Isaiah 53:5 Meaning But He Was Pierced for Our Transgressions

The wounds are his; the wrongdoing behind them belongs to the people speaking. Wounded and bruised translate Hebrew words for pierced through and crushed, so what happened to him was a killing.

Peace here is shalom, a relationship with nothing broken in it and nothing still owing. The LORD laid the punishment that bought it on him, and the one bearing it is Christ at the cross. The healing his wounds bring is healing from the wrongdoing, though some hear the body included too. Those who trust him receive that healing as something already paid for.

Every community carries a weight it cannot look at directly: the greed and cruelty each person hides even from themselves. Rather than face this darkness, they push it outward onto one figure, whose wounds become the visible shape of everything they refuse to call their own.

But something can turn. When people see their own hidden faults carried openly by another and finally own them, they stop pretending the wrong lives only in others. The healing is not magic. It happens because a fault you admit is one you can face and change, while a fault you deny stays hidden and keeps shaping what you do.