Intertextuality Pair

Romans 5:19 → Isaiah 53:11

Allusion

Later text

Romans 5:19BSB

For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.

Earlier text

Isaiah 53:11BSB

After the anguish of His soul, He will see the light of life and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant will justify many, and He will bear their iniquities.
+ 1 more earlier text

Earlier text

53:12BSB

Therefore I will allot Him a portion with the great, and He will divide the spoils with the strong, because He has poured out His life unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors. Yet He bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors.
Walk the Square · a single-voice walk of this pair around the Clowney square14:08

Significance

Paul's Adam-Christ antithesis — "through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous" — draws its decisive vocabulary from Isaiah 53:11, which alone in the OT joins "the righteous one," "the many," and the verb "make righteous / justify" (LXX dikaiōsai dikaion... tois pollois). Where Isaiah says "My righteous Servant will justify the many," Paul says the obedient one will make "the many" righteous; the recurring "the many" (hoi polloi) of 5:15-19 is the Servant Song's rabbîm. Paul also coordinates this with 53:12's "He bore the sin of many": the Servant's sin-bearing is the mechanism by which the many are justified. The connection is Promise-Fulfillment rather than mere analogy — Paul is not illustrating with Isaiah but identifying Christ as the foretold righteous Servant whose representative obedience reverses Adam's representative disobedience. The telos is the wonder of an alien righteousness: "the many" are constituted righteous not by their own deeds but by the obedience of Another, so that the Servant's justifying work is savored as sheer gift, the only ground on which guilty sinners stand acquitted before God.

Found via
Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type
Allusion
Connection Method(s)
Promise-Fulfillment

▸ The Suffering Servant

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