The first Servant Song, Is 42:1-9, was fairly vague when it comes to identifying the Servant and His mission, but this week we will be going through the second song verse by verse. The Servant, in the first half, speaks about Himself and what He has been commissioned to do. Then Yahweh responds to the Servant and the earth rejoices.
Transcript below, woefully unedited. Consider it a growth experience.
********************
Isaiah and the Messiah 11—Isaiah 49:1-13
Isaiah 1-39 was all about “hear, obey, and trust—or else”—or else what? Or else you’re going into exile. God was commanding His wayward people to listen to His commandments and, more than that, obey them. As Moses said, in Deuteronomy 30, 11 “For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. 12 It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 13 Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 14 But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.” But, as we were reminded by Yahweh in last week’s lesson on Isaiah Chapter 48, they never were willing. Able? Yes. Willing? No.
Isaiah 40-48, on the other hand, is very much different and the overarching theme is, “You didn’t hear, you didn’t obey and you didn’t trust, but I am going to pardon you completely anyway for the sake of my glory and deliver you from the “or else” that your ancestors so richly earned–exile.”
Now we are starting the next phase of Isaiah, chapters 40-53 which deal with the Servant whom we are first introduced to in Isaiah 42:1-9. Everything in Isaiah, from chapter one, has been leading up to this moment. Now there will be two main focuses—the Servant and Zion. We have what are known as “servant songs” and “Zion poems” and, in fact, next week we will encounter our first Zion poem where Zion, Jerusalem, is portrayed as a widowed, childless and generally desolate woman whom Yahweh is consoling and raising back up. Although it might seem disconnected from what has gone before, it is a logical progression from a disobedient people being warned of impending judgment, to an exiled people being woken from their pity party slumbering, to Yahweh reminding the world that He is God and the idols are nothing, to Yahweh enfolding His shocking plans to prove just that to the world and, even worse, saying that He will someday become their God as well. He declares final judgment on Babylon and its gods before giving Israel one last command to hear, obey and trust and leave Babylonia once the prophesied events through Cyrus take place.
There has been a progression, but from chap 49 onward we see an almost complete ditching of the main themes we have been studying so far. The New American Commentary on Isaiah 40-66 puts it this way: “the oracles in chaps. 49–55 are not about (a) the coming of a great conqueror of the nations, (b) the defeat of the Daughter of Babylon and her gods, (c) the uselessness of constructing and worshipping idols made of wood, (d) themes like the former things and the later things, or (e) descriptions of God as the first and the last; and (f) these messages are no longer addressed to the blind and sinful servant Jacob.”[1]
In Isaiah 49 we get our most compelling glimpse yet of the Servant of the Lord who, in context, cannot be Cyrus “the great conqueror of the nations” and cannot be Israel and doesn’t match up with any single person from the Hebrew Scriptures.
Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have five years’ worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids—and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com and transcripts can be had for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com.
All Scripture this week is taken from the ESV, the English Standard Version because that is what my interlinear is in. And unlike my usual MO, I will be saying Yahweh instead of God and Lord because there are so many different voices speaking back and forth in Isaiah 40-55 that it will help eliminate confusion. Otherwise, I always use titles because I don’t like to use His name carelessly or casually. Just a personal preference.
Let’s review Isaiah 42:1-9. The verse by verse in context break down of this can be found in Isaiah and the Messiah part Four. I will just read it briefly here for context:
42 Behold 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.
2 He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street;
3 a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.
4 He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his law.
5 Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it:
6 “I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you;
I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations,
7 to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.
8 I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.
9 Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them.”
This gentle and humble servant, upon whom God’s Spirit rests, who will bring justice to the nations, who will not have any earthly authority, who will bring God’s instruction to the ends of the earth—it isn’t Cyrus. No way, Jose.
Cyrus is no light to the nations, and he is not a covenant for the people (a term we will see again this week). He will not open blind eyes or free those imprisoned by darkness. As Yahweh says in the final verse, this is a new thing that He is declaring.
It also can’t really be Israel, who is continuously rebuked for not being any of these things—despite this being Israel’s ancient mandate. This is what Israel should have done, this was the ideal purpose for which Israel was created. But, then and now, just like every other human on this earth from the beginning, Israel is rebellious and does things her own way, leans on her own understandings, and has not fulfilled her mandate to be a light. Whether through syncretism with the nations or through xenophobic aversion to the nations, Israel did not carry the law to the nations and bring the whole world under Yahweh’s reign. No mere human, and certainly no group of humans, is capable of this level of obedience and/or sacrifice—the Bible shows us that quite clearly. Historically she could barely take care of her own walk. And, lest you think I am being too hard on Israel, I am just going from the Biblical text. And, as I explained last week, we aren’t any better now. In fact, we wouldn’t be having any success with Israel’s divine mandate now if it was not for the Servant who is the focal point of this new section of Isaiah—the Messiah.
Just FYI, everyone has an agenda with this but I am going to attempt to pull back and be fair and objective with the text. I have already passed up quite a few opportunities to stretch the text out of context and I don’t want to start now. But, obviously, I know that Yeshua/Jesus is the Messiah of Israel. I know this experientially—as I know that Mark is my own husband and if you wrote a balanced letter describing him, I would recognize him from what you say. Someone who doesn’t know him, or hates him, might not see him there but I will. I can’t do anything about the people who don’t know him or hate him. I can only say that, after thirty-five years, I can recognize him. When the disciples read these passages, that’s what happened to them—they recognized the teacher that they knew in real life.
I am going to read the first half here and then we will pull it apart and compare it to 42:1-9 which we just read and contrast it with everything we have heard about Cyrus and about Israel thus far. I will say this right off the bat about what I will read to you today, this is the message—and this is from Bruggeman’s Isaiah 40-66 commentary pg 110—“Yahweh has appointed a human agent to heal and emancipate the world but Israel in particular.” I really love that quote. Just a heads up, Isaiah 49-55 will consist of three “servant poems” aka “servant songs” followed by three “Zion poems.” Altogether, because we already had a servant song in Is 42, that’s four servant songs and three Zion poems. We will cover the first Zion poem next week. They serve as responses to God’s proclamations about His Servant, the Messiah.
49 Listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention, you peoples from afar.
The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name.
2 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.
3 And he said to me, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
4 But I said, “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;
yet surely my right is with the Lord, and my recompense with my God.”
5 And now the Lord says, he who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him; and that Israel might be gathered to him—for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord, and my God has become my strength—
6 he says: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
7 Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation, the servant of rulers: “Kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves;
because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”
So, read as a whole unit, what do we see? First of all, the Servant is speaking for himself in verses 1-4—this is a new voice in the narrative, depending on how we look at the mystery voice last week. But right now we can just ignore that, as it is a mystery and is only one line—not even a full verse. He makes certain claims, which we will cover when we go through verse by verse but, if you notice, the speaker in verses 5-7 is actually Yahweh again, speaking to the Servant. We will actually have three speakers this week as the prophet will pipe up at the end. But this section is a dialogue between the Servant and Yahweh.
49 Listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention, you peoples from afar.
The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name.
We see a lot of really important things here. For one, we see a command to the ends of the earth to listen. Who has the authority to command that the nations of the earth listen? And this is sh’mu—related to shema, meaning hear and obey and we saw that as a huge theme a few weeks back in Isaiah 48 when the exiles were being commanded over and over again to listen, hear, obey Yahweh as he declared and announced—we had these words repeated throughout. But this can’t be Yahweh here, because in the very next line we see that Yahweh has called him from before birth. From the time he was in his mother, Yahweh named Him. But this isn’t just giving someone a name—it is a commissioning. Hizkir sh’mi—it is not a collective, but personal commissioning. This is not a nation being referred to—but even if it could be—who among the patriarchs was named before birth? Not one. So this cannot be Israel—a name not even given to Jacob until late in life. Also, the mention of a mother alone with regards to a child is very uncommon. We really mostly see it with respect to miscarriage in Job, but Samson calls himself a Nazirite from his mother’s womb and we see the same statement made concerning John the Baptist—both of whom served as judges over Israel in their own way. Again, this is commissioning language. We also see mother-exclusive language in other identified Messiah passages like Gen 3:15, Isaiah 7:14, Micah 5:2 and Psalms 22:1. Now, Samson was not named before his birth, but both John and Yeshua/Jesus were in Luke 1 and Matthew 1 respectively. They were also both commissioned with Kingdom roles before birth. That Hizkir sh’mi, I forgot to mention, was also the phrase in Isaiah 45:4 referring to the commissioning of King Cyrus to deliver the Jews from exile. This is personal language, and throughout the first five verses here, the most common words are going to be “me, I and my”—they will appear a staggering twenty times. This is all personal, not collective. There aren’t any plurals here like we often see when Israel is referred to as a people.
This is a human being, born of a woman, commissioned and named before birth with the authority to speak to the Nations and command that they listen to him.
2 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.
His only weapon is his mouth. This is not Cyrus or any other heathen king. This is also a parallelism and I wish I had a chart here. A parallelism is when there are two sentences that say the exact same thing two separate ways. Here, “He made my mouth like a sharp sword” is being equated to “he made me a polished arrow.” Whoever this servant is, His whole being is being compared to His mouth. He is the words that come out of his mouth, they define Him, He is a warrior who does battle only with His mouth. And it is as effective as a sharp sword and an arrow. And he is hidden by Yahweh, He will not be obvious to those around Him—they won’t be able to really see Him coming as He will be and they will largely miss Him when He arrives. Yahweh said He was doing a “new thing” that had never been seen before. And now the Servant emerges. Let’s remember that Yahweh is not a prisoner of how we or anyone else interprets the Bible. Heck, we’ve been wrong for almost 2000 years now about Revelation, right? He can do whatever He wants however He chooses. Prophecy exists not so that we can figure out the future before it happens but so, when it does happen, we can say, “Oh my gosh, He called it! No other god can do that!”
3 And he said to me, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
Isaiah 1-39 was spent telling rebellious Israel, “obey, or else, you are embarrassing me with your evil deeds.” Isaiah 40-48 was saying, “okay, you guys are clearly not obeying and you are more afraid of Babylon than you trust in me, but I will deliver you so that I can glorify myself through your deliverance.” Now we have Yahweh speaking to someone who will finally glorify Him. Although the word Israel is here in black and white, it cannot be a collective Israel referred to. One, we have that pesky matter of Yahweh directing this to an individual, to “me” and there are no other plural indicators here. You have really got to ignore everything before this point to make this collectively be about Israel as a nation glorifying God and taking His message to the ends of the earth because, except through the Messiah, it still hasn’t happened. Only through Yeshua did paganism in the Western world crumble within only a few hundred years after his death, through His message.
It is only when we look at Israel, in this verse, as the perfect representation of Israel by one specific Jewish man who did what the collective did not and could not (I mean, not like we are out there doing what Messiah did either, right? Just look at our social media witness. Oy.) that it makes any sense. Yeshua has brought worldwide glory to the Father as the perfect Servant.
4 But I said, “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;
yet surely my right is with the Lord, and my recompense with my God.”
And yet, this Servant will not see success in His life. Despite being commissioned before birth, despite the fact that Yahweh declares that He will be glorifed through the Servant, the Servants laments that His life is spent with no visible results during His life. And, up until the moment of Yeshua’s resurrection, this describes His life. He wasn’t even surrounded by His closest male associates either at His trial or at His death. The thousands of people He healed, delivered and even raised from the dead were gone. What worse kind of defeat was possible within an honor/shame society. He died utterly disgraced and almost entirely alone. Only the women and perhaps John was there. And yet, despite appearances, He professes faith that God has His back.
5 And now the Lord says, he who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him; and that Israel might be gathered to him—for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord, and my God has become my strength—
Here’s the last word from the Servant about His commissioning—and it is specifically about the nature of His job as Servant. His job is to bring Jacob back to Yahweh (not to the Holy Land like Cyrus) so that Israel could be gathered back to Yahweh. Tell me, how can Jacob bring back Jacob? How can Israel regather Israel when they weren’t even all willing to return from Babylonia after Cyrus set them free? No, this is a bringing back of a people in repentance and teshuva, a literal turning around from their own ways to Yahweh’s. This is not something a group can perform on itself. This is the work of one man commissioned by God—from the womb, called in the womb, named before His birth, who would glorify God by bringing Jacob back and regathering Israel from the four corners of the earth. And because of this, the Servant is honored in God’s eyes despite being dishonored in the eyes of others. But wait, there’s more.
6 he says: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation (yeshuat) may reach to the end of the earth.”
Wow, “That job isn’t enough—being my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and bring them back to me. You will also be a light to the nations so that all the earth will know about Me and they can be saved.” Israel here is not replaced—the nations are simply added to God’s plan of redemption.
This is not the nation of Israel raising themselves up and regathering themselves. This isn’t Israel going out and making disciples of the Nations to the ends of the earth, because it never happened—except through one singular Israelite who served as the ideal and perfect Israelite. Israel as Israel should have been, except Israel is made up of people and you know how ridiculous we are. We can’t even save ourselves much less anyone else. But Yeshua/Jesus is different. We cannot ignore what He has accomplished at the Cross. The lives changed, the entire nations changed. Polytheism stomped out in so much of the world today not by Judaism or Islam but by Christianity, because at its core Christianity, when it is pure, is the work of one Jew who is God’s Servant, a covenant to the people—as we will see again in verse 8. Saving Israel is not enough—God created the world and so the world is what He is determined to save. The Servant must accomplish that. Any entity not working toward and accomplishing that goal is not the Servant.
7 Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation, the servant of rulers: “Kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves; because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”
Again, the Servant is deeply despised, hated by the nation, and this is singular and not plural, so Israel even though the word is goy—it is not exclusively meaning the heathen nations unless it is goyim and even then sometimes it includes every nation on earth including Israel. But the nation Israel cannot hate the Servant if the Servant is itself. Doesn’t work that way. He is also called the servant of rulers. Yeshua became the servant of everyone on the Cross, but we also see Him, in life subjected to the rule of Herod the Great, Herod Antipas, Herod Archelaus, and Pontius Pilate. He was not a ruler in life, he was a subject. BUT, Yahweh makes it clear that one day rulers would bend the knee to Him—and again, this has happened with Yeshua but not with the nation of Israel as a whole.
*****************
8 Thus says the Lord: “In a time of favor I have answered you; in a day of salvation I have helped you;
I will keep you and give you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages,
9 saying to the prisoners, ‘Come out,’ to those who are in darkness, ‘Appear.’ They shall feed along the ways; on all bare heights shall be their pasture;
10 they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them.
11 And I will make all my mountains a road, and my highways shall be raised up.
12 Behold, these shall come from afar, and behold, these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Syene.”
13 Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the Lord has comforted his people and will have compassion on his afflicted.
Okay, here we have an oath written in clear Jubilee language followed by a doxology, a formal hymn of praise. This is a response to the cries of Israel for salvation. You see, even after they returned from Babylon, according to the prayer of Nehemiah 9, they still considered themselves to be in exile. They were laboring for their oppressive overlords—it had only started with Assyria, and then Babylon, and then they labored for the Medes and Persians, the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Greeks, and then, of course, the Romans. Then they were kicked out of Jerusalem entirely. Even now, the Jewish residents of Israel are under the thumb of the United Nations. But when John the Baptist came preaching, he was preaching a message of repentance and “salvation from sins.” And that didn’t mean to them what it means to us—they knew they were still in exile and they knew it was because God had not completely wiped their slates clean. Just read Malachi! Oh, my goodness. Most of the exiles never returned and those who did were really behaving badly—from the marrying of pagan women (even the priests!) to offering only the lame, blind and maimed animals on the altar of the Lord, and divorce was rampant. Divorce was even worse in the first century, by the way, with men sending their wives away for “any reason.” So, coming back from Babylon was just the beginning—and we can imagine that if they all returned together en masse then a lot of the wealth of Babylon would have gone with them and no one could have stopped them from building the Temple, the city and the walls very quickly. But when Nehemiah returned 150 years later, the walls were still lying in shambles. It was disgraceful. Israel could not and would not and did not save itself. And I am not being disrespectful here, this is plain old history from the Bible and elsewhere. This is what happened and we can all see it with our own eyes. The problem, the big problem and we see this exemplified by the refusal to return to the Holy Land, is not exile but estrangement. The nation is estranged from their Creator, they became comfortable in Babylon and had no desire to return to His Land—which could have easily been established and reapportioned at that time had Israel obeyed the command to come out of Babylonia. Because of their refusal to do any of this, as a group, Yahweh has to appoint a Servant to do it in their place. BUT, as we saw above, the Servant did not die having accomplished any of it. We will see this more clearly in Isaiah 52/53.
8 Thus says the Lord: “In a time of favor I have answered you; in a day of salvation I have helped you;
I will keep you and give you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages,
Do you remember the language used about the devastation of the daughter of Babylon from last time and how it never actually happened historically? How Cyrus came in and rather peacefully took over the empire and the Babylonians weren’t reduced to slavery or anything like that? Okay, so we talked about the poetry to retribution. Psalm 137 is another excellent example. We don’t see Babylon destroyed in battle by Cyrus of the Babylonian babies being dashed against the rocks and all that. It is symbolic language, not an actual predictive prophecy. It is so important to understand how God is communicating through the prophet and here we have a Jubilee or a restoration oracle.
We don’t have time to go through it, but if you look at Leviticus 25 you will see that in the fiftieth year, all lands sold away to pay off debts were returned to their original owners so that families could not lose their God-given inheritance forever. So this didn’t happen, in reality, after the exile when Cyrus said they could go home. It just couldn’t happen. No one who came back had ever even been there before. They were foreigners who had never even set foot in the Land. Does this invalidate the prophecy? No. Because what was being communicated was about restoration. And the Land has still obviously never been returned to the original families. That won’t happen until the Prince rises up as we see starting in Ezekiel 34, until the Prince, the Messiah reapportions the Land.
But again, as in Is 42:6, which we read earlier—Yahweh is again speaking of the one whom He will give as a Covenant to the people. If we read this as it was intended, how it would have read to the people of the time, this promise is about Jubilee-like restoration of inheritance. It has not happened in any sort of physical even though Yeshua the Messiah has already been offered as a Covenant for the people and has, in fact, restored those who believe in Him to a relationship with Yahweh. It is all about what that Jubilee represented.
9 saying to the prisoners, ‘Come out,’ to those who are in darkness, ‘Appear.’ They shall feed along the ways; on all bare heights shall be their pasture;
Let’s read Isaiah 61:1-4 really fast, which Yeshua quoted about Himself in Luke 4:18-19.
61 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
3 to grant to those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;
that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.
4 They shall build up the ancient ruins;
they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
the devastations of many generations.
10 they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them.
Combined with the previous verse, we have shepherd language, which was kingly language in the ancient near east. Kings were described as shepherds. We see the word pity here, which hearkens back to the fact that in verse 2 the Servant has no weapons of war but only his words and in 42:3, the Servant is described as someone who will be so gentle that he will not break a bruised reed or snuff out a smoldering wick.
11 And I will make all my mountains a road, and my highways shall be raised up.
12 Behold, these shall come from afar, and behold, these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Syene.”
We have all obstacles removed so that the ends of the earth—those from afar, from the north and the west and from the southern border of Egypt (which was as far as they could imagine from Babylonia) can come to salvation, as the Servant was commissioned in 49:6. We end it with a hymn of praise bursting out spontaneously from all the earth in response to the commissioning of the Servant.
13 Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the Lord has comforted his people and will have compassion on his afflicted.
[1] Smith, G. (2009). Isaiah 40-66 (Vol. 15B, p. 337). Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers.
