The Hebrew nagas (H5065) means to press, drive, or oppress β to bear down hard on another person, especially as a slave driver or oppressor. In Exodus 3:7, God sees how the Egyptians have 'oppressed' (nagas) His people. Isaiah 53:7 uses it of the Suffering Servant: 'He was oppressed (nagas) and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth.' The word conveys relentless, grinding pressure applied to the powerless.
Isaiah 53:7 is the theological apex of nagas: the One who had come to free the oppressed became Himself the oppressed. The Servant of Isaiah 53 takes on the role of the enslaved, beaten, and silenced β the very condition God had come to relieve in Exodus. This inversion β the Liberator becoming the slave β is the heart of substitutionary atonement. Because He bore the nagas of sin and judgment, those who were crushed under sin's weight can be set free (Isaiah 61:1: 'to proclaim freedom for the captives').