“But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).
The verse has two poetic parallels. In the following, “wounded” and “bruised” are parallel, and “transgressions” and “iniquities” are parallel:
But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The point is that He was not hurt because of any wrongdoings of His own, but for our sins. Just like the substitute sacrificial lamb suffered for the lawbreaker.
In the following, “The chastisement” and “His stripes” are parallels, and “our peace” and “we are healed” are parallels:
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.
The point is that when we see that His wounds (the stripes from the scourging on His back) came because Jesus was suffering in our place, then our guilt is expunged; we are “healed” in the sense that we bear our guilt no longer. Jesus took our guilt. From this perspective, the healing is spiritual because we are free, knowing that God already took care of our punishment when Jesus was punished in our place.
