“By Your Wounds We Are Healed”: The Same Promise in Four Bible Versions, and Which Wording to Pray

If this is happening in your body right now, read this first.
A tight or painful chest, pain spreading to your arm, jaw, neck or back, sudden shortness of breath, a pounding or irregular heartbeat, sweating, nausea, faintness, or numbness can be a medical emergency — not anxiety. Do not try to breathe or pray it away. Call your local emergency number now and let a doctor check your heart first. This page is only for anxiety a professional has already helped you recognise, and is never a substitute for urgent care.

By Hayley Louisa Mark

There is a particular kind of stuck that has nothing to do with the diagnosis and everything to do with the words.

I remember sitting on the edge of the bath one evening — the house quiet, the test results folded in my coat pocket where I could not see them — with my phone open to the same verse in four different apps. By his stripes. By his wounds. By his bruises. I kept switching between them, reading the same promise three or four ways, and I could not make myself pray any of them. It was not doubt, exactly. It was the strange paralysis of not knowing which wording was true — as if the healing might be hiding in one translation and not another, and I would miss it if I prayed the wrong one. The body has a way of clenching around that uncertainty. My shoulders had crept up toward my ears; my jaw was set tight, the way it goes when you are braced to get something exactly right and afraid of getting it wrong. And I had not yet prayed a single word.

If that is where you are tonight — not unsure whether the promise is real, but unsure which version of it to hold — this page is for you. You have probably seen “by your wounds we are healed” and “by his stripes we are healed” used interchangeably, and somewhere a small anxious voice asked: are these the same verse? Did someone soften it, or strengthen it? Which one am I supposed to pray? Those are good questions, and they deserve a real answer, not a shrug. So this is the companion page to the older, more weathered “by his stripes” reflection — but where that one sits with the promise while the body is still waiting, this one lays the wordings side by side so you can stop switching apps and finally pray.

The short answer. The by your wounds we are healed verse and the “by his stripes we are healed” verse are the same promise — Isaiah 53:5, echoed in 1 Peter 2:24 — rendered by different translations. “Stripes” (KJV) means the lash-marks of a scourging; “wounds” (ESV) and “bruises” are simply plainer or older English for the same lacerations. None is more powerful than the others. Pray whichever wording slows your breath and lets you mean it.

A note on what I am doing below. I am going to put Isaiah 53:5 and 1 Peter 2:24 in front of you in four versions — the King James (KJV), the English Standard Version (ESV), the New International Version (NIV), and the New American Standard (NASB) — and tell you honestly what each word carries. I quote the KJV most fully because its cadence steadies the breath, but I will give the others their due. Where a word choice changes the feel of the promise, I will say so. Where it does not change the meaning, I will say that too — because the most freeing thing I can hand you tonight may simply be permission to stop hunting for the perfect wording.

How to use this page

You do not need to read every section. Jump to the question that is actually keeping you on the edge of the bath tonight:

Take one. You are choosing a wording to pray, not passing an exam on translation theory.

Is the “by your wounds we are healed” verse the same as “stripes”? — Isaiah 53:5

Let me put the prophecy in front of you four ways. Read them slowly, one after another, and notice that the promise never moves — only the English does.

KJV — “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.”

ESV — “But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.”

NIV — “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.”

NASB — “But He was pierced for our offenses, He was crushed for our wrongdoing; the punishment for our well-being was laid upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed.”

Now look at what actually changed. The KJV says He was wounded and bruised; the ESV, NIV and NASB say He was pierced and crushed. The KJV ends on his stripes; the others end on his wounds. These are not four different events. They are four English crews translating one Hebrew sentence, and the Hebrew word at the end (chabbûrâ) means a welt, a stripe, a bruise left by a blow — the mark a lash raises on skin. “Stripes,” “wounds,” “bruise”: all of them are reaching for that single image of a body marked by the punishment that should have been ours.

So no — nobody softened the promise and nobody secretly strengthened it. The thing your anxious voice feared, that the healing might live in one wording and hide from another, is not true. It lives in all four, because it lives in Him.

Body: Read the four versions again, but this time lay your forefinger lightly across the inside of your other wrist — over the soft skin where a mark would show — and keep it there through all four. One sentence, one wound, four ways of saying it. Let your finger be the thing that does not move while the words do.

Pray: Lord, however the words fall, the promise is one. You were marked for my peace. I do not have to find the perfect translation to be reached by it.

What does “stripes” actually mean? — the word the KJV keeps

If the King James cadence is the one your ear rests in, you may want to know exactly what you are saying when you say stripes — because it is an old word, and most of us have lost its weight.

KJV (Isaiah 53:5b) — “…and with his stripes we are healed.”

A “stripe,” in the older English, is the raised welt a whip leaves — a single lash-line across the skin. To say “with his stripes we are healed” is to name the scourging directly: the Roman flagellum, the back laid open, the marks counted. The KJV does not look away from the violence of it, and that is part of why the wording has held for four centuries. It does not say He was generally hurt. It says His skin was striped, and from those exact lines of broken flesh, healing comes.

The ESV and NIV’s “wounds” is gentler on the modern ear but means the same lacerations; the NASB keeps “wounds” as well. None is wrong. But if you have ever felt that “wounds” is too soft for what you are carrying — if your own suffering is the kind that needs a word with some blood in it — “stripes” is yours to pray. The older word is not more spiritual. It is simply less afraid of the wound.

Body: Lay one open hand flat across your own upper back, as far as it will reach, over the place a stripe would fall. Speak “with his stripes” with your hand resting there — not pressing, just acknowledging the place the word names.

Pray: You were striped, Lord — really, in the body, in the flesh. From those marks, not around them, my healing comes. I will not look away from what it cost.

Why does 1 Peter say “were healed” when Isaiah says “are healed”? — 1 Peter 2:24

Here is the place the wording really does shift the feel, and it is worth slowing down for. When Peter picks Isaiah’s promise up and carries it into the New Testament, he changes the tense — and that small change tells you which way the verse is pointing.

KJV (1 Peter 2:24) — “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.”

ESV — “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.”

NIV — “…by his wounds you have been healed.”

NASB — “…by His wounds you were healed.”

Isaiah, looking forward to the cross, says “we are healed” — the present of a prophet seeing it happen. Peter, looking back at the cross from the other side, says “ye were healed” (KJV, NASB) or “you have been healed” (ESV, NIV) — the past tense of someone reporting a finished act. That is not a contradiction. It is the same healing seen from two sides of the same event: promised on one side, accomplished on the other.

And notice what Peter does with it. He frames the whole sentence around sin — “bare our sins… being dead to sins… live unto righteousness” — and only then says “ye were healed.” Peter’s first and weightiest meaning is the healing of the soul from sin. I will not flatten that into a guaranteed cure for the body on your timetable, because that is not honest and you deserve honesty. But I will not shrink it either: the same finished work that reaches your sin reaches toward your whole self, body included. The “were” points you back to the cross, where it is already done — and the body, in the long mercy of God, is catching up to a verdict already passed.

Body: Place one hand flat over the center of your chest, the way you would rest it to steady yourself. Read the verse once silently, then once aloud on a slow exhale — and on the word “were,” let the breath go all the way out. It is past tense. You can stop bracing for something already finished.

Pray: By Your stripes I was healed — past tense, finished work. I receive the healing of my soul as the sure thing it is, and I trust my body into the “already and not yet” without pretending I can name the day.

What does the promise actually promise? — the honest scope

I would be failing you if I laid out four beautiful wordings and let you walk away thinking the verse is a guarantee that this illness ends the way you are praying it will. So let me hold the honest tension out loud, because this is exactly the place where well-meant teaching goes wrong.

What the verse promises, in every translation, is that Christ took into His own body the punishment that was ours, and that from His wounds healing comes — most certainly and weightiest the healing of the soul from sin (this is the meaning Peter draws out), and truly also the down-payment of a final wholeness that includes the body. God can heal the body, and He sometimes does, and healing is real; I have prayed this verse and watched bodies mend. What the verse does not do is bind God to a particular outcome on your schedule, or make your physical cure the proof of whether you prayed the right wording with enough faith. It is not a formula. It is a finished work you stand inside.

So pray it boldly — and hold it honestly. If you are still sick after praying every version of it, you have not prayed the wrong one, and your faith is not too small. The promise was never a lever that obligates God to heal on demand; it is His sworn nearness to you in the wound, which is not a lesser answer than cure. It is the deeper one. And please hear this plainly, because love requires it: this is not medical advice, and Scripture is not a substitute for care. Keep your appointments. Take the medicine. See the doctor. Tell someone if the suffering is more than you can carry. God works through the wisdom of careful hands as surely as He works through a verse on the edge of a bath — and reaching for both is faith, not failure.

A note on the science

Notice what happens in your body when you stop switching between four wordings and settle on one. The hunt itself — the rapid scanning, the looping which is right, am I missing it — keeps the mind wound up and unable to go quiet; the eyes dart from app to app, the thoughts race ahead of you, the jaw clenches and the shoulders ride up toward the ears. When you choose a single line and read it slowly, especially out loud on a long, complete exhale, you do something measurable: the unhurried out-breath gently engages the vagus nerve and tips you toward the parasympathetic “rest” branch of the nervous system. The looping thoughts have somewhere to land, the jaw and shoulders you have been bracing get permission to let go, and the oldest part of the brain reads the slow breath as a signal that you are safe enough to stop scanning. To be clear about what I am and am not saying: a settled breath calms the nervous system; it does not treat a disease, and I will not pretend it does. The Scripture you are praying is doing something else entirely, in a separate room from the physiology — the breath quiets the body so you can be present to a promise the body cannot manufacture. Use both. Honour the difference.

The body-science here reflects established neuroscience of the nervous system. What the science actually says about a settled body → · the research behind these pages.

Body: Drop your shoulders down from your ears on a long exhale. You are not bracing to get the wording right anymore. The promise will not slip away because your grip loosened.

Pray: You took the punishment into Your own body so I would not have to earn my way to peace. I will keep my appointments and take my medicine, and I will hold this promise — bold and honest, both at once.

Which wording should I pray?

Here is the practical heart of it, the answer to the question that had me stuck on the edge of the bath: which one?

The honest answer is the freeing one — the one that lets you mean it. They are the same promise. So choose by your ear and your need, not by some hidden hierarchy of power:

  • Pray the KJV (“by his stripes”) if the old cadence steadies your breath, or if your suffering is the kind that needs a word with blood in it. “Stripes” does not flinch.
  • Pray the ESV or NIV (“by his wounds”) if plainer English helps you actually hear the sentence rather than admire it — if “wounds” lands in your chest where “stripes” only echoes in your ear.
  • Pray the NASB if you want the modern wording but with the older “were healed” tense kept intact — a bridge between the two.
  • And if it steadies you, pray Isaiah’s present tense (“we are healed”) and Peter’s past tense (“ye were healed”) together — looking forward and looking back at the same cross. That is not confusion. That is the whole truth held in two hands.

The one thing I would gently steer you away from is treating any single wording as a magic key — as if the healing were locked behind the “right” words and you must find them or forfeit it. That is the very anxiety that kept me from praying at all. The promise is not hiding. Pick the wording your soul can rest in tonight, and pray that one, and pray it again tomorrow.

Body: Choose one wording now — out loud, name it: I am praying the [KJV / ESV / NIV / NASB] tonight. Then close the other apps. The choosing, spoken and final, is itself a kind of rest.

Pray: I choose this wording, Lord, not because the others are wrong but because this is the one I can mean. Meet me in it. I am done hunting for the key to a door You already opened.

A word on the phrases that get attached but aren’t quite the verse

Because this promise gets prayed so often, a few lines travel alongside it that are worth handling honestly, so you stand on the verse itself and not on a slogan grafted onto it.

  • “By His stripes I am healed.” Very close, and a fair declaration of faith — but the actual texts read “with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5) and “by whose stripes ye were healed” (1 Peter 2:24). The shift to a personal I am, summoned in the present, is a human paraphrase, not the verse. Pray the real wording; it roots you in the finished cross rather than in a result you are trying to generate.
  • “His wounds, my healing — claim it.” A common refrain in some teaching, but the verse never frames the promise as something you claim to obligate God. Peter frames it as something already accomplished that you receive. The difference between claiming and receiving is the difference between leverage and trust.
  • “Healing is in the atonement, so it’s always God’s will to heal me physically right now.” This stretches a real truth past what the text says. Physical wholeness is genuinely part of what the cross secures — but Scripture itself shows godly people still unwell (Paul left Trophimus sick, 2 Timothy 4:20; Paul’s own thorn was not removed, 2 Corinthians 12:8–9). The “already” of the atonement and the “not yet” of a body in a broken world both stand. Hold them together; do not let anyone shame you for the gap.

If a wording steadies you and it is genuinely the verse, pray it with your whole chest. If it merely sounds powerful, let it go. The real promise is more than enough.

When the wording is settled but the waiting isn’t

Choosing a version to pray is one good piece of the work — but it is not all of it, and a few near rooms may be exactly where you need to go next.

If you have chosen your wording and now you simply have to carry the promise through the long days when the body has not caught up, that is the older, more weathered companion to this page: “By His Stripes We Are Healed”: What the Verse Really Promises When the Body Hasn’t Caught Up Yet sits with you in exactly that waiting.

If underneath the question of wording is a different fear — that the healing hasn’t come because your faith isn’t strong enough — then please read “Your Faith Has Healed You”: Did Jesus Mean My Faith Is the Cure? What the Verse Actually Says, because that fear deserves a clear, gentle, biblical answer.

And if you came here unsure which kind of healing scripture you even need — body, heart, mind, or soul — start at the map: Healing Scriptures, Sorted by the Kind of Healing You Need Tonight will point you to the right room.

Stop switching apps

You came here on the edge of the bath, switching between stripes and wounds and bruises, unable to pray because you could not find the perfect wording. I hope you can see now that there was never a perfect one to find — only the same promise, offered to you in whatever English your soul can rest in. Christ was marked for your peace. From His wounds, healing comes. Pick the wording you can mean tonight, pray it slowly on a long breath, and leave the outcome where it has always safely belonged — in the hands of the One who was striped for you.

If you want the four wordings where you can actually compare them without four apps open — Isaiah 53:5 and 1 Peter 2:24 in KJV, ESV, NIV and NASB, side by side, with a blank line to write the wording you have chosen to pray — I made you a free printable card for exactly that.

→ Get the free Four-Wording Card — Isaiah 53:5 and 1 Peter 2:24 in four versions side by side, with a line for the wording you choose to pray. No cost; it is yours.

And if you want a daily place to keep praying this promise — room to write the wording that steadies you, to wrestle honestly on the days the body lags, and to record what God is doing over time — our Stilling Waves devotional journal was made for exactly this kind of faith. See the journal here.

Frequently asked questions

Is “by your wounds we are healed” the same verse as “by his stripes we are healed”?

Yes. Both render Isaiah 53:5, echoed in 1 Peter 2:24. “Stripes” is the King James wording for the lash-marks of a scourging; “wounds” is how the ESV, NIV and NASB translate the same Hebrew word (chabbûrâ), meaning a welt or bruise left by a blow. The promise is identical; only the English differs. No translation is more powerful than the others.

What does “stripes” mean in “by his stripes we are healed”?

A “stripe” in older English is the raised welt a whip leaves — a single lash-line across the skin. It names the scourging of Christ directly: His back laid open, the marks counted. Modern translations say “wounds” for the same lacerations. The KJV keeps the older, more graphic word, which is why some people find it carries more weight when the suffering they bring to it is heavy.

Why does Isaiah say “we are healed” but 1 Peter says “you were healed”?

Isaiah, prophesying before the cross, sees it in the present — “we are healed.” Peter, writing after the cross, reports it as finished — “ye were healed” (KJV) or “you have been healed” (ESV, NIV). It is the same healing seen from two sides of the same event. Peter’s emphasis is the healing of the soul from sin, with the body included in the “already and not yet” of redemption.

Which translation of the verse should I pray?

The one you can honestly mean. They carry the same promise, so choose by your ear and your need: the KJV if its cadence steadies you or your suffering needs a word with blood in it; the ESV or NIV if plainer English helps you hear it; the NASB for modern wording with the older “were healed” tense kept. Pick one, pray it slowly, and stop hunting for a “perfect” version — there isn’t a hidden one.

What if I pray this verse and I’m still not healed?

You have not prayed the wrong wording, and your faith is not too small. The verse promises that Christ took your punishment and that healing flows from His wounds — most surely the healing of the soul, and truly a down-payment of a final, whole-bodied wholeness — but it does not bind God to cure your body on a particular timetable. Scripture shows faithful people still unwell. His nearness in the wound is not a lesser answer than cure; it is the deeper one. Keep praying boldly, keep your medical care, and hold the promise honestly. This is not medical advice — please see a doctor for any physical symptoms.