Can you help me to critique a Jewish interpretation of Isaiah 53?

This text is from a letter written by David Gooding in 2011.

Thank you very much for your letter, and for making yourself known to me. May God bless your work. I have read with interest your determination to learn Hebrew, and am pleased to hear that you have such a gracious tutor. She seems a very sympathetic person, and I think perhaps she does not necessarily agree with the argument put forward at great length by Marshall Roth in the article that you shared with her and have now shared with me. I notice her comment at the end, 'It is so fraught! Do you have any further thoughts?' Who knows but what in God's mercy you might be the means in his hands in bringing her to faith in the true Messiah.

Now to answer your immediate question, these are the works that I recommend. First is Alec Motyer's Isaiah, IVP, 1999. It discusses in a little detail the verses you are particularly interested in. Similarly, if you are looking for rigorous Hebrew, then I would recommend a book by the same author entitled The Prophecy of Isaiah, IVP, 1993. This is, generally speaking, very heavy going; but it would be worthwhile getting a hold of it maybe, and considering it. The second scholar you might consult is Derek Kidner. His commentary on Isaiah is contained in the New Bible Commentary, 21st Century Edition, IVP, 1994.

Now to deal with the article. Marshall Roth cites two main objections against the traditional Christian view, which is that, in chapter 53, it is Israel who is speaking about the sufferings of the Messiah. Roth claims the following:

In chapter 53, it is not Israel that is speaking about the Messiah: it is the Gentile nations who are speaking about Israel. They are confessing that Israel has been wounded and has suffered by the Gentile nations' own persecution of the Jews.

Isaiah 53:5 is a classic example of mistranslation: the verse does not say, 'he was wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities', which could convey the vicarious suffering ascribed to Jesus. Rather, the proper translation is 'he was wounded because of our transgressions, and crushed because of our iniquities'. This conveys that the Servant suffered as a result of the sinfulness of others—not the opposite as Christians contend, that the Servant suffered to atone for the sins of others.

My comment on the first claim is simply that Roth's reinterpretation seems to me highly unlikely. The last verse of chapter 52 informs us that kings shall shut their mouths at him, the Messiah. It seems a little difficult to have the very next verse quote what those kings will say, in spite of their mouths being shut!

More important is my critique of the second claim. Roth argues that the translation of 53:5, 'he was wounded for our transgressions', chimes in with the idea that the Messiah suffered vicariously for Israel. But again, according to Roth, this is a complete mistranslation, and should be rendered 'because of our transgressions'—which implies that the Gentile nations will confess that Israel suffered and was wounded by the transgressions of the Gentile nations themselves.

If this were the true translation, it would be an astonishing understatement. Who was never aware that Israel suffered terrible wounds and uncountable deaths through the persecution of the Gentile nations? It is therefore a most unlikely interpretation.

But in the second place, Roth's translations—'because of', and later on 'as a result of'—do not get rid of what is, for many Jews, the basic problem: namely, vicarious suffering on account of other people's sins. For instance, in the very next verse in Isaiah 53 (v. 6), Roth's interpretation takes the phrase 'and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all' to imply that the Lord himself caused the Gentile persecution of Israel, and caused the Gentiles to torture and eliminate millions of Jews. This is an astonishing thing for modern Jews to hold.

At the end of verse 5, according to Roth's interpretation, the Gentile nations who persecuted and wounded Israel now claim that 'the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed'. This means that the Gentile nations are claiming that Israel was chastised for the good of the other nations; or, to put it slightly differently, that the persecutions of the Jews in, say, Hitler's concentration camps were designed by God as a chastisement upon Israel as the price that God himself demanded Israel to pay for the peace of Hitler's Germany, which Israel's suffering produced.

In other words, Roth's interpretation does not escape the question of vicarious suffering. Instead, it now implies that the Gentile nations have been brought into peace by Israel vicariously suffering the pain, the woundings and the gassings perpetrated on Israel by the Gentile nations themselves. And secondly, it was God himself that laid on Israel the chastisement perpetrated by the Gentile nations, and God did so in order that, by that means of persecuting Israel, the nations might be given peace by God.

I certainly would be interested to hear your Hebrew tutor's explanation of the implications of her interpretation of Isaiah 53.

All for now. If you have any further questions, or have not completely understood what I have said in this letter, please do not hesitate to write again.

Yours sincerely in Christ,