Paying Attention to the Words

Last Sunday, I attended a performance of Rob Gardner’s Lamb of God by the Minnesota Mormon Chorale and Orchestra. It was surprisingly good — pretty much professional quality.

Of course, me being a writer and editor, I can’t simply leave it there. And in fact there was one small detail of the performance that stuck in my mind, and eventually led me to this keyboard — in musing upon language and scripture, and how familiarity and easy readings can dull our perception.

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A lot of the burden of the story itself in this particular oratorio is carried by the narrators, who (among other things) speak all the actual words of Jesus. At one point, I recall, one of the narrators read that well-known verse from Isaiah:

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. (Isaiah 53:4)

He recited it in the standard way, more or less as follows (using italics to indicate emphasis):

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. (Isaiah 53:4)

There’s a lot of sense in this delivery. It puts the emphasis on the important words, as we’re told we should do. At the same time, I think it also misses the point of this scripture, to a certain degree.

Never let it be said there isn’t irony in the scriptures, particularly the Bible. And this verse is one I believe is meant to sting. Let me propose an alternative reading of this verse and the one preceding, putting the emphasis where I think it perhaps is meant to be:

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: 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 we are healed. (Isaiah 53:3-4)

The story here is all in the pronouns. Note that the first verse isn’t that much different from how we might normally read it. But that second verse, ah, the difference it makes to emphasize all those instances of he and his and we and our, leading up to the culminating phrase that expresses in capsule form the paradox and miracle of the atonement: that we are (can be) healed by someone else taking our punishment for us. The message is even more powerful when approached from the context of the verses before those quoted, describing our rejection of the very Jesus who paid that price. Yet I don’t think I’ve ever heard read it that way.

Before writing this post, by the way, I did something I often do with the Bible: that is, read the verse while omitting words that are italicized in the King James Version, to see if my favored interpretation still makes sense. (I don’t know for sure what the italicization means, but I think I’ve read that it indicates words interpolated to make sense in English that didn’t actually appear in the original text.) While several of those pronouns do indeed appear to be added words, still I think my reading holds up pretty well:

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:3-4; italicized words in the original KJV omitted)

So there you have it. No great moral, but an experience (in my view) in paying attention to the words, and the insight that can come when we do.