The Hyperlinked Bible
Intertextuality Pair
Quotation
Later text
He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. “By His stripes you are healed.” For “you were like sheep going astray,” but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
Earlier text
Isaiah 53:6BSB
We all like sheep have gone astray, each one has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid upon Him the iniquity of us all.
Peter quotes the opening clause of Isaiah 53:6 — "you were like sheep going astray" (ēte gar hōs probata planōmenoi) — and then completes the verse's logic in his own words: "but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls." Isaiah 53:6 holds the chapter's two halves together: the diagnosis ("all we like sheep have gone astray, each one has turned to his own way") and the remedy ("the LORD has laid upon Him the iniquity of us all"). Peter has just stated the remedy in 2:24 ("He Himself bore our sins"); here in 2:25 he completes the sheep imagery by naming the return. The straying sheep of Isaiah find their counterpart not merely in a generic flock but in Christ as the Shepherd to whom they are restored — the same sin-bearing Servant of 53:6b is now the Shepherd of 53:6a's wanderers. The telos is restoration to a Person: the iniquity laid on the Servant is what makes the wanderer's homecoming possible, so that the gospel is not "stop straying" but "behold the Shepherd who bore your straying and now keeps your soul." Christ is seen as the desirable end of the journey home, not a new burden of vigilance.