“The Suffering Servant.” We’re looking this week at a very important piece of Isaiah’s prophecy - a part of the prophecy that puts Christians and Jews completely at odds with each other over the question of how to interpret it. The basic question is simple: who is “the suffering servant” of Isaiah 52-53? The answer, though, is a lot more complex, and obviously - as always with any of the prophets, we need some context to begin understanding what this passage is speaking about. There’s a few things we need to be aware of.
First, if you remember a couple of weeks ago we spoke about the 3 different parts of Isaiah. This passage comes from Second Isaiah, so that tells us that it’s been written during the last days of the Jewish exile in Babylon. In First Isaiah destruction is imminent and restoration is a dim future hope; in Second Isaiah destruction is in the past and the restoration is imminent. So, the exile is coming to an end, hopefulness is returning to the people, there’s a sense that something exciting is going to happen. At the same time, even though conditions are better for the Jewish people in Babylon than they had been for a long time, there’s still a very raw memory among the people of the hardships they had endured; of the trauma and horror that they (within the last generation) had experienced. So Second Isaiah is written with a very complex set of emotions present among the people - there’s a need to celebrate; there’s a need to heal; there’s still, to some extent, a need to lament what had been lost because the Jewish nation would never be the same again after this experience of exile. Second Isaiah has a very different feel than First Isaiah - in First Isaiah the people are in despair and there was a sense of anger and bitterness over what was happening to them. Things are much more complex for the author of Second Isaiah and the nation is literally awash with competing emotions.
The identity of the Servant is, as I said, an issue of huge debate and contention. There have been a variety of possibilities that have been speculated on. Some say it’s the author of Second Isaiah himself. Some have said it’s actually Jeremiah. Some have said it’s an unnamed leper - because of the reference to his marred appearance. But, for the most part, there are only two options that are taken particularly seriously, and to talk about that we need to reflect on the fact that this isn’t the only passage in Second Isaiah where the figure of the “Servant” makes an appearance. There are actually three other Servant appearances in this section of Isaiah - they’re traditionally called the Servant Songs.
The first is Isaiah 42:1-4:
Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching.
The second is Isaiah 44:1-5:
But now hear, O Jacob my servant, Israel whom I have chosen! Thus says the Lord who made you, who formed you in the womb and will help you: Do not fear, O Jacob my servant, Jeshurun whom I have chosen. For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my spirit upon your descendants, and my blessing on your offspring. They shall spring up like a green tamarisk, like willows by flowing streams. This one will say, “I am the Lord’s,” another will be called by the name of Jacob, yet another will write on the hand, “The Lord’s,” and adopt the name of Israel.
The third is from Isaiah 49 - I’m only going to offer a snippet because it’s a longer passage:
The Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mother’s womb he named me. He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away. And he said to me, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
Then the fourth of the Servant Songs is what I asked you to read this week from Isaiah 52 & 53.
One thing that’s interesting about these Servant Songs is that it isn’t clear that they’re referring to the same “servant.” The first and fourth (so including our passage tonight) don’t identify any particular personality with the servant, the second and third seem to be referring to Jacob - the son of Isaac and the grandson of Abraham, who was renamed “Israel” by God. And since Jacob (or Israel) gave rise to the nation Israel, some believe that this is a specific reference to Israel as a nation being the servant of God - so not a specific person but the nation collectively; the community of God’s people.
It would take too long to analyze all four passages but I just want to make it clear that while most people think that the image of the servant in the four passages is a reference to the same historic persona (if only because they’re almost certainly all written by the same author who chose the imagery so it would seem strange if he were using the same image to depict different figures) that isn’t entirely clear. But that explains pretty well the divide between the Jewish and Christian interpretations of the passage we read tonight. Jewish interpreters will say that the servant in all four servant songs must be Israel; Christian interpreters will say that isn’t necessarily the case, and will point to several things about the first and fourth Servant Songs especially that, simply put, sound like Jesus. I don’t think that we’ll ever be able to come to a common understanding on this, but I think it’s important to remember that we shouldn’t just look at this one passage in isolation and say - “Oh! It’s Jesus! Obviously!” It’s much more complicated than that.
In one of the most important verses of Psalm 53 (which as Christians we immediately associate with Jesus) there are some who also believe there’s a problem of translation that impacts how we understand the verse. Isaiah 53:5 says “But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities.” As Christians we read those verses in the light of what’s called “atonement theology” - the idea that (in traditional Christian language) Jesus died for our sins; that his death was the means by which God offered forgiveness to all. There are, however, Jewish scholars who dispute that translation and suggest that the verse properly translated says “But he was wounded because of our transgressions, crushed because of our iniquities.” So, in a way, whoever the servant is becomes not the solution to human sinfulness but the victim of human sinfulness. At first glance at least, that translation doesn’t seem to fit the Christian understanding of the work of Jesus. But actually having said that “Jesus died for our sins” is only one interpretation of the effect of Jesus dying on the cross - there is a less common interpretation even in the Christian community that sees Jesus’ death on the cross as an act of solidarity with the human condition - so Jesus experiences the worst experience that any of us could possibly imagine; he sufferers and dies unjustly - thus dying because of human sin and not for human sin. So even if you accept the argument that the Christian Bible has historically (from the beginning) mistranslated the verse, that doesn’t automatically negate the argument that the passage can or can’t be applied to Jesus. I’m not sufficiently trained in Hebrew to be able to take a firm position on the translation issue, although I will say that the Interlinear Bibles (Bibles that have the English text and Hebrew text together to show how the words are translated) I consulted do suggest that the proper translation is “for” and not “because of.” In fairness, though, all of those interlinear Bible were published by Christian authors with, obviously, a Christian bias. I couldn’t find a Hebrew-English Interlinear Bible published by a Jewish author, but I did consult a Tanakh (the Hebrew name for the Jewish Scriptures) and it translates Isaiah 53:5 as “But he was pained because of our transgressions, crushed because of our iniquities.” At best, then, it’s an open question to me about what the proper translation of the verse is, and in a lot of ways Isaiah 53:5 is at the absolute heart of the Christ-Jewish divide over whether Jesus is the Suffering Servant of Isaiah’s prophecy.
I don’t really want to spend a great deal of time tonight discussing the specifics of the passage verse by verse. What I wanted to do tonight was just introduce some of the complications that arise in Jewish-Christian relations over this passage. Jews accuse Christians of appropriating and mistranslating the text to make it sound like it’s speaking of Jesus when it isn’t; Christians accuse Jews of overlooking the obvious in interpreting the text on the basis that it’s impossible to read the text without seeing Jesus in it. And it’s certainly true that the authors of the New Testament cited portions of Isaiah 53 several times in defending their position that Jesus was the Messiah - which is, however, another point of contention, because Jews don’t necessarily agree that these “servant songs” are even messianic. So it’s a very complicated issue. I guess I would have to come back to a point I made a couple of weeks ago: a prophecy doesn’t necessarily have to point to a specific event at a specific point in time. Perhaps a prophecy can be applied repeatedly to various things that happen over the course of history. In that sense, prophecy can be “fulfilled” many times and not necessarily just once.
As I said above I’m not planning tonight to go through the passage verse by verse in any detail, but I did ask you to look at the passage and see where you thought it might be talking about Jesus and where you thought it might not be. I suppose the primary point is that if you look at this passage through a Christian lens, you’re going to be able to “find” Jesus (so to speak) in much of this prophecy. And the real issue might be that if you take away the Christian lens, then you suddenly start to see other possible ways to apply the prophecy. And even with the Christian lens, there are parts of the prophecy that don’t seem to fit very well - for example, there’s a reference to the servant having “offspring” in verse 10. As far as we know Jesus had no offspring of his own. He did have other family members, but to the best of our knowledge there’s no one in the world today who can trace their ancestry back directly to Jesus or Jesus’ immediate family - and you would think that if there had been a line of Jesus’ descendants (direct or otherwise) the family would have been noteworthy in Christian circles. So, we have to question whether verse 10 can be applied to Jesus. Could the “offspring” be spiritual offspring - those being “born again” (to use a traditional phrase) and welcomed into the family of God? Or is it more natural to think of this verse as a reference to Israel’s offspring - the nation has continued in spite of ongoing persecutions and hardships? And considering the history of Israel, even the parts of this passage that deal with suffering could be applied to the nation of Israel, because there’s is a tragic history of persecution that the Jewish nation has suffered over the centuries, right down to the present day.
So this is a tough passage in some ways to interpret - but given its connection to Jesus and the cross and the whole concept of atonement it seems an interesting passage to reflect upon during this first week of the Season of Lent.
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