essay: “I plan to look at all the differences between the Masoretic text and the Septuagint here.”  (My take on Isaiah 53:10a can be found there.)  I decided to give Isaiah 53:10-12 its own thread when I felt rushed and unwilling to spend the time it deserved as an aside in another thread.

A note (28) in the NET after the line—once restitution is made—reads:

The meaning of this line is uncertain. It reads literally, “if you/she makes, a reparation offering, his life.” The verb תָּשִׂים (tasim) could be second masculine singular, in which case it would have to be addressed to the servant or to God. However, the servant is only addressed once in this servant song (see 52:14a), and God either speaks or is spoken about in this servant song; he is never addressed. Furthermore, the idea of God himself making a reparation offering is odd. If the verb is taken as third feminine singular, then the feminine noun נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) at the end of the line is the likely subject. In this case one can take the suffixed form of the noun as equivalent to a pronoun and translate, “if he [literally, “his life”] makes a reparation offering.”

“Furthermore, the idea of God himself making a reparation offering is odd,” practically leapt off the page at me.  Assuming the NET translators considered וַֽיהֹוָ֞ה (y^ehôvâh) here^[1] as the Father and taking Jesus literally—The Father and I are one^[2]—I ask, who but יְהֹוָה (y^ehôvâh) could make a meaningful “reparation offering”?  For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.^[3]  The writer of Hebrews explained (Hebrews 9:22-26 NET):

Indeed according to the law almost everything was purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.  So it was necessary for the sketches of the things in heaven to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves required better sacrifices than these.  For Christ^[4] did not enter a sanctuary made with hands—the representation of the true sanctuary—but into heaven itself, and he appears now in God’s presence for us [Table].  And he did not enter to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the sanctuary year after year with blood that is not his own, for then he would have had to suffer again and again since the foundation of the world.  But now^[5] he has appeared once for all at the consummation of the ages to put away sin^[6] by his sacrifice [Table].

Who wrote the letter to the Hebrews?  It seems important now to explain what I’m thinking since I can’t calculate how much affect that speculation has on my interpretation.

If I had read Matthew’s account only I would have thought this unnamed Pharisee tried to entrap Jesus in his words.  Mark pointed out that he saw that Jesus answered [the Sadducees] well.  This insight makes me suspect that the unnamed Pharisee became known to Mark or Peter at some later time.  At that particular moment he may have hoped his brother Pharisees perceived his question as a test (πειράζων, a form of πειράζω) but I wonder if, secretly, it was more like what John described: Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test (δοκιμάζετε, a form of δοκιμάζω) the spirits to determine if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.^[9]

Mark’s Gospel narrative continued (Mark 12:32-34a NET):

The expert in the law said to him, “That is true, Teacher; you are right to say that he is one, and there is no one else besides him.  And to love him with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices”^[10] [Table].  When Jesus saw that he had answered thoughtfully, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

Jesus’ affirmation along with this unnamed Pharisee’s desire for a love [that] is the fulfillment of the law^[11] causes me to think he stood in the background among the other disciples as Jesus, after his resurrection, taught them what became the content of the letter to the Hebrews.  Though I quoted Paul, I don’t think this unnamed Pharisee was Saul.  The Pharisee who became the Apostle Paul was off doing his own thing, advancing in Judaism beyond many of [his] contemporaries in [his] nation, and was extremely zealous for the traditions of [his] ancestors.^[12]

I think the Eleven plus Matthias (Acts 1:15-26) struggled mentally to force Jesus’ death and resurrection into their hypothesis of a political revolutionary who would free Israel from Roman domination.  Jesus’ teaching washed over them, virtually unheard and unheeded.  It was too technical, too religious, perhaps even too “heretical” to fully sink in.

This is not to say that the unnamed Pharisee was untroubled by Jesus’ teaching.  But I think that he was not a zealot in any sense of the word.  He was more patient, more thoughtful, more attuned to these particular technicalities and more willing to entertain Jesus’ notions, though he, too, would need time and the indwelling Holy Spirit to fully embrace them.

Sometime prior to the stoning of Stephen (Acts 7:54-8:3) this unnamed Pharisee recalled Jesus’ teaching as a solution to signs of defection he witnessed among his brothers, and he wrote it down.  I don’t know if he showed it to anyone or not.  To the apostles in Jerusalem, seeing themselves primarily as a Jewish reform movement (Acts 21:18-24), it may have seemed too radical, like pouring fuel on a smoldering fire (Acts 21:26-31).

I imagine this unnamed Pharisee standing again in the background at the Jerusalem Council.  He sensed a kindred spirit in Paul and handed him a copy, perhaps his only copy, of the manuscript of the letter to the Hebrews.  John could have confirmed its contents as Jesus’ teaching if Paul had asked.  I don’t know how Paul might have reacted.

He seemed content with the results of the Jerusalem Council initially: As [he and Timothy] went through the towns, they passed on the decrees that had been decided on by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the Gentile believers to obey.^[13]

After Paul journeyed through Athens and Corinth, however, perhaps during the affliction that happened to [him] in the province of Asia,^[14] I think Jesus’ teaching in the unnamed Pharisee’s writing known as Hebrews percolated, along with his recent experience and the Holy Spirit’s answers to the things that had troubled him (Romans 9-11), into that masterful Gospel commentary known today as Paul’s Letter to the Romans.  That unnamed Pharisee’s account of Jesus’ teaching had a much better opportunity for widespread circulation in Paul’s traveling library of scrolls and parchments.

This is all conjecture on my part, more like a screenwriter or an actor developing a backstory.  I share it here because I promised I would and because it may have some influence on my interpretation of Hebrews.

I searched all the occurrences of אָשָׁם֙ (ʼâshâm), translated offering for sin (Tanakh, KJV) and restitution (NET), and made the following table of those with identical consonants (no prefixes or suffixes) to see how the rabbis translated each of them in the Septuagint.

Only 2 Kings 12:16 (4 Kings 12:17) matched the vowel points with the occurrence in Isaiah 53:10.  Both were translated περὶ ἁμαρτίας (for sin).  A table of the homograph אָשַׁ֥ם (ʼâsham) yielded no additional vowel point matches.

The exercise persuaded me that אָשָׁם֙ (ʼâshâm) was the Hebrew word the rabbis intended to understand and translate in the Septuagint.  Then I searched all occurrences of תָּשִׂ֚ים (suwm), translated thou shalt make (Tanakh, KJV) and is made (NET), and made the following table of those with identical consonants (no prefixes or suffixes).

None of the other occurrences of תָּשִׂ֚ים (suwm) matched the vowel points exactly.  All were translated into Greek as 2^nd person verbs, most were singular.  The plural exceptions were Isaiah 53:10 [Table] and Genesis 44:2.

I don’t see any reason for a plural verb here but its existence gives me pause to consider the similar occurrence in Isaiah 53:10 as the translators’ interpretive choice.  Since “third [person] feminine singular” was another option cited in the NET note above I made a table of those occurrences as well.

The final occurrence (Job 13:27), though its consonants were identical to the others, was clearly “second [person] masculine singular.”  And none of these was an exact match for the occurrence in Isaiah 53:10.  I noted one other form which was translated as forms of τίθημι in the Septuagint.

This exercise made me willing to consider that תָּשִׂ֚ים (suwm) might be original to Isaiah 53:10, the Hebrew word the rabbis intended to understand and translate in the Septuagint.  Paul, in his greeting to believers in Galatia, had also used a (singular) form of δίδωμι  (Galatians 1:3-5 NET):

Grace and peace to you from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave (δόντος, another form of δίδωμι) himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age according to the will of our God and Father [Table], to whom be glory forever and ever!  Amen.

Though I still need to consider נַפְשׁ֔וֹ (nephesh), translated his soul (Tannakh, KJV), I began to consider: if this—when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin—is the more legitimate understanding of this clause, how did God make his soul an offering for sin?

What follows is a fictional explanation from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, offered as the intellectual equivalent of an appetizer, to get the mind warmed up to the taste and smell of this issue:

“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.”^[15]

The understanding that was part of my own socialization is perhaps best exemplified by an excerpt from “The Death of Christ,” a sermon delivered by Charles Haddon Spurgeon on January 24, 1858:

Understand, then, the sense in which Christ was made a sacrifice for sin. But here lies the glory of this matter. It was as a substitute for sin that he did actually and literally suffer punishment for the sin of all his elect. When I say this, I am not to be understood as using any figure whatever, but as saying actually what I mean. Man for his sin was condemned to eternal fire; when God took Christ to be the substitute, it is true, he did not send Christ into eternal fire, but he poured upon him grief so desperate, that it was a valid payment for even an eternity of fire. Man was condemned to live forever in hell. God did not send Christ forever into hell; but he put on Christ, punishment that was equivalent for that. Although he did not give Christ to drink the actual hells of believers, yet he gave him a quid pro quo—something that was equivalent thereunto. He took the cup of Christ’s agony, and he put in there, suffering, misery, and anguish such as only God can imagine or dream of, that was the exact equivalent for all the suffering, all the woe, and all the eternal tortures of every one that shall at last stand in heaven, bought with the blood of Christ.

Both of these explanations share a common theme: God made Christ “a sacrifice for sin” by conforming to something presumed to be innate to the created cosmos.  In C.S. Lewis’ fiction He conformed to the “deeper magic” and in Charles Spurgeon’s sermon He conformed to some idea of judicial or commercial equivalence:  “something that was equivalent” to “a valid payment for even an eternity of fire” since “Man was condemned to live forever in hell.”

I think God made Christ “a sacrifice for sin” by the truth, power and authority of his word.

God said, Let Christ be the offering for sin.  And God made Christ the offering for sin, and it was so (John 3:16 NET Table):

For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

God said, Let Christ be the offering for sin.  And it was so (John 11:49-53 NET):

Then one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said, “You know nothing at all!  You do not realize that it is more to your advantage to have one man die for the people than for the whole nation to perish.”  (Now he did not say this on his own, but because he was high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the Jewish nation [Table], and not for the Jewish nation only, but to gather together into one the children of God who are scattered.)  So from that day they planned together to kill him [Table].

God said, Let Christ be the offering for sin.  And it was so.  The Christ obeyed God his Father (John 10:17, 18 NET).

This is why the Father loves me—because I lay down my life, so that I may take it back again.  No one takes it away from me, but I lay it down of my own free will.  I have the authority to lay it down, and I have the authority to take it back again.  This commandment I received from my Father.”

Tables comparing Genesis 44:2 in the Tanakh, KJV and NET, and comparing Genesis 44:2 in the Septuagint (BLB and Elpenor), and a table comparing Matthew 22:35 in the NET and KJV follow.