Christ the plague-bearer

I'd like to expand on the plague metaphor in Isa 53, which this post accentuates:

http://www.therecapitulator.com/leviticus-leprosy-and-lent-in-the-light-of-the-corona-virus-crisis-part-4/

Metaphors, including theological metaphors, are so familiar that they often bounce right off of us. We don't take the time to visualize the metaphor. Yet metaphors can function as compact picturesque stories, and with regard to theological metaphors it is useful to step into the world of the metaphor and look around. Appreciate the surroundings. That's a way to deepen our appreciation of the metaphor and what it represents. 

Plague and pestilence were real horrors in the ancient world. That's what lends potency and sting to Isaiah's use of the image. He depicts Messiah as the vicarious plague-bearer. 

There are different ways we can imaginatively develop this metaphor. For instance, you might imagine a healer who can touch a plague victim and transfer the pathogen from the victim to himself. Once inside himself, the pathogen is destroyed by the healer's supernatural immune system.

Or you might imagine a virulent, highly contagious plague for which there's no natural resistance, much less immunity. It threatenes to wipe out the entire human race.

But there's one human being with a beneficial genetic mutation. If infected, it triggers his immune system. He develops antibodies that destroy the pathogen. And transfusions of his blood heal the sick and dying. 

Infection makes him sick. He suffers from the same painful debilitating symptoms. But his body is able to counterattack and create an antidote.

One way of telling the story is that his antibodies can be replicated and multiplied. Another way of telling the story is that after his blood cures a patient, transfusions of their blood cure patients. 

Although this is figurative, I once read about an Eskimo woman who was a healer. Not a witchdoctor. She was Christian. It's possible that her healing ability derived from pagan ancestors, but if so, it was co-oped and sanctified in her use. 

She could't raise the dead, restore the blind, or instantly heal broken bodies. But she could absorb pain. She should extract pain and take it into herself, where it would dissipate. 

Although I wouldn't swear by it, this was reported by an anthropologist who lived with villagers for a year. Based on firsthand observation. Turner, Edith. The Hands Feel It (Northern Illinois U. Press 1996).

The point is that when we think about vicarious atonement and penal substitution, one illustration is a plague-bearer. Jesus transfers the plague to himself. He extracts the plague, absorbs the plague, and destroys the plague in himself. 

A related illustration: we are cleansed by his blood transfusion. He transfers to us his antibodies.

It's important not to press the metaphor and confuse the metaphor with the reality which it was meant to illustrate. But abstractions have limitations, too. Scripture often uses disease figuratively. So it's instructive to mentally explore that.