The Hyperlinked Bible
Intertextuality Pair
Allusion
Later text
Isaiah 53:10BSB
Yet it was the LORD's will to crush Him and to cause Him to suffer; and when His soul is made a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.
Earlier text
"If someone acts unfaithfully and sins unintentionally against any of the LORD's holy things, he must bring his guilt offering to the LORD: an unblemished ram from the flock, of proper value in silver shekels according to the sanctuary shekel; it is a guilt offering.
Isaiah 53:10 declares that the Servant's life is made "a guilt offering" (אָשָׁם, asham), a specific sacrificial term drawn from the Levitical legislation in Leviticus 5:15ff (the pericope opening at the speech formula of 5:14). The asham was the offering required for violations against holy things or for cases where restitution was needed — the offerer had to restore what was taken plus one-fifth (Lev 5:16). By identifying the Servant's suffering as an asham, Isaiah portrays his death not merely as general atonement but as providing restitution for the specific debt of sin, compensating God for what sin has stolen from His glory. The Servant bears both the penalty and the restitution cost that Leviticus 5 prescribes. The אָשָׁם required an unblemished ram (Lev 5:15); Isaiah transposes that animal offering into the Servant's own voluntary, personal self-offering — "it was the LORD's will to crush Him... and when His soul is made a guilt offering" (Isa 53:10). The CRITICAL weight this pair carries in its trajectories rests on a canon-rare collocation, not on the shared noun alone: the full shared set — אָשָׁם (H817), נֶפֶשׁ (H5315), and יהוה (H3068) — co-occurs in exactly two verses in the entire Hebrew canon, Leviticus 5:15 and Isaiah 53:10, a citation-grade rarity marking Isaiah's deliberate reach for this specific legislation.