This week we cover the third Servant Song, where the mysterious Servant of Yahweh further sets himself apart from the nation of Israel and we begin to see the legal persecution of the Servant by the ba’al mishpati. We will also explore the preamble to the second Zion song and its connection to The Great Scroll of Isaiah, 1QIs-a and see how the Qumran community taught it as sort of an extra Servant Song.
Transcript below–you know by now it won’t be edited worth a darn 😉
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Isaiah and the Messiah 13—The Servant Speaks Again!
So, two weeks ago, The Servant addressed Israel and started unwrapping not only His divinely mandated mission to regather Jacob and bring Israel back into relationship with Yahweh but also His additional mission to be a light to the nations and bring salvation to the Gentiles. This week, in what scholars call the third Servant Song, the Servant will talk more about Himself, Yahweh’s work through Him, and how He fulfills Israel’s divine mandate by being the perfect Servant that mere humans would never be. This is another short section—but we will be looking closely at some materials from the Qumran Covenanters, the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls who were perhaps Essenes, and how they used these materials in the first and second centuries BCE. This is some exciting material—touching on discipleship, honor and shame, institutionalized shaming as public punishment in the ancient world, and an interesting commentary on the word echad.
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
Throughout this series, I have been quoting from the English Standard Version, the ESV.
Although we will be starting this week’s lesson with Isaiah 50:4, it is always important to backtrack. Nothing in Scripture should be taught in a vacuum, which is why I have been going over past materials over and over again as well as making sure that I teach every single verse. Isaiah is complex, it is prophetic, oracular poetry. You can’t look at any one verse or even a few verses and hope to understand it. We have various themes spoken by various speakers to various audiences and the context cannot be ignored or you can just make all this mean whatever you want it to mean—which is why anti-missionaries so successfully use Isaiah to “prove” that Yeshua/Jesus can’t be the Messiah. But when you teach the whole thing, you just can’t do that. If we love the Bible, then we can’t ever afford to teach one verse and we can’t ever believe that one verse can give us the whole story. Frankly, any more than I can take one snippet from a politician or public figure’s words and judge them for that.
50 Thus says the Lord: “Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce, with which I sent her away? Or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities you were sold, and for your transgressions your mother was sent away. 2 Why, when I came, was there no man; why, when I called, was there no one to answer? Is my hand shortened, that it cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver? Behold, by my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a desert; their fish stink for lack of water and die of thirst. 3 I clothe the heavens with blackness and make sackcloth their covering.”
We covered this last week, but again—Israel is in exile, unrepentant and unwilling to admit her responsibility for what has happened. If this happened today, she would probably be on the internet saying she was under attack by the devil who was trying to steal her peace instead of owning the consequences of her actions. But I want to focus on verse two. “Why, when I came, was there no man; why, when I called, was there no one to answer?” This is Yahweh speaking, and He is referring again, as He has repeatedly, that Israel was called to hear and obey and follow and seek but has not been responsive. Israel, who insinuated that Yahweh is blind and deaf and uncaring, has, in fact, been blind themselves. When summoned, they don’t show up. They don’t seek Him. Each one walks in His own ways. This is the cause of the exile, the failure of Israel not only to live up to their divinely commanded mandate to be a witness to His Name, meaning His power, glory and reputation and not a collection of syllables. Israel failed to meet the requirements of being Israel. But does Yahweh get rid of them? No way! They are irreplaceable and, frankly, no one else is any better so who the heck would He replace them with even if he could? That’s a part of replacement theology I never understood. I mean, if you are going to trade something in, you go get something better—not the same quality or worse. Humans be humans. Only the Cross changes people from within, and it doesn’t happen pre-emptively.
Let’s get on with this week’s lesson, starting in Isaiah 50:4. We have a new speaker. 50:1 started with a “Thus says the Lord” so we know who was speaking there, but now we are going to see someone who will repeat the phrase “Lord God” four times in succession. We also saw it last week in 49:22 but I don’t think I pointed it out. But it is not common outside the prophets. In English, it looks as though it is in Scripture a lot and especially in Genesis but you have to look at the caps. If God is in all caps, it is Adonai Yahweh, and if it is not then it is Yahweh Elohim. If my calculations are correct, then it appears thirty times in Isaiah. It is used quite a bit in the works of the prophets leading up to, during and after the exile. It means Yahweh, my Lord, or my Master. Yahweh Elohim means something more like Yahweh, my God, the mighty One. It seems to be a particularly intimate term for those with special prophetic callings and not something commonly in use. And that makes sense—Yahweh is not giving such direct orders to most people as He does with His prophets! He speaks and they must deliver His words! So who is our new speaker here? Let’s find out:
4 The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary. Morning by morning he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught.
The Masoretic text (our current Hebrew text) is really interesting. Here we have this new speaker, talking about the Lord God, which he will do four times, giving him the tongue of “those who are taught” and it might not be readily apparent how significant this is. The Hebrew word for “those who are taught” is limmudim—and the best one-word English translation for that is disciple. Now, disciples were expected to learn from their teachers, more than teachers, masters really—until they could repeat verbatim everything their master knew and taught. They exhibited the character of their master as well.
Now, who is this? I will give you a heads up because when we get to verses 10-11 the speaker will be identified as the Servant whom we have seen in Isaiah 42 and 49 in the first and second Servant Songs. Who is the Servant addressing? Not Yahweh, He is talking about Yahweh, not to Him. He is addressing an unnamed audience, probably His fellow Israelites. This is someone who uses what Adonai Yahweh, Yahweh His Master, teaches Him in order to help the vulnerable—the weary. Not to teach the scholars, not to impress people with his knowledge, but to sustain the weary, to uplift the fallen, to give hope to the oppressed—all that jazz. And He is given this instruction every morning without fail. Dang, wish I had that kind of hotline communication! The function of the word He was given to speak was not specified in Isaiah 49 in the second song. So, we have right here another indication that the description of the Servant and His mission is ramping up and becoming more specific without ever actually being completely specific.
So, the Servant is a direct disciple of Yahweh as well as a Teacher who focuses on the downtrodden. Before we move on to the next verse, I want to point out Witherington’s version as we find in the LXX, the Greek translation from the second/third century BCE.
LXX—The Lord gives me the tongue of instruction, that I may know in season when it is necessary to speak a word, He assigned it to me in the morning, he added to me an ear to hear (Witherington, Isaiah Old and New, pg 228).
I love that—pure wisdom literature. And something for us to allow to go very deep. A tongue of instruction is one that knows when it is the right time to speak. It doesn’t just spew information presumptuously.
5 The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious; I turned not backward.
Right here, another proof that the Servant is not Israel. Israel has unendingly been referred to not only as deaf but willful and rebellious and unwilling to obey and whatever other euphemisms you want to use. Open ear. Not rebellious. Never turning away. This is the perfect servant, absolutely 100% responsive and constant. God said such and such and I responded perfectly. That is no merely human voice and it describes no one in the Hebrew Scriptures—not Abraham, not Moses, not David, not Jonah, not anyone. Nor does it describe Isaiah, a man who described himself as a man of unclean lips among a people of unclean lips.
6 I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting.
Right here we turn to a legal or quasi-legal setting. In the ancient world, we didn’t have people in prison forever. We had people generally either executed, vindicated, or publicly shamed. Once a person was shamed, society would take care of their lifelong punishment depending on the extent and severity of the shaming. Flogging was directed in the Bible as a suitable punishment, but the limit was set at 39 lashes because no Israelite was permitted to shame another past the point of no return. If they had done badly enough to deserve that, they were to be executed. I am talking about murderers, rapists and adulterers and those who committed specific acts of Ma’al—encroachment. But what we have here is a man who is being shamed well beyond the boundaries of normal decency. A man’s face was one of his honor zones—I talk about this in my curriculum book, Honor and Shame in the Bible, volume one of my Context for Kids series. Damaging a man’s face was an act of supreme shaming. Spitting is just particularly vile. Flogging was mandated in the Torah because any marks would be covered by a man’s normal clothing.
But we have this Servant, and He is willingly submitting to this process. He “gave” His back, and His cheeks, and He refused to cover His face or turn it away. This Servant is remarkable. Meekness was seen as cowardice and weakness in the ancient world and that includes ancient Israel. Turning the other cheek was a shocking thing for a man to do. It was shameful. For a man to preach it or do it was counter-cultural in the extreme.
7 But the Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame.
So, despite all evidence of extreme public, institutionalized shaming in the previous verse, the Servant says that He is not actually disgraced, a word which also appeared in verse six. This is not bosheth—our normal word for shame, which is also in this verse in the parallelism “I know that I shall not be put to shame.” This is niklamti and carries the sense of being harmed and insulted. This is the word used when David’s emissaries to Ammon were insulted on purposes—having their beards shaved and sent home with their robes cut at the buttocks, therefore leaving them exposed for public ridicule. Bosheth, on the other hand, generally refers to felt and earned shame. Now, these guys in verse six are obviously insulting him and trying to inflict permanent shame, but because the Lord God, Adonai Yahweh (second instance in this chapter) helps the Servant, they will not succeed in truly insulting Him. Put a different way, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”—Romans 8:31. Also His face is set like flint, which we see in Luke 9:51:
When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.
This is about faithful determination, an absolute willingness to fulfill His mission and nothing would stop Him.
8 He who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me.
Remember, we have a legal or quasi-legal setting here and the Servant is challenging those who are trying to shame Him. Adonai Yahweh is waiting in the wings to vindicate Him—therefore who will dare to accuse him or oppose His divinely ordained mission to regather Israel to intimacy with God and bring salvation to the Gentiles? When you heard the phrase “Who is my adversary?” you might have assumed that the Hebrew word translated adversary is satan, but that would be incorrect. It is ba’al mishpati-literally master/owner/husband of my justice. This is someone who has been given legal authority, really solidifying this as courtroom context here. And yet, the ba’al mishpati is working against the Servant of Adonai Yahweh! Notice that the entire nation is not against the Servant, only the ba’al mishpati.
9 Behold, the Lord God helps me; who will declare me guilty? Behold, all of them will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up.
Fourth mention of Adonai Yahweh, and so far His actions toward the Servant have been helping (twice), giving Him the tongue of a disciple, awakening Him, opening His ear each morning, and vindicating Him. The Servant responds with unfailing obedience and responsiveness. This is a special and unique relationship. Adonai Yahweh will vindicate, so who will dare step up to declare Him guilty anyway? The ba’al mishpati! The legal authority/authorities who stand in opposition to the mission of the Servant.
These baal mishpati will not prevail, however, they and their judgments will fade like a worn-out garment and will be devoured. I think someone said something once about old garments with holes in them and how they cannot be patched with the new.
10 Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of his servant? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God.
The speaker abruptly changes here and it is not clear whether it is the prophet or Yahweh, but the important thing is that, whoever the speaker is, the audience is clearly Israel as a nation. Remember I told you in the beginning that the speaker in verses 4-9 was the Servant? This is where we get the confirmation. It is vitally important to note that fearing the Lord is here equated with obeying the voice of the Servant. Walking in darkness and having no light is a term that is often used not only of the Nations, but also with rebellious Israel when she refuses to walk in obedience—which has literally been one of the major themes of all of Isaiah. But it can also mean adversity—we could go either/or here. Could be one or both of those. But there is a cure! Trust in the Name (reputation, past mighty acts and faithfulness) of Yahweh and rely on his elohim, the meaning of which is not entirely clear because Elohim is a generic word meaning mighty one but if this is a parallelism then it is also referring back to Yahweh.
11 Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who equip yourselves with burning torches! Walk by the light of your fire, and by the torches that you have kindled!
This you have from my hand: you shall lie down in torment.
This seems to me to be a general warning to Israel but also specifically directed to the ba’al mishpati who would dare to oppose and accuse the Servant. The Servant has been given words to speak and those words are called a light and specifically a light to the nations as well as to Israel—but these are men who are kindling their own sort of light. Could this be referring to the Sadducees, who were the central governing authorities and who only were willing to listen to the Torah and really poo-pooed the rest of the Word or the Pharisees and their sometimes legalistic loopholes that allowed them to do wrong while claiming to be doing right? Or is it just endemic to the leadership in general who were all finding their own ways of obedience instead of looking at the Spirit of the Torah? Later Talmudic authors didn’t call it a time of gratuitous hatred for nothing! But one way or another, this was going to end in disaster for them, the ba’al mishpati, masters of my justice.
Whoever the speaker was in the previous two verses, now Yahweh will speak again. And this is going to be cool because we are going to talk about how the Qumran Covenanters used this passage and a few others to speak about the Messiah. We are no longer in the Servant Song. This is now a prelude to the second Zion song. This is only eight verses but we are going to see an entirely new audience here, and so this is very exciting. The audience is the remnant of faithful within Israel. Up to this point, the entire nation as been addressed in very unappetizing terms. Nothing positive. But now Yahweh is going to single out those who are faithful for a special salvation oracle. The Qumran community clearly believed this was referring to them. Undoubtedly the Pharisees thought the same. Funny how the positive verses all have a billion claimants while people go running from the rebukes! In truth, we all need to be able to see ourselves in the rebukes.
51 “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord: look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.
So, this isn’t directed at the blind, the rebellious, the disobedient, the unrepentant and the generally clueless as to why they are in exile. It is those who actually pursue, that’s a heavy action word, righteousness—that would be ethics, tzeddek. They seek the Lord, something that has been commanded over and over again. These people are being singled out and addressed. So everything you see here is going to be special instructions for the good part of the good, the bad and the ugly. They are told to look to the rock and to the quarry from which they came—but what is that rock and where is that quarry?
2 Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, that I might bless him and multiply him.
Okay, no mystery here! Abraham and Sarah! A few things here—this is the only place in all of Scripture where Abraham is called a rock. So, anyone looking for two witnesses is going to be disappointed. But remember, this is a poetic oracle and so you will see unique references. The faithful remnant is directed to look to them both, and that look is the exact same Hebrew verb as we see in Gen 15:5:
5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
Pretty cool, eh? Sort of like a mirror, Abraham was commanded to look into the sky to see them and they are commanded to look back to Him.
Another neat thing here, when it says that “Abraham was but one when I called him,” that word for one was echad. And yet it also mentions Sarah—echad doesn’t mean alone. He wasn’t one, He was most definitely two, a plural unity, oneflesh.
3 For the Lord comforts Zion; he comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.
Why are they told to look to Abraham and Sarah? In order to remind them what God can do with a tiny group who are willing to leave one place and go to the Land of promise at His command. The remnant that will in fact go is going to be miniscule—but God will prosper them and multiply them. Greater is He who is with them and that sort of thing. This verse is about a reversal of status, like we see with David and Joshua (and I wrote about this in Honor and Shame in the Bible as well). Waste places and wilderness (uncultivated land) blossoming into a paradise. And they will have joy and delight as well, despite how daunting the task will be.
Now, we are going to have some fun and I will be citing an excellent article. It’s from Brill, so their stuff is always amazing. The Functions of God as Messianic Titles in the Complete Qumran Isaiah Scroll by John V Chamberlain. It sounds a lot more complicated than it is because this guy, like me, never met a long title he didn’t like! The Scroll in question is 1QISa. If you don’t know how to identify Dead Sea Scrolls by their code, it’s a very beneficial thing to learn. 1Q means that it was located in the first of the Qumran caves to be discovered. Is is the short form of Isaiah and the “a” designation denotes which Isaiah manuscript is being discussed. I am going to read the entire five verses in the Masoretic text first, which is what all modern Hebrew Bibles are based on, and our earliest complete manuscripts of it date to the 8th century of the Common Era, so they are roughly 1200 years old. Anyone who wants older manuscripts has to look to the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint, which predate the common era by a couple of hundred years.
1QIsa is also called “The Great Isaiah Scroll” and it is the best preserved out of all the scrolls found. I will include a link when I post the transcript on my blog when this goes up as a podcast. http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/isaiah
Remember, this is spoken to the righteous remnant.
4 “Give attention to me, my people, and give ear to me, my nation;
for a law will go out from me, and I will set my justice for a light to the peoples.
5 My righteousness draws near, my salvation has gone out, and my arms will judge the peoples;
the coastlands hope for me, and for my arm they wait.
6 Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and they who dwell in it will die in like manner;
but my salvation will be forever, and my righteousness will never be dismayed.
7 “Listen to me, you who know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law;
fear not the reproach of man, nor be dismayed at their revilings.
8 For the moth will eat them up like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool,
but my righteousness will be forever, and my salvation to all generations.”
Now, the Qumran community, who were perhaps Essenes, wrote it out slightly differently—and I owe this translation to John V Chamberlain. It is not complete, it only highlights the differences.
4Attend to me, my people, and give ear to me, my nation, for TORAH will go forth from me and MY JUDGMENT I will establish as a light for the peoples.
5Near is MY RIGHTEOUSNESS; MY DELIVERANCE has gone forth, and his arms will rule the peoples. In him the coastlands trust, and for his arms they wait.
6…but MY SALVATION will be forever, and MY JUSTICE will never be confounded.
8…but MY JUSTICE shall be forever, and MY SALVATION to the ages.
Qumran saw themselves as an eschatological and Messianic community. Meaning they believed they were living in the last days before the coming of the Messiah and that he would destroy all their enemies and reward them for being super keen. And, of course, I don’t know anyone like that…nothing ever changes. Or maybe the more things change, the more they stay the same. Anyway, they looked at this passage of Isaiah and saw clear allusions to the Messiah, relating them to the Servant Songs in ways that the Masoretic is vague about. They, going back to the title of Chamberlain’s article, took the expressed functions of God, like Torah, judgment, righteousness, deliverance, salvation, and salvation and personified them as titles for the Messiah. So when Yahweh says “Torah will go forth from me,” they saw it as the Messiah going forth. Same with the others. “My judgment I will establish as a light” meant “My Messiah I will establish as a light” and they aren’t without cause because this is very much outright both said and hinted at in the other servant songs which, of course, describe the Messiah and His Mission. What they did alter is the personal pronouns. Instead of “my arms” in verse five, they wrote “his arms” and “in him the coastlands trust” and “for him they wait.” Was it a substitution, or simply a logical extension of what was being said?
As we will see next week when we discuss “the arm of the Lord” who is clearly an agent/servant and not Yahweh Himself—yes, they were simply taking the material starting in verse nine and retroactively applying it to verses 4-8.
To the Qumran community, it was a common thing to personify certain virtues as being personal names for the Messiah, and we see that later Rabbinic Jews did the same with the Torah, sometimes writing that in certain verses that it is code for the Messiah. Much like The Branch.
Isaiah 26:8 is another one of these verses where they do this. Here is the MT
8 In the path of your judgments, O Lord, we wait for you; your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul.
But the Great Isaiah Scroll words it this way:
Oh Lord, we await YOUR NAME, and the desire of our soul is for YOUR TORAH.
It is a parallelism where two concepts are equated and here we have YOUR NAME and TORAH linked as being equivalent. As we know from later rabbinic words that Torah was sometimes seen as code for the Messiah, is it so surprising to see the same concept 800 years earlier?
Now, are later rabbinic sources and the DSS the only examples of this being done? Not at all. In the Masoretic text, in Is 62:11, we see it done as well:
11 Behold, the Lord has proclaimed to the end of the earth: Say to the daughter of Zion,“Behold, your salvation comes; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.”
So we have this very clear example of salvation as a person—“his (salvation’s) reward is with him” and “his recompense is before him.” This is no different than seeing wisdom personified as a woman in the proverbs, and in fact, the Ruach was feminized in both Jewish and Christian writings until the middle ages at which times all aspects of deity were given male pronouns, even when the original language was clearly neutral in character. But, back to the Messiah here—what the Qumran community was doing here is just a good example of expounding upon the text by using the text itself. It took material that appeared elsewhere within the same literary context and applied it to verses that they believed clearly were related. In a way, they were just clarifying the text as they knew and studied it and really, it (and the Septuagint) is the earliest Jewish commentary that we have on Isaiah so we can’t afford to ignore it. Both predate our current Masoretic text but, of course, until 1947 no one knew about the existence of the Dead Sea Scrolls so all we really had were the Masoretic, which began being edited and compiled during the seventh century, the targums, which were Aramaic commentaries popularly in use even earlier during the first century, and the Greek translation Septuagint. It is so important to know about these different transmissions or they can easily be misused.
Just about a month ago, I saw someone on social media had asked for certain NT verses in a rather disreputable “messianic” bible and in the Septuagint. And, this really disturbed me, I responded two hours later and despite numerous responses, not one person had pointed out that there are no NT verses in the Septuagint because it is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures that predated the NT by a couple of hundred years. So, the next time you ask a question on social media and get a bunch of answers, bear in mind that a lot of people really aren’t as knowledgeable as they claim to be or think they are. And I don’t mean to be unkind, but there are people out there who treat the Bible like a toy—like politics or entertainment where everyone gets to say whatever they think without actually needing to have any sort of expertise. But, if we love and revere the Word of God then we can’t treat it like a freedom of speech issue where we can say whatever the heck we want about it with no spiritual consequences to ourselves and others. I don’t mind it when someone is seriously studying it and looks at the same data I am looking at and honestly disagrees—I am talking about people who haven’t even read the whole thing through and are looking at one verse and giving their opinions. It’s as though we are gossiping about it like it’s the latest fantasy book or murder mystery. Those things don’t matter if we aren’t really knowledgeable about the material—but people’s lives depend on the Bible.
