Episode 51: Isaiah and the Messiah Part 15–The Suffering Servant Song
Yes! In my opinion (which is rarely humble), Isaiah 52:13-53:13 is the most important material in all of the Hebrew Scriptures. Finally, God’s plan for the promised end to the relational estrangement between not only God and Israel but also God and the nations will be revealed and the shocking mission of the Servant, the Messiah, revealed.
The teaching I made reference to in the broadcast is Ryan White’s The Suffering Servant/The Leper Messiah and can be found on his website FaithofMessiah.com and is free all this month to subscribers at the $10/year level.
Speaking of support–I don’t get paid for doing the radio show but it does cost money to produce in terms of study materials, monthly software subscriptions, and the channel and blog costs. Plus this takes a huge amount of time to put together. Would you consider becoming a supporter? If everyone who listens would just chip in $5/month it would make a huge difference.
Transcript below, marginally edited.
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Isaiah and the Messiah 15—The Suffering Servant Song
I am going to be really honest here. I have been dreading this. It is too great a responsibility and I believe it is the most important section of the Hebrew Scriptures—yes, even more important than the Torah because if the Torah was sufficient to save us, it would have and we would not have needed the subject of today’s broadcast. Torah gives us guidance and it is eternal, but it remains powerless to save. When the disciples of Yeshua of Nazareth, you may call Him Jesus, heard and/or read these verses in Isaiah 42, 49, 50, 52 and 53, they recognized their teacher. Yeshua Himself used the verses of the various servant songs to describe Himself—but never used the verses that were clearly referring to Cyrus the Great. Isaiah has been building up to this climactic and universe-altering material since 49:1 when the Servant began to speak for Himself and outline His divinely ordained mission. The material started out rather vague but has gotten more and more detailed not only concerning his mission but also his fate.
My dear friend Ryan White has the absolute best teaching on this subject matter that I have ever heard and if you are a subscriber to his website at the $10/year level he has made his Suffering Servant teaching available as this month’s featured teaching. He works from his own translation that he did while getting his Master’s degree in Biblical Studies and covers it entirely from the context of honor and shame. His website is FaithofMessiah.com and he is someone I absolutely trust and I do not recommend teachers generally unless I know them, in person, and also know their spouse and kids as well. He is someone I talk with all the time and I know personally that he is willing to learn and grow and to admit error and reconsider his position when confronted with new data. Of course, the books I read are different—all you have to be is an excellent scholar. I don’t have enough time to get to know everyone whose books I read and even if I did, quite a few of them are dead.
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 the fourth Servant Song officially begins with 52:13, it begins with a “Behold” which behooves us to go back to see the context in which this new announcement is being made.
12 For you shall not go out in haste, and you shall not go in flight, for the Lord will go before you,
and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.
As a review, the second Zion Song, which we covered last time, is a protest after the end of the third Servant Song, where the Servant speaks of the immediate results of His mission to regather and comfort Israel and bring salvation to the nations (which we heard in the Second Servant Song), culminating in his voluntary suffering within a legal setting which will be overturned by Yahweh, who will vindicate Him. Yahweh then, as He began in chapter 40, speaks of the comforting of His people and their future salvation via the “arm of the Lord.” The response from Israel to this good news that the Servant and salvation are coming is a challenge to Yahweh to wake up and save them, as though they didn’t even hear what He had said. We see this thematic cycle over and over again—Yahweh promises salvation and tells them to rejoice and they tell Him that they have no cause for rejoicing and that He is some combination of blind, deaf, powerless, uncaring and/or asleep. But last week’s Zion song ended with the promise of a Greater Exodus, greater than the Exodus out of Egypt and far greater than the pale shadow of a remnant Exodus inaugurated by Cyrus the Great out of Babylonia. This is the Greater Exodus led by the Servant, the Agent of Yahweh, the Suffering One, whom some later Rabbinic treatises label as the “Leper Messiah.” This Greater Exodus is the context of Mark—invisible if you don’t know what to look for but it wouldn’t have been lost on the Jews of the time. Paul, specifically, alluded to this quite a bit but, again, if we don’t know what to look for in the Synoptic Gospels, we will miss it. The last fifteen weeks and the next two—I am only teaching this so that you will be familiar enough with the material that when I teach Mark, you will see the story behind the story. Plus, by teaching this you can also see how the anti-missionaries selectively quote out of context in order to get people to deny Yeshua as Messiah. But let’s go over that last verse from last week once more:
12 For you shall not go out in haste, and you shall not go in flight, for the Lord will go before you,
and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.
Obviously, a reference to the original Exodus—but also a reference to Cyrus’s Exodus. The original Exodus was unique—they ate of the Passover in haste and left Egypt in haste, they literally had to flee because once Pharaoh came to his senses after the shock of losing his firstborn son, he sent his armies after the Israelites and the mixed multitude who accompanied them. But this time is different. No one is chasing them. No one is going to try and get them back. But, just like the first Exodus, Yahweh will go before and behind them to protect them. Nothing really complicated here. But next, we have a “behold!” that is a signal to pay attention. And we cannot, cannot separate it from the verse before because this has all been one long connected poem since Isaiah 40. This is what the anti-missionaries do wrong, they take a verse here and there and then tell you what they mean without the context of the whole.
13 Behold, my servant shall act wisely; he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted.
What is the context of this? “The Lord will go before you, the God of Israel will be your rear guard.” This is a huge show of strength on the part of the Lord followed by a reference to the success of the mission of the Messiah. How is this possible in terms of the Greater Exodus being alluded to in terms of the nations being saved and the restoration of relationship (gathering) of Israel with Yahweh? The main, overarching theme of 49-52 has been Israel’s estrangement with God and His promise to restore her Himself. And this is the alarming way that it will happen, a way that makes so little sense to humans that we come up with quaint little mantras in order to explain it away. But I think that in trying to pretend like we can ever fully grasp the divine logic of salvation through the Servant, we deplete it of quite a lot of beauty. In truth, though it may offend us terribly—it really doesn’t matter if we understand it all. It only matters that it has been proven true with billions of people over the past 2000 years.
But, “my servant shall act wisely.” Obviously, the speaker is Yahweh. The word translated wisely, yaskil, means to act in such a way that one’s efforts will be successful. So, we have a Servant here who is guaranteed success. The Targum on this actually adds “Messiah” after the word “Servant” so the authors obviously believed this was not Israel but one man, the Messiah. Look at ”he shall be high and lifted up”–that phrase cannot be ignored as it only appears four times in Scripture and three of those times it refers to Yahweh Himself. Also, we see that he “shall be exalted”, the Hebrew on that being gabah, and when we go back to Isaiah 2:6-22 we have a big long treatise/rebuke/whatever telling us that only God Himself can be exalted. And so these two phrases really complicate things for those who desire a fully human Messiah who was not also fully divine. Gabah can mean tall, and high and raised up—but when combined with “high and lifted up” the meaning becomes clear.
So, a verse about the Exodus, and then a verse about the success and exaltation of the Servant and then, we have what appears to be a 180. Like someone said, BUT not yet.
14 As many were astonished at you—his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance,
and his form beyond that of the children of mankind—
Wow, high and exalted but here we have this man, singular, “marred beyond ish” which means man but is translated here as human resemblance. Man, but not man because of disfigurement. And his body, beyond that of b’nei adam, the children of mankind. I the ancient world, where beauty was blessing and disfigurement of any kind was dishonor, this is a shocking turn of events that we sometimes miss because we no longer think in terms of honor and shame. And yet, when we see someone grossly disfigured, we still will mock, shame, or sometimes react with horror. So, the contrast here could not be greater for an ancient audience, hence their astonishment.
15 so shall he sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths because of him, for that which has not been told them they see, and that which they have not heard they understand.
The word sprinkle is the translation of a rare word yazzah which is found in Lev 14:7 in reference to the sprinkling of the leper during their purification. But of the twenty-four times it occurs in Scripture, fifteen of those are from Leviticus and refer to sprinkling with blood or oil in various purification rituals. Remember that although the Servant, in Is 49, would regather Israel to Yahweh and end their estrangement from Him, that job was considered too small and He was also given the task of bringing salvation to the nations. So, it makes sense that this Servant would sprinkle many nations—as Israel is a kingdom of priests, the ideal representative of Israel would perform this priestly purification of the nations.
Going forward, Kings shall shut their mouths because of him, for that which has not been told them they see, and that which they have not heard they understand. This is the great irony—the gentile nations will be scandalized and shocked at the thought of a God who redeems those who are not even His own people. They had literally never heard of it but all of a sudden they would see it, and they would understand what they had never been told. The Cross, when it happened, turned the world upside down within the course of just a few hundred years—destroying polytheism within the Roman world. The Jews heard but only a remnant responded and believed—much like the remnant who responded and believed and left Babylonia when Cyrus gave them permission to leave. Paul wrote about this phenomenon a lot and especially in Romans.
Now, before we start in on Is 53, I want to mention a few things. (1) Isaiah 53 was used as the template for different creeds within Christianity, and of course, the creeds were written in order to combat heresies like dualism and Gnosticism as well as to promote a unity of belief in order to protect people from those who would just flat out make up crazy stuff in an age of gross illiteracy; (2) Personal pronouns—in this chapter, there are at least nineteen references to Israel as a plural unity (we and they, that sort of thing) while there are forty-six singular references to the Servant. Those who teach that the Servant is Israel have to do some serious linguistic gymnastics in order to justify it. The Servant, in context, is part of Israel, its ideal son, so to speak, but Israel is not the Servant. The Servant serves Israel, gathers Israel, redeems Israel, ends Israel’s estrangement from Yahweh. Just as I can’t do that for myself, and no one can, by the way, Israel could not do it for herself either.
53 Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
Who is this us being referred to? We’re going to see a litany of nineteen plural pronouns here, all referring to Israel as a whole and whoever is speaking identifies themselves as part of Israel. Call it a representative speaking for the whole, the author. This isn’t an outsider, but an insider. This cannot be a representative for the nations because the context is just not correct for that and we have never seen them utter a peep up to this point. They are always challenged and then silent in response. No, this is a speaker who is speaking on behalf of all of Israel. Now, this entire section (all of chapter 53) is going to be posed as a retrospective, as though someone is remembering the past and talking about something shameful and shocking and tragic that they witnessed. This sort of perspective isn’t that uncommon and remember how much of Isaiah speaks of the future as though it is already a done deal. Same sort of concept—once Yahweh announces His plans, they are no longer in question. They will happen.
“to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? “ Remember, we have been talking over the past two weeks about the “arm of the Lord” (51:5&9) whom the Qumran community, the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls and specifically 1QIsa (the Great Isaiah Scroll) identify as the Messiah. We can look at it this way, through their eyes, long before the birth of Yeshua—“To whom has the Messiah been revealed?” The Servant is the Arm of the Lord is the Messiah according to Jewish thought before His birth.
2 For he (referring back to 52:14, the disfigured one) grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.
Whoever the Servant is, He didn’t just appear out of nowhere. He grew up in their presence—not like Mithra who popped up out of a rock fully grown up. No, the Servant was born and lived among the “us” spoken of in verse one. He was like a “root out of dry ground.” The Hebrew word for root is shoresh and in context here it is talking about a plant something like desert scrub brush. Not a pretty plant in a garden, but a survivor out in the uncultivated wilderness. That he has no form or majesty that “we” should look at him or any beauty that “we” should desire him—in the ancient world, and especially in Greco-Roman times when they worshipped the perfect human form, beauty and perfection was considered to be proof of God’s blessing and any sort of ugliness and deformity was considered to be a curse. No one in the ancient world wanted to be attached to someone who was cursed. Even Samuel wanted David’s eldest brother for king because was beautiful.
But not this guy, not the Servant.
3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
This should remind us of Job, and indeed it is a lament. Look at the Messianic Psalm 22 really quick for context:
6 But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people.
7 All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads;
It is heartbreaking to really think about this. The Servant, the arm of the Lord, was despised. And we look at despised and we think of how we feel about our enemies, but this word is not about hatred. It is about looking at someone and deciding that he is totally worthless and beneath contempt—totally unworthy of notice. Such a person would be an affront to recognized leadership if he ever gathered any kind of notoriety. No wonder such a one would be familiar with grief. He has come to save and to serve and yet he is considered to be worse than nothing. That judgment undermines his mission and prevents him from doing what he came to do—or so it would seem at first.
And men hid their faces from him. Not shocking in a world where those who were believed to be under a curse would not be looked at for fear of the evil eye. People (and especially pregnant women) thought it was dangerous to even look at a disfigured person for fear that the curse would transfer.
4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
Verse three told us that he was well acquainted with grief and sorrow but how does he respond? By taking on the grief and sorrows of others as well. This man is kind and loving and forgiving. Yet, but, the response to him was to decide that he was stricken, smitten and afflicted by God. And this is a double whammy—and again, alludes back to Job, who was innocent and yet stricken. How quickly and conveniently we forget that not all people who are afflicted are getting what they have coming to them—but that was the common belief in ancient times. You got what you deserved, in their minds, pure and simple. But “we” attributed deservedness to him despite his taking of our sorrows upon himself. I want you to get the point of what is being communicated here. What he looks like on the outside is what we look like on the inside. That’s what this verse is saying. And that word translated as stricken is na’gua—it refers to being stricken with leprosy, the living death. So all of “us” are like lepers on the inside while we consider him to be a leper, to be shunned and driven away because of his outside appearance when we look like that in a far worse place, on the inside.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
So much here. But he was pierced for our transgressions. First, we see the word “but” which is a response to our completely wrong attitude about him. Try, “despite our judgement of him, he was pierced.” It should hurt. It was meant to be shameful and hurt us. That word translated as pierced is mecholal and it is associated with death in Is 22:2, 51:9, 66:16 and Ps 69:26-27. This death happened on behalf of our transgressions, which is pescha, willful and rebellious spit in the face of God sin, and he was crushed for our iniquities, avon, intentional sins that are more the result of falling to temptation than outright rebellion. But to be crushed, that word actually means pulverized—not like, a rock fell on my leg and I will survive. The Servant was killed.
It is not explained or justified how his chastisement brought us to peace, to shalom, to wholeness and reconciliation with Yahweh, or how our wounds are healed. I find it remarkable that we are simply told that it is true and we are to accept that. We definitely try too hard to understand why what works, works—instead of praising God that it does. Sounds exactly like how Israel is rebuked through all of chapters 40-55, right? I have to see it, I have to experience it, I have to understand it, I have to like it before I accept it and praise God for it.
Although we do see the concept of one person suffering and atoning for another in various places, it is only specifically spelled out and claimed here. If you want to check out contemporary (for them) ideas about vicarious suffering/substitutionary atonement, check out 2 Macc 7:37-38, 4 Macc 6:27-29, 17:22, and 18:4. Isaiah 53 in the Masoretic text, as well as in the Septuagint and in 1QIsa, the Great Isaiah Scroll, all clearly lay it out but without saying how it is possible. Other documents that are questionable referring to it are the Apocryphon of Levi, 4Q540-541, and the Testament of Benjamin 3:8 but it is very much suspected to have been reworked during the Christian era by “helpful” scribes.
But, I will add this quote from John Oswalt, pg 385 of his NICOT on Is 40-66:
A lamb cannot die in a human’s place, but a perfect human could; and if that human is also God, he could die for every human’s sin.
Speaking of sheep, the next two verses introduce a “sheep vs sheep” situation. Two types of sheep are going to be compared and contrasted.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
First, we have the “we” sheep. They (we) are unruly, have gone astray, have turned to our own ways. Not complimentary. Remember that ancient Near Eastern kings were called shepherds, so all us common folks being sheep is not some mysterious metaphor. All of God’s people are His sheep because He is our king. But we aren’t exactly the model herd, are we? And so we do all these things. We don’t listen, we go where we want to go and do what we want to do. It’s all me, me! AND, we have an and clause here, instead of giving is all the annihilation we have so richly earned for being such stubborn beasts, all this iniquity, avon, the guilt sins, the ones that weren’t an accident but simply disobedience—Yahweh lays them on the Servant instead of upon us. Again, no reason given as to how or why this works. Perhaps it isn’t as important as we think it is, the why.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.
I told you we had a sheep vs sheep simile. The Servant is not the kind of sheep we are—he is submissive, gentle, trusting and obedient. Is this merely a prophet? Well, can you name a prophet who didn’t loudly complain about persecution? Hello, Jeremiah. Hello Jonah. And in addition, the Servant is a willing participant. Let’s say hello to Jonah again! Poor Jonah! Like we would do better. But Israel, from chapter 40 onward, has been anything but quiet about what they believe to be their unfair treatment. Boy howdy, has Yahweh been hearing about it. This is a superhuman effort required for the Servant to endure without complaint, just because it is Yahweh’s will that it be done. Once more, this is what Israel should have been but wasn’t. This is what all of us should be, but aren’t. And can’t live up to.
Now, how literally do we take this? About his mouth literally never opening? As seriously as we take the Servant being literally pulverized and our wounds miraculously sealing up and healing on the spot. Remember, this is all oracular poetry and is expressing truth and not always in terms of accuracy. If we try to make all of the Bible dead-on accurate then we will have to toss a lot of it out. We cannot hold ancient writings to modern rules for literature. It is arrogant and unreasonable and presumes that our way of communicating is the best and one true way.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?
By oppression and judgment he was taken away gives the impression of a legal or quasi-legal setting. And if you have been following along week by week, you might be thinking of the ba’al mishpati of Isaiah 50:8 in part 13. Let’s look at that verse really quick:
8He 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.
That’s right—the legal adversary of the Servant! Ba’al mishpati means “master of my justice” and in this case, it is dripping with irony. Because here we see that he is being oppressed and judged unrighteously. Taken away is not a positive thing in Scripture. The word used for taken away in the Septuagint is the same Greek word that refers to the fate of those who were destroyed in the flood in Matthew 23:39. So much for the rapture being a positive experience.
But this man was taken away—destroyed—so that he was cut off from the land of the living and, again, stricken for transgression. As a reminder, nega, the word for being afflicted with the living death of Biblical leprosy (not to be confused with modern-day Hansen’s disease) for the willful, rebellious, hateful actions of “my people.” Obviously for Israel’s rebellion.
9 And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.
We continue with the wrongful oppression of the Servant even after death as ba’alim misphati assign him to death alongside the wicked but already we see a glimmer of honor as a rich man gives him a place in death. This despite the reminder that, unlike Cyrus and unlike Moses, he did no violence nor, unlike David and his descendants, did he ever lie. This is just reminding us of the unjust fate of the Servant, despite his mission of mercy on behalf of God toward His people and the world.
10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
This is a tough verse and we cannot ignore it. And there is going to be just as tough a verse in Isaiah 54 next week and we can’t ignore that either. This crushing and grief—it was the will of God. It was the Servant’s purpose on earth. It doesn’t matter if we like it or understand it or approve of it. It is offensive to us. We don’t fully understand it. YET, it was Yahweh’s will that it happen. In Is 55 we will see a reminder that His ways are thoughts are light years above ours, but it is hard to swallow when we read this verse and wished that He thinks more like us, in ways that don’t offend our sensibilities.
His soul, the Servant’s nephesh, his very life and being, makes an asham-that’s the offering for avon, iniquity. The stuff we do on purpose but without malice toward God. But here we get to a point where the anti-missionaries think they can get all clever. This is not a human sacrifice. No animal ever had a choice. Animals were not created for sacrifice, that came later as a way to re-establish broken relationships between man and Yahweh in terms of an offering. This is a willing offering of the life of one for many—this is an act of love. The asham of the Servant was voluntary, it was like a sacrifice but it wasn’t a sacrifice. It served the same purpose, so it was like a sacrifice. But it didn’t even begin to meet the minimum ritual requirements for an actual sacrifice. The Servant’s offering of Himself on behalf of the world is far above and beyond temporal sacrifices of unwilling animals who cannot sin and thus cannot permanently atone for it.
11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.
BUT, despite all we have seen, all he endured, what will come out of his suffering will give him satisfaction. It will be worth it in the end, when his mission is accomplished. Yahweh’s righteous one, the one judged to be right in his conflict with the baal mishpati, the one who, unlike the legal authorities who persecuted and oppressed him, is actually Yahweh’s true Servant will make many, rabbim, to be accounted, considered to be, in the right because he bears their iniquities, their avon, the things they did intentionally but without malice toward God.
I want you to notice the word rabbim, meaning many, because they pop up four times in our last two verses, 11 and twelve. Three times as many and once as their.
12 Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,
because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.
Therefore, therefore what? Going back to verse eleven, because he made many to be accounted righteous and bore iniquity that didn’t belong to him, because he did Yahweh’s will and fulfilled his mission on behalf of Israel, Yahweh will divide him a portion with the many and spoil with the strong. The language here hearkens back to a conqueror’s victory parade, like a Roman Triumph and Hitler did these as well. The conqueror generally shares of the spoil with his troops, but Yahweh is so generous that he is literally giving a portion to and sharing spoil with the conquered! Why? Because when we identify with the Servant and accept that He is bearing our iniquities, then we become his allies—not his equals but his allies and he shares/will share with us. For our sake he was lumped in together with wanton God-hating criminals, transgressors who commit pesha level offenses against God. He bore the chattat, unintentional sin, of many—perhaps the Gentiles who did not know their right hand from their left, to borrow a line from Jonah. He even makes intercession for the transgressors, the pescha level offenders!
Our gratitude toward Him, going back to 52:13, exalts him to a place occupied by no one before nor since.
13 Behold, my servant shall act wisely; he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted.
Yahweh made him to be high and lifted up, and therefore worthy of our allegiance and praise and worship—and we exalt him accordingly by giving him a position above all mere humans.
It is no wonder that, in the aftermath of the Cross and the resurrection, the disciples of Yeshua of Nazareth saw Him in these verses as plain as day.
Next week we have the third Zion song in response to this earth-shattering pronouncement of Yahweh’s plans.