The Messiah will be called “the Leper of the House of Rabbi

The Messiah will be called “the Leper of the House of Rabbi,” a strange name indeed for the promised Savior King:

And the rabbis say: “His name is The Leper … as it is said [in Isaiah 53:4], ‘Surely our sicknesses he himself bore and our sorrows he carried, yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.’” (b.Sanhedrin 98b)

A word association between the leper and the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 involves the Hebrew verb nega which means to “smite.” The Torah refers to the condition of leprosy with the noun form of the same word which means plague, smiting, and affliction. The Talmud quotes Isaiah 53:4 where Isaiah uses the same word to describe the affliction of the suffering servant:

Surely our sicknesses (nagua) He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried; yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. (Isaiah 53:4)

On the basis of these associations, the sages referred to the suffering Messiah son of Joseph as “The Leper.” The Messiah son of Joseph carries the suffering of the exile and the punishment of the Jewish people like a leper carries his affliction.