The problem comes, I think, when the central thrust of Isaiah 53—that this suffering was the means, not merely the occasion, of the forgiveness of sins and all that went with it—is taken out of the context, both literary and historical, in which it is found and made to serve a different narrative. At that moment, I suggest—and this is one of the main arguments of the present book—those who read the text in this new way are in imminent danger of exchanging the ancient Israelite covenantal context of the notion of redemptive suffering for a very different context, namely, a pagan one.
So whht is the point
