Isaiah 53:10: A Question of Sacrifice or Also an Attempt to Legitimize Authority?

This article analyses Isaiah 53:10 in the context of the so-called ‘Fourth Servant Song’, exploring whether its meaning is exclusively sacrificial or whether it also responds to a strategy of legitimizing authority in post-exilic Israel. Through a methodology that combines synchrony with diachronic reflection, the Neo-Babylonian and Persian historical background is reconstructed, identifying the social, political, and religious tensions that influenced the writing of the book of Isaiah. The study examines how the centrality of Jerusalem, the fracture between deportees and the indigenous population, and the struggle for the legitimization of religious authority are reflected in the text. The sacrificial vocabulary, especially the term אָשָׁם, and its metaphorical use in Isaiah 53:10, as well as the dynamics of guilt and benefit transfer, are analyzed in detail. The article concludes that the passage not only redefines sacrifice outside the cultic and priestly sphere, but also legitimizes a prophetic–scribal group as mediators of salvation, displacing the priestly monopoly and proposing the surrender of life as the theological core of atonement and restoration of the community.