By His Stripes We Are Healed

The Source: Isaiah 53:5

Isaiah 53:5 — "But he [was] wounded for our transgressions, [he was] bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace [was] upon him; and with his stripes we are healed."

The phrase "by his stripes we are healed" comes from the fourth of Isaiah's Servant Songs (Isaiah 52:13–53:12), written roughly 700 years before Jesus's crucifixion. The passage describes a suffering servant who bears the iniquities of others — a figure the New Testament writers identify with Jesus.

The Hebrew Words

Three Hebrew words in the verse carry specific weight:

• Chaburah (חֲבוּרָה, Strong's H2250) — "stripe, welt, bruise, wound from a blow." From the verb chabar ("to bind, to unite"). A chaburah is specifically a bruise from being struck — the mark left when flesh is bound in on itself.
• Nirpa — passive form of rapha (רָפָא, H7495) — "to heal." The same verb that gives the divine name Jehovah Rapha (Exodus 15:26). The verb covers physical healing, relational restoration, and spiritual repair.
• Shalom (H7965) — "peace, wholeness." Appears in the preceding clause: "the chastisement of our shalom."

The Structure of Isaiah 53:5

The verse is built on Hebrew parallelism — each clause doubles the thought:

• "wounded for our transgressions" / "bruised for our iniquities"
• "chastisement of our peace upon him" / "by his stripes we are healed"

The servant's wounds are for the people — the Hebrew preposition is min ("from, because of"), indicating both cause and substitution. The logic is that what should have fallen on "us" has fallen on "him."

The New Testament Quotation: 1 Peter 2:24

1 Peter 2:24 — "Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed."

Peter cites Isaiah 53:5 directly. The Greek word for "stripes" is mōlōpi (μώλωπι, Strong's G3468) — "a welt, a bruise from a blow" — a close match for the Hebrew chaburah. The Septuagint uses the same word in translating Isaiah 53:5.

Notice Peter's framing: the healing he applies the verse to is healing from sin — "that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness." Peter's primary application of "by his stripes we are healed" is moral and spiritual, not physical.

The Matthew 8:17 Application: Physical Healing

Matthew 8:17 — "That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses."

Matthew cites the previous verse — Isaiah 53:4 — and explicitly applies it to Jesus's physical healings. The Hebrew there uses choli (חֳלִי, H2483, "sickness") and makob (מַכְאוֹב, H4341, "pain") — words with physical range. Matthew places the quotation in a context of bodily healing miracles.

So the Servant Song has both dimensions in the New Testament citation pattern: Isaiah 53:4 applied to physical sickness (Matthew 8:17), and Isaiah 53:5 applied to sin (1 Peter 2:24).

The Ongoing Debate

Whether Isaiah 53:5 promises physical healing as part of the atonement — alongside forgiveness of sins — is a question on which honest, biblically-grounded Christians disagree. The positions generally break along these lines:

• Spiritual-primary reading — points to 1 Peter 2:24's explicit framing (sin, not sickness) and to the broader Isaiah 53 context (sin-bearing, justification). The physical healings Matthew 8:17 describes anticipate the full redemption of the body, which is not complete in this age (Romans 8:23).
• Physical-also reading — points to Matthew 8:17's placement of the quotation in a healing context and to the fact that the Greek iaomai (the verb translated "healed" in 1 Peter 2:24) is the standard word for physical healing in the New Testament.

Scripture does not require picking one reading against the other. What it does not support is a guaranteed-physical-healing-now reading that ignores the biblical pattern of suffering, patience, and ultimate bodily redemption. Paul himself asked three times for the removal of his "thorn in the flesh" and was told "my grace is sufficient for thee" (2 Corinthians 12:9) — not that his flesh was healed.

The Stripes Themselves

The physical event behind the phrase is the Roman flagellatio — the scourging Jesus received before crucifixion (Matthew 27:26, Mark 15:15, John 19:1). The Roman scourge (flagrum) was typically made of leather thongs with bone or metal fragments embedded, designed to tear flesh. Pilate's scourging was severe enough that when Jesus was later forced to carry his cross, Simon of Cyrene was compelled to carry it for him (Matthew 27:32).

Summary

• Source: Isaiah 53:5, part of the fourth Servant Song.
• Quoted: 1 Peter 2:24 (applied to sin); Isaiah 53:4 quoted in Matthew 8:17 (applied to physical healing).
• Hebrew chaburah — bruise, welt from a blow — specifically the marks of the Roman scourging.
• Hebrew rapha — to heal — the same verb as Jehovah Rapha, covering physical, relational, and spiritual restoration.