WITH
THE RICH IN HIS DEATH
Allan A. MacRae
[Dr. MacRae is president of Biblical School of Theology, Hatfield, Pennsylvania.]
The late Professor James R. Montgomery of the University of Pennsylvania said on several occasions that the translators of the King James Version were so thoroughly trained in biblical languages that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find an equally competent group of translators today.
Their translation into the language of three hundred years ago was certainly one of the finest ever made of any book into any language. Yet, as in any human work, occasionally unfortunate mistakes were made. One relates to a very important prediction concerning Christ.
The first part of Isaiah 53:9 is one of the verses most quoted by Christians to show that the Old Testament predicts in detail the circumstances of the death of Christ. Yet, as translated in the King James Version, the verse seems somewhat vague. It reads: “And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death.”
Unfortunately, this is one of the least exact translations anywhere in that excellent version. Its English words introduce ideas not in the original and omit ideas the Hebrew contains.
The phrase “he made his grave” could mean that He himself dug a grave. This is not at all the content of the Hebrew. First, the Hebrew verb used here is not the common word for “make,” but one that is generally translated “give.” This verb is also used to describe establishing a law or appointing a man to a certain position. Twice the word is translated “assign.”
A second cause of misunderstanding in this phrase is the translators’ use of the word “he.” In context, the phrase is clearly indefinite or impersonal, sometimes rendered “one” in modern English but more often by “they” or by use of a passive verb.1 Thus the first part of the verse would be better translated, “they assigned his grave”
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or “his grave was assigned.”
The next words, “with the wicked,” likewise do not properly represent the Hebrew, which uses a simple plural adjective without an article and means “wicked ones” or “wicked men.” In modern English, “the wicked” might suggest a large group of wicked men, but the original Hebrew exactly fits the expectation that Christ would be buried with two malefactors.
It was common practice among the Romans to leave crucified criminals unburied or to put them together in a common grave. Therefore the statement, if literally translated, exactly describes what was expected to happen to the body of Jesus: “His grave was assigned with wicked men.”
In the King James Version the next phrase reads: “And with the rich in his death.” This is still further from expressing the precise thought of the original Hebrew. The Hebrew contains no article before “rich,” a singular masculine adjective.
Such use of the adjective, “rich,” may seem strange to us, but it is common in Hebrew as well as in many other ancient and modern languages. Thus if two German women were discussing a man known to one of them, and he entered the room in company with another, one woman might say, “Here comes the man I told you about,” and the other might ask, “Do you mean the tall or the short?”
In English we would say, “Do you mean the tall man or the short man?” Similarly, the singular Hebrew word used in this phrase, if translated into today’s English, would be “a rich man,” rather than “the rich.”
Another important point needs to be mentioned. The word translated “and” is a much broader conjunction than our English “and.” In English, “and” generally means coordination, but sometimes it is used to indicate contrast. Thus we might say, “I looked for him, and he was not there,” really meaning “I looked for him, but he was not there.”
The Hebrew conjunction used here, though generally translated “and,” often carries this idea, and is frequently translated in the King James Version as “but” or “yet.”2
Since the thought is that one assigned a grave with wicked men should in spite of this be buried with a rich man, it would be more precise to translate “but” or “yet,” rather than “and.”
Thus a literal rendering of the first half of Isaiah 53:9 could read:
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“His grave was assigned with wicked men, but he was with a rich man in his death.” (The word “was,” inserted here, is clearly implied in the original.)
When precisely translated the passage exactly describes what would happen some seven hundred years later when Jesus Christ was crucified. Although, in accordance with Roman custom, Christ’s grave was assigned with wicked men, a wealthy man, Joseph of Arimathaea, had sufficient influence with the Roman governor to obtain permission to give the body of Jesus an honorable burial in his own tomb. God led His prophet to predict this event exactly as it would occur seven centuries after the prophet wrote.
Understandably, some do not wish to believe that Isaiah would predict such a remarkable fact about one who would live seven centuries after his time. To them it appears very strange that a reference to wicked persons should be followed by the words, “a rich man.”
They suggest that there must be a mistake in the Hebrew text; that the original text read “evildoers,” and that the word “rich” is a copyist’s error. In fact, The New English Bible, without warrant, has substituted the words, “among the refuse of mankind.”
Yet the word “rich” has been correctly preserved by Hebrew copyists through the ages. In fact, it is included in the Greek translation made about two centuries before Christ.
Occasionally one hears it said that the Dead Sea scroll of Isaiah originally contained the word “evildoers” at this place. However, Professor Millar Burrows of Yale University has pointed out that there is evidence of an erasure in that manuscript at the end of the word for “a rich man,” but he explains the erasure very simply.
After copying the word for “wicked men” a scribe might easily continue to think in plural terms, writing “rich men,” rather than “rich man” without realizing what he had done. But in comparing his work with the manuscript from which he had copied, he would see that he had inserted the plural by mistake and would erase this ending. As it stands, the Dead Sea scroll agrees exactly with other Hebrew manuscripts of Isaiah.
The rest of Isaiah 53:9 explains why such a strange thing would happen: that a man whose grave was assigned with wicked men should instead be placed in a rich man’s tomb. It would be because the Savior’s perfect life was free from all violence and deceit.
This is clearly brought out in the King James Version, which introduces the rest of the verse by the word “because”: “because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.”
A number of modern versions have made an unfortunate mistake
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at this point. Eight of them agree in changing the King James Version word “because” to “although.”
This change was suggested by the German critical scholar Ewald during the nineteenth century, but examination of the evidence shows that his suggestion is quite unwarranted. It relates to a very common Hebrew word, which is generally used as a preposition, but occasionally as a conjunction. Its commonest equivalent in English is “on” or “upon,” though it has a wider range of meaning.
In many passages this word clearly means “because” or “on account of,” but in only a very few has it even been suggested that the word could mean “although.” In most of these, “because” would fit as well or better. There is therefore no reason to substitute “although” for “because.”
The full verse, properly translated from the Hebrew, therefore might better read: “His grave was assigned with wicked men, but he was with a rich man in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.
When the Hebrew in this passage is literally translated, it exactly predicts the events connected with the burial of Christ seven hundred years after Isaiah wrote. Along with the other such prophecies, it provides convincing evidence of the wonderful provision of our miracle-working God.
(Reprinted by permission from the September, 1976 issue of Moody Monthly.)
Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.
Jeremiah 17:7, 8
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