In Isa 53:11, speaking of the Suffering Servant, the prophet Isaiah wrote:
He shall see the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.
In this verse, we read that the Messiah's people will be justified, not by an imputation of an alien righteousness, but by (ב) the knowledge (דַּעַת). That Isaiah does not understand דַּעַת as anything other than intellectual/experiential knowledge, and not an imputed righteousness, can be seen in the other instances it is used in the book of Isaiah:
Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge (דַּעַת): and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst. (Isa 5:13)
And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and the might, the spirit of knowledge (דַּעַת) and the fear of the Lord. (Isa 11:2)
And wisdom and knowledge (דַּעַת) shall be the stability of thy times, and strength of salvation: the fear of the Lord is his treasure. (Isa 33:6)
With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge (דַּעַת), and shewed to him the way of understanding? (Isa 40:14)
And none considereth in his heart, neither is there knowledge (דַּעַת) nor understanding to say, I have burned part of it in the fire; yea, also I have baked bread upon the coals thereof; I have roasted flesh, and eaten it: and shall I make the residue thereof an abomination? shall I fall down to the stock of a tree? (Isa 44:19)
That frustrateth the tokens of the liars, and maketh diviners mad; that turneth wise men backward, and maketh their knowledge (דַּעַת) foolish (Isa 44:25)
For thou hast trusted in thy wickedness: thou hast said, None seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge (דַּעַת), it hath perverted thee; and thou hast said in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me. (Isa 47:10)
Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know (דַּעַת) my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching God. (Isa 58:2)
Some may be tempted to argue that the Hebrew phrase בְּדַעְתּ֗וֹ would best be translated as an objective genitive (i.e., by knowledge of the Messiah). However, the context does not allow for it. As John Goldingay and David Payne noted:
53.11 aβb. By his knowledge my servant will show many that he is indeed just, because he bears their wrongdoing. We link beda’tȏ with what follows, with the MT, Tg, and 1Qsa (which prefixes w to the word). Out of this context beda’tȏ could be an objective genitive, ‘by knowledge of him’. That might then denote people’s knowledge/ acknowledgement of the servant or the servant’s knowledge/ acknowledgement of Yhwh, though the expression is once again allusive. But the link with the opening subsection (52.13) suggest that it is rather the more common subjective genitive, ‘by his knowledge’. As that first subsection opened by declaring that Yhwh’s servant would act with insight, so the last subsection opens by declaring what Yhwh’s servant will achieve through his knowledge. (John Goldingay and David Payne, Isaiah 40-55: A Critical and Exegetical Commentary, volume II [International Critical Commentary; London: Bloomsbury, 2014], 325)
As with many other texts (e.g., 1 Cor 3:15), such is a very "un-Protestant" text.
