Isaiah 53:4 - “Our”
that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying: Himself took our infirmities, and bare our diseases. (Matthew 8:17, ASV)
Some critics of divine healing have argued that this quotation of Isaiah 53:4 pertains to Jesus’s earthly ministry only and not His redemptive work. That argument not only ignores the Holy Spirit’s own exegesis of Isaiah, but also requires some Mary Lou Renton moves to pull it off just with the “ours”.
First we look back to Isaiah:
He was despised, and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief [sickness]: and as one from whom men hide their face he was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs [sicknesses], and carried our sorrows [pains]: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 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 [bruise - AV] we are healed … and the Lord hath laid [made to light on] him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:3-6, RV, marg.)
In this excerpt of Isaiah, I have reddened all of the “ours”. A quick reading demonstrably shows that the same “our” that is used to speak of sicknesses and pains is the same “our” used to speak of transgressions and iniquities. Each has the same “our” suffix in the Hebrew. I am not aware of a single Bible scholar who says that the “our transgressions” and “our iniquities” pertains just to the people Jesus ministered to in his earthly ministry. I am also unaware of a competent scholar or theologian who can persuade me that “he was despised … and a man of sorrows” and “wounded for transgressions” speak to Jesus’s redemptive work, but everything in between speaks only about those in Matthew 8:17.
that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying: Himself took our infirmities, and bare our diseases. (Matthew 8:17, ASV)
Arguing that Matthew’s citation to Isaiah pertains only to Jesus’s earthly ministry also falls on the sword of Matthew’s “ours.” In the Greek, Matthew uses the ordinary Greek word ῾ημων which is universally translated “our” or “of us.” This same word is used in the following scriptures:
For I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received: that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15:3, ASV)
who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed. (1 Peter 2:24, ASV)
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. (1 John 4:10, RSV)
The same our is used for physical healing as it is for redemption. If the Holy Ghost had actually meant for Isaiah 53:4 to apply just to those folks healed in Jesus’s earthly ministry, He would have used ὑμων which is Greek for “their” or “of them.”