The Verses PSA Uses to Defend Itself — The Brief
Five verses. Original languages. The text speaks for itself.
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 week’s essay walks five verses, one at a time. For each verse: the verse quoted the way you have heard it, the PSA claim stated plainly, and what the original language actually says.
Isaiah 53:4-6. The Hebrew preposition for “wounded for our transgressions” is min, which is causal, not substitutionary. Hebrew has a substitutionary preposition available (tachat, used in Genesis 22:13 when the ram is offered in place of Isaac), and Isaiah does not use it.
Romans 3:25. The Greek word translated “propitiation” is hilastērion. In the Septuagint, that exact word is used twenty-one times to translate one specific Hebrew word: kapporet, the mercy seat on the Ark of the Covenant. Sha’ul is not announcing a new theological category called wrath-satisfaction. He is saying Yeshua is the new mercy seat. The cross is not the new courthouse. It is the new Holy of Holies.
2 Corinthians 5:21. The Greek word translated “sin” is hamartia. In the Septuagint, hamartia is the standard technical translation for the Hebrew chatat, the sin offering. Read with the Levitical meaning: “He made Him to be a sin offering for us.” The verse is no longer about God treating Yeshua as if He were morally sin. It is about Yeshua becoming the new purification offering.
Galatians 3:13. The curse here is Deuteronomy 21:23, the ceremonial shame of public execution, not divine wrath transferred to a substitute. The Greek verb for “redeemed” is exagorazō, marketplace language for buying a slave out of slavery. Liberation, not punishment-transfer.
1 John 2:2. The Greek word translated “propitiation” is hilasmos, same root as Romans 3:25. Modern English translations split: ESV and NASB use “propitiation,” NRSV and NET correctly use “atoning sacrifice.” This is a translation question, not a textual one. The Greek does not demand PSA. The translators imported PSA into the English.
Every single one of these verses can be read in the Hebraic-Levitical frame of purification, rescue, and restoration. None of them require the Anselmian frame. 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.
Full essay at sergiodesoto.com
The full Dig Deeper bibliography (Milgrom, Wright, Hooker, Levenson, Bailey, Anselm, BDB) is at the end of the essay. If you want to test the case for yourself, those sources are where you start.
Shalom v’shalvah, your brother in the Way,
Sergio