The Berean Exercise
If you push back on penal substitutionary atonement in any evangelical conversation, here is what happens. Someone reaches for a verse. They say, "But what about Isaiah 53? What about Romans 3? What about 2 Corinthians 5:21?" The verses get quoted as if quoting them ends the discussion. They do not end the discussion. They open it. Because every single one of these verses, when you read it in the language it was given in, says something different from what your pastor told you it said.
This is the third and final article in this series. The first article (Once a Son, Always a Son) walked the parable of the Prodigal Son and showed you the relational frame the Father actually operates in. The second (Why Penal Substitution Does Not Fit the Text) named the framework that built the modern altar call, traced it back to an eleventh-century archbishop, and walked five places in the Hebrew text where the framework does not belong. This article is the verse work. The five verses PSA evangelicals reach for, walked one at a time, in their original languages.
This is the part that is going to look intimidating in the table of contents. Do not skip it. The whole series rests on whether the verses you have been told prove PSA actually prove PSA. If they do, the framework wins and you can stop reading. If they do not, you deserve to see exactly why.
For each verse we will quote it the way you have heard it. We will state plainly what PSA claims it means. Then we will show you what the text actually does. This is not a hostile exercise. This is the Berean exercise. Acts 17:11 says the Bereans were more noble than the Thessalonians because they searched the Scriptures daily to see whether the things they were being taught were true. We are doing what Luke commended them for.
1. Isaiah 53:4-6
"Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 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. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." (Isaiah 53:4-6)
PSA claim: God the Father punished Yeshua in our place. The wounds and stripes are the punishment we deserved, transferred to His body. God's wrath was poured out on Him so it would not have to be poured out on us.
What the text says: The English prepositions hide the Hebrew. The phrase translated "wounded for our transgressions" is מְחֹלָל מִפְּשָׁעֵנוּ (mecholal mip'sha'enu). The preposition is מִן (min), which is causal, not substitutionary. The wounds came because of our rebellions, not in place of the punishment our rebellions deserved. The same construction holds in the next phrase, מְדֻכָּא מֵעֲוֺנֺתֵינוּ (meduka me'avonotenu), "crushed because of our iniquities."
Hebrew has a substitutionary preposition available. It is תַּחַת (tachat), meaning "in place of," used in Genesis 22:13 when the ram is offered tachat Isaac. Isaiah does not use it. Isaiah uses min. The grammar permits a relational reading. It does not demand a legal one. The servant suffers because of what the people have done, not as a legal substitute absorbing what the people deserved.
The verb that PSA preachers point to is שָׂם (sam) at the end of verse 6: "the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." Even this verb does not require punishment-transfer. The same verb is used in Numbers 11:11 when Moshe complains to HaShem that He has laid the burden of all this people upon him. Moshe is not absorbing a divine penalty. He is carrying a weight. The servant in Isaiah 53 carries the weight of his people's brokenness, the way a parent carries a wayward child's weight. It is solidarity, not substitution.
And here is what almost no Christian sermon admits. For the seven hundred years between when Isaiah wrote this chapter and when Yeshua walked into Galilee, the Hebrew-speaking Jewish community read this passage without the PSA framework, because the PSA framework did not exist. The Targum Jonathan on Isaiah 53 (the Aramaic paraphrase used in the synagogues of Yeshua's day) actually reads the chapter messianically, applying it to the coming Messiah, but it does not read it penally. Rashi (eleventh century) reads the servant as Israel collectively suffering for the nations. Ibn Ezra (twelfth century) reads it similarly. Both Jewish readings see suffering, both see vicarious bearing of weight, neither sees penal substitution. The PSA reading is not the original reading. It is the Reformation reading projected back into the text.
2. Romans 3:25
"Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God." (Romans 3:25)
PSA claim: Yeshua's blood was a "propitiation," meaning it satisfied God's wrath against sinners. God was angry, the blood absorbed the anger, now God is no longer angry.
What the text says: The Greek word your English Bible translates as "propitiation" is ἱλαστήριον (hilastērion). Here is the part most pastors do not know and most seminaries do not teach. Hilastērion is not a generic word for "wrath-satisfier." It is a specific technical term, and in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Tanakh that Sha'ul and every other first-century Jew read constantly), the word hilastērion is used twenty-seven times. Twenty-one of those uses translate one specific Hebrew word: כַּפֹּרֶת (kapporet), the mercy seat.
The mercy seat is the gold lid on top of the Ark of the Covenant inside the Holy of Holies. It is the exact spot where, on Yom Kippur, the high priest sprinkled the blood of the sin offering for the purification of Israel.
So when Sha'ul writes that God set Yeshua forth as a hilastērion, he is not announcing a new theological category called "propitiation of divine wrath." He is making a Levitical claim that any first-century Jewish reader would have caught instantly. He is saying: Yeshua is the new mercy seat. The cross is the new place of kapparah, the new place of purification, the new spot where blood is sprinkled and the relationship with HaShem is restored.
The cross is not the new courthouse. It is the new Holy of Holies.
This is not an exotic reading. It is the plain reading if you know the Septuagint, which Sha'ul knew by heart. N.T. Wright's The Day the Revolution Began makes this case at length, and Wright is not even Hebraic in his framework. He is a British Pauline scholar working from inside the Greek text, and he arrives at the same conclusion. Hilastērion means kapporet. Romans 3:25 is purification language, not wrath-absorption language.
3. 2 Corinthians 5:21
"For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." (2 Corinthians 5:21)
PSA claim: God the Father treated Yeshua as if He literally became sin, and then punished sin in His body. The Father turned His face away in disgust.
What the text says: The Greek word translated "sin" in this verse is ἁμαρτία (hamartia). And here is the move almost no English translation makes visible to you: in the Septuagint, the word hamartia is the standard technical translation for the Hebrew חַטָּאת (chatat), which is the sin offering. Leviticus 4 uses chatat fifteen times for the purification sacrifice the priest offers when an Israelite has unintentionally sinned. The Septuagint of Leviticus 4 translates chatat as hamartia every single time. So the word hamartia in a sentence written by a Jewish man steeped in the Septuagint has two possible meanings: "sin" in the moral sense, or "sin offering" in the Levitical sense. Context tells you which.
Now read 2 Corinthians 5:21 with the Levitical meaning in mind. "For He hath made Him to be a sin offering for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." The verse is no longer about God treating Yeshua as if He were morally sin. The verse is about Yeshua being made the new chatat, the new purification offering, the new place where defilement is removed so the relationship can keep going.
This reading was argued at length by Morna Hooker in From Adam to Christ (Cambridge, 1990), well before Wright picked it up, and it has been the standard reading among scholars working seriously with Sha'ul's Septuagint vocabulary for decades. It fits the grammar perfectly. It fits Sha'ul's Levitical frame perfectly. And it produces a verse that says exactly what the rest of the Tanakh says: HaShem provides the means of purification so His people can stay in relationship with Him.
The PSA reading requires you to believe that God turned His face away from Yeshua on the cross in disgust. The Levitical reading requires you to believe that Yeshua became the means of cleansing on the cross so the relationship could continue. One of those is in the text. The other is in a sermon series.
4. Galatians 3:13
"Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." (Galatians 3:13)
PSA claim: God the Father cursed Yeshua so He could bless us. Yeshua absorbed the divine curse our sin had earned.
What the text says: Sha'ul is quoting Deuteronomy 21:23, and the context of that verse in Deuteronomy is critical. The verse is not about divine wrath being poured out on a substitute. It is about the social and ceremonial shame of public execution.
In ancient Israel, when a criminal was executed and his body was hung on a tree as a warning, that body was considered a defilement of the land, and it had to be taken down by sundown. The curse was visible public shame, the worst form of social humiliation in a culture where honor and shame were the central currency of communal life.
Sha'ul is saying: Yeshua entered into that exact place of public shame on our behalf. He took on the visible humiliation of the cross, the shame of being hung on a tree like a common criminal, so we would not have to live under the shame of being people whose lives are publicly defined by failure.
The Greek verb ἐξαγοράζω (exagorazō), translated "redeemed," is marketplace language. It means to buy out, to liberate, to purchase someone's release from bondage. It is the verb used for buying a slave out of slavery. Sha'ul is not saying God cursed Yeshua. He is saying Yeshua paid the price to liberate us from the system of shame and bondage we were trapped in. This is solidarity language, not substitution language. He entered the place of shame so He could lead us out of it.
That is yasha. That is rescue. That is the same shape as everything else in this series. The cross does not transfer punishment. The cross liberates captives. The vocabulary Sha'ul reaches for is the vocabulary of the slave market, not the vocabulary of the courtroom.
5. 1 John 2:2
"And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." (1 John 2:2)
PSA claim: Yeshua propitiated (satisfied) God's anger against sinners. He turned away divine wrath by being the object of it Himself.
What the text says: The Greek word here is ἱλασμός (hilasmos), a noun built from the same root as hilastērion in Romans 3:25. Hilasmos means "a means of atonement, a means of purification." It does not require the meaning "wrath-absorber." That meaning is imported from the English translation tradition that began in the Reformation.
Modern English translations split on this word, and the split tells you everything. The ESV and NASB render it "propitiation," because those translations are committed to a Reformed theological framework that requires the PSA reading. The NRSV renders it "atoning sacrifice." The NET renders it "atoning sacrifice" with a technical note explaining that "propitiation" is misleading. The 1984 NIV used "atoning sacrifice."
This is not a textual question. It is a translation question. The Greek does not demand PSA. The translators imported PSA into the English. If you have only ever read the ESV or NASB, you have been reading a verse that has been theologically pre-loaded for you. The Greek text itself is open to the Levitical reading that has held among careful scholars for decades.
Yochanan is saying: Yeshua is the means of purification for our sins, and not only for ours, but for the whole world. The image is Levitical. The means of purification has been provided. The relationship can continue. The whole world is invited into the purified space. That is a Hebraic statement of universal welcome, not a courtroom statement of universal verdict.
What This Adds Up To
Every single one of these five verses can be read in the Hebraic-Levitical frame of purification, rescue, and restoration. Not one of them requires the Anselmian frame. The Anselmian frame is an eleventh-century theological overlay that got written into the English translations during the Reformation and then handed back to readers as if the text had always said that. It had not. The text has always said rescue. The text has always said purification. The text has always said the relationship continues.
You were not lied to on purpose. You were taught a framework by people who were taught the same framework by people who were taught the same framework, all the way back to a Latin-speaking archbishop in 1098 who was trying to explain the cross in the vocabulary of medieval feudal honor. The framework persisted because it gave a clean, legal-sounding answer to a question that was bothering people. But the answer was answering the wrong question.
The right question is the one we have been asking from the beginning of this series. Not "have you completed the transaction." But "what is He rescuing you from, and will you let Him?" The verses you were taught defended PSA actually defend the Hebraic frame, every one of them, when you read them in the language they were written in. The text has been telling you the truth the whole time. The translation has been telling you something else.
This is why we are Berean. This is why we do the work. The text is more beautiful than the doctrine. It always has been.
Dig Deeper
If you want to test the case for yourself, here are the sources to read.
Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16 (Anchor Bible, Doubleday, 1991). The definitive scholarly treatment of the Levitical sacrificial system. Milgrom is the reason serious scholars no longer treat the sin offering as punishment-transfer. His work on kapparah as ritual purification, and on the scapegoat as the carrier of removed defilement rather than absorbed penalty, is the textual ground beneath this entire series. If you only read one source on this list, read this one. He is also Jewish, which means he reads Leviticus as a system that works, not a system Christianity superseded.
N.T. Wright, The Day the Revolution Began (HarperOne, 2016). Wright is not Hebraic in his framework. He is a British Pauline scholar working from inside the Greek text. That is exactly what makes him useful here. He is not coming at PSA from the outside as a critic. He is coming at it from the inside as a scholar of Sha'ul who believes the framework gets the apostle wrong. His treatment of hilastērion in Romans 3:25 as the mercy seat is the cleanest articulation of that argument in print.
Morna Hooker, From Adam to Christ: Essays on Paul (Cambridge University Press, 1990). Hooker is the scholar who first made the strong case that hamartia in 2 Corinthians 5:21 should be read as "sin offering" in the Levitical sense. Her essays on Pauline soteriology pre-date Wright by decades and are still the standard treatment.
Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son (Yale University Press, 1993). Levenson is a Jewish biblical scholar at Harvard. This book traces the Hebrew theological pattern of the beloved son who is offered, dies, and is restored, from Isaac through Joseph through the Exodus through the suffering servant. Once you see the pattern, the Hebraic frame of the cross becomes obvious and the Anselmian frame becomes anachronistic.
Kenneth Bailey, The Cross and the Prodigal (IVP Academic, 2005). Bailey lived in the Middle East for forty years and learned to read Luke 15 the way the original audience would have heard it. The detail about the patriarch running being a public scandal traces back to Bailey's fieldwork. If the Prodigal Son section in Post 1 of this series landed for you, this book is the next step.
Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus Homo (1098). Read the source. It is not long. It is freely available online. Read it once so you can see exactly what the satisfaction theory says, and then ask yourself whether you find it in the text. We are not afraid of Anselm. We are pointing you at him so you can see for yourself what was being argued, and when, and on what basis.
Brown, Driver, and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB). The standard Hebrew lexicon. Look up yasha, yeshuah, nasa, kapparah, and davaq. BDB will give you the semantic range no English translation can.
Selah
If five verses can be read inside two completely different frameworks, and one framework is one thousand years older than the other, which one are you going to trust?
If your translation is making translation choices that pre-load the theology you are going to find when you read it, are you actually reading the Bible, or are you reading the translators?
If the text has been saying rescue and the church has been saying courtroom, and those produce two different Gods, which God do you actually want to spend the rest of your life with?
And now that the framework has been named and the verses have been walked, what is left for you to do but go home? The Father is still at the end of the road. The watching has not stopped. The grip has not loosened. He has been davaq to you the whole time. Press in. Cling. Return.
Come home. The Father is already running.
Shalom v'shalvah, your brother in the Way,
Sergio
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