Introduction
In the time after the New Testament texts were written, Christians have attached a variety of passages from the Hebrew Bible to Jesus. He realizes this prediction or embodies that psalm. One of the traditions that is found in the New Testament itself is that Jesus fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy of the ‘suffering servant’, a figure described four times in Isa 40–55. For example:
Isaiah 53
1 Peter 2
Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. […] All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and Yhwh has laid on him the iniquity of us all. […] although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.
He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth. When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.
For many Christians, Isaiah predicted the self-sacrifice of this suffering servant about eight centuries before Jesus was crucified.
Of course, Judaism does not agree with this interpretation of Isaiah. Instead, the servant is commonly identified not as an individual, but as the personification of Israel. This view is strongly supported by the chapters leading up to Isa 53.
Yet, despite this seeming clarity, there are some puzzles to be solved in these chapters that make the suffering servant’s identity less obvious than readers tend to think.
The Second Book of Isaiah
There are four ‘suffering servant songs’, all found in Isa 40–55. They are commonly outlined as:
- 42.1–4 or 1–9
- 49.1–6
- 50.4–9 or 4–11
- 52.13–53.12
Isa 40–55 is identified by many scholars as ‘Deutero-Isaiah’ or ‘Second Isaiah’.
The beginning of this section is identified for its abrupt and significant change in writing style and vocabulary after chapters 1–39. Where those first thirty-nine chapters — called Proto-Isaiah or First Isaiah — are primarily concerned with the threats of Israel, Syria, and Assyria to the Judean kingdom, chapters 40–55 instead use ‘Israel’ in a broader sense to refer to the Judean people under the dominion of Babylon. The first focus suits Isaiah’s time period in the late eighth century BCE, but the second focus only makes sense in the mid sixth century, when the kingdom of Babylon had asserted itself as a world power and conquered the Judean kingdom.
The end of this section is based on the high level of ‘correspondence’ chapter 55 has with chapter 40.
For these reasons (along with other, finer details), most scholars agree that ‘Deutero-Isaiah’ contains prophecies not from Isaiah, but an otherwise anonymous prophet writing about a century and a half later. This second prophet lived during the Babylonian exile, and wrote his prophecies in its final years. This author, like Ezekiel, may have written his book among the exiles in Babylon.
Any interpretation of the servant songs must be found in this context.
Unity of the Servant Songs
It is a near-unanimous view that the four songs are a unity with each other, coming from a single hand, but there is no agreement whether they came from the same author as the rest of Deutero-Isaiah, or if they were written at the same time.
Most scholars took Deutero-Isaiah as a literary unity before 1980, but after this time scholars ‘increasingly emphasized the internal tensions’
Some scholars insisted the four servant songs were not closely related enough to their surrounding context; they could be removed completely without interrupting the flow of the rest of Deutero-Isaiah.
There have been various interpreters who found a framework that explains the arrangement of these smaller units, and how the servant songs fit into them. At first glance the placement of the servant songs throughout Deutero is ‘seemingly erratic’.
Consequently, there is, in fact, an obvious narrative progression throughout the songs.
With these points in mind, as well as the possibility that Deutero contains much more structure than usually thought, we should consider explanations for the ‘internal tensions’ that don’t require us to speculate about multiple authors unless absolutely necessary.
The Nation of Israel as the Servant
Mentioned above, the chapters leading up to Isa 53 repeatedly identify Israel (aka Jacob) as a ‘servant’ of God.
Isaiah 41
But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen […] saying to you, ‘You are my servant, I have chosen you’
Isaiah 43
But now thus says Yhwh, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: […] You are my witnesses, says Yhwh, and my servant whom I have chosen
Isaiah 44
But now hear, O Jacob my servant, Israel whom I have chosen! […] Do not fear, O Jacob my servant, Jeshurun whom I have chosen. […] Remember these things, O Jacob, and Israel, for you are my servant; I formed you, you are my servant; O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me.
Isaiah 45
For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen
Isaiah 48
‘Yhwh has redeemed his servant Jacob!’
Isaiah 49
And he said to me, ‘You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.’
One would think that, by the time readers get to Isa 53, there is no question the author intended readers to identify the ‘suffering servant’ with Israel. And indeed, it is unanimous among scholars that Deutero-Isaiah as a whole identifies the servant with ‘the nation [of Israel] in its entirety’.
The fourth servant song (Isa 52.13–53.12) is the one used in the New Testament to describe Jesus: his appearance was marred beyond recognition (52.14), he was despised and rejected (53.3), he was wounded for our transgressions (53.5), he did no violence and never deceived (53.9). Yet Isa 49 — which explicitly calls the servant Israel — and the fourth servant song share the imagery of the servant being exalted over nations and kings, which takes place amid a new exodus (e.g. return from exile, pathways made clear and safe by God’s presence, maintaining the temple vessels).
Isaiah 49
Isaiah 52–53
Thus says Yhwh, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers, ‘Kings shall see and stand up, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, because of Yhwh, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.’ Thus says Yhwh: In a time of favour I have answered you, on a day of salvation I have helped you; I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages; saying to the prisoners, ‘Come out’, to those who are in darkness, ‘Show yourselves.’ They shall feed along the ways, on all the bare heights shall be their pasture; they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them down, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them. And I will turn all my mountains into a road, and my highways shall be raised up. Lo, these shall come from far away, and lo, these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Syene.
Depart, depart, go out from there! Touch no unclean thing; go out from the midst of it, purify yourselves, you who carry the vessels of Yhwh. For you shall not go out in haste, and you shall not go in flight; for Yhwh will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rearguard. See, my servant shall prosper; he shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high. Just as there were many who were astonished at him—so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of mortals—so he shall startle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him; for that which had not been told them they shall see, and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate.
It is possible the idea of personifying Israel as God’s servant, teaching the nations how to follow their god Yhwh, is rooted in earlier prophetic literature.
Isaiah 2.3
cf. Micah 4.2 ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of Yhwh, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’
Despite the thematic parallels between Isa 49 and 52–53, it is Isa 49 in particular which most acutely shows the problem with flatly identifying the servant as Israel.
Isaiah 49.3, 5, 6
And he said to me, ‘You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.’ […] And now Yhwh says, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him […] he says, ‘It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel’
How can Israel be God’s faithful servant, if the servant’s goal is to bring faithless Israel to God? Within this text, the servant is somehow both Israel and not.
An Individual as the Servant
Some more reactionary interpreters today insist the messianic interpretation is a uniquely Christian one. While the identification of the servant with the whole nation of Israel is certainly ancient, the interpretation that the servant is a person — not a personification — is also just as ancient, and is found in Judaism both before and after the advent of Christianity.
Targum Isaiah interprets the servant as the Messiah, directly inserting messianic details such as how long Israel waited for the Messiah’s appearance, and the Messiah’s mission to rebuild a glorified temple in Jerusalem.
Isaiah 52–53
Targum Isaiah
See, my servant shall prosper; he shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high.
Behold, my servant the Messiah shall prosper. He shall be exalted and extolled, and he shall be very strong.
Just as there were many who were astonished at him—so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of mortals
As the house of Israel anxiously hoped for him many days, (which was poor among the nations; their appearance and their brightness being worse than that of the sons of men:)
But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.
He shall build the house of the sanctuary, which has been profaned on account of our sins; his was delivered over on account of our iniquities, and through his doctrine peace shall be multiplied upon us, and through the teaching of his words our sins shall be forgiven us.
A major figure throughout Deutero-Isaiah, named directly in the text, is Cyrus. The Persian king conquered Babylon in 538 BCE, and soon after released the Judean exiles from their punishment. Cyrus’ historical influence is felt throughout Deutero-Isaiah (41.1–7, 21–29; 43.14; 44.24–45.7; 46.11; and 48.14–16),
There are differing ideas about how Deutero presents Cyrus. While calling him a ‘Messiah’ who fulfills God’s will is certainly an exalted position to be in, there is also some overlap in the language used to describe the servant and Cyrus.
Some scholars argue that the Judean king Josiah stands in the background of the servant songs. When Josiah became king of Judah, a scroll containing God’s law was allegedly discovered in the temple. This led to major, monotheizing reforms throughout the kingdom. (It is commonly thought that this scroll was an early version of Deuteronomy, newly written under Josiah as a way to reshape and unify his kingdom.) This led to a propagandizing campaign to elevate Josiah as the greatest king since David himself (e.g. 2 Kings 22.2; 23.25). When Josiah was suddenly killed in battle, pierced by arrows in the valley of Megiddo, the kingdom was confronted with the question: ‘why was the righteous king rejected by YHWH’?
For Jeremiah, Josiah’s unexpected death meant that YHWH was not yet finished bringing judgment to the nation, that is, Judah would also experience judgment like northern Israel before any promised restoration of all Israel could take place.35
An answer that justified Josiah’s death without completely reevaluating his moral character would be that his death was a vicarious one: though a just king, he bore the punishment due for the sins of his predecessor Manasseh.
2 Kings 23
Before him there was no king like him, who turned to Yhwh with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; nor did any like him arise after him. Still Yhwh did not turn from the fierceness of his great wrath, by which his anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked him.
The concept of vicarious punishment was not universally accepted by the Hebrew Bible’s authors. Ezekiel, for example, flatly condemns such a notion (18.20). But there are still places where we find the idea, including punishment inflicted on multiple generations (Exo 20.5; 34.7; Num 14.18; Deut 5.9).
Ezekiel 4.4–6
Then lie on your left side, and place the punishment of the house of Israel upon it; you shall bear their punishment for the number of the days that you lie there. For I assign to you a number of days, three hundred and ninety days, equal to the number of the years of their punishment; and so you shall bear the punishment of the house of Israel. When you have completed these, you shall lie down a second time, but on your right side, and bear the punishment of the house of Judah; forty days I assign you, one day for each year.
The fourth servant song even appears to borrow from other texts where good people suffer (Isa 53.3 from Psa 22.7; 53.7–9 from Jer 11.19).
After Josiah’s death, we are told the Judeans wrote songs lamenting him (2 Chr 35.24–25). Ostensibly (it is argued), Josiah’s impact on Judean culture continued even through these laments, shaping language and motifs used by later biblical authors. For example, Zech 12.10–13.1 may owe to this historical event.
There is possibly another person from the Hebrew Bible who stands behind Deutero’s servant figure: Moses.
As noted by G. von Rad, the prominence of the second exodus theme in Deutero-Isaiah invites, if it does not demand, an identification of the servant of the Lord with a second Moses figure.41
This is not a new connection, but one made at least as far back as the Talmud.
b. Soṭa 14a
The Holy One, Blessed be He, said to him [Moses]: Do you seek to enter the land to perform these mitzvot for any reason other than to receive a reward? I will ascribe you credit as if you had performed them and you will receive your reward, as it is stated: “Therefore will I divide him a portion among the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the mighty; because he bared his soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors”
Mentioned earlier, Deutero-Isaiah is popularly recognized as building the theme of a ‘new exodus’: God’s people are held in bondage in a foreign land, but they will soon be delivered, protected by God on the journey to the land promised to their ancestors and led by God’s servant. It would only be natural to compare Deutero’s servant figure with Moses. There are some interesting parallels between the four servant songs and the Torah, suggesting a conscious literary reflection on the book traditionally attributed to Moses:
- The first song: contains a cluster of terms from Gen 1 (create, firmament, earth, bring forth); builds the theme of Yhwh’s name, lifted from Exo 3; uses the verb ‘bring out’ three times, lifted from its three uses in Exo 3.10,11,12
- The second song: takes the verb ‘send’ from Exo 3.10,13–15; uses ‘my commandments’ based on Exo 20; also uses the verb ‘bring out’ which is repeated in Exodus; alludes to Moses drawing water from rocks
- The third song: highlights the servant’s role as teacher, based on Moses’ role as teacher in Deut 1.5; 4.1,5,14; 5.31; 6.1
- The fourth song: interprets Moses’ death in Deut 34, such as his burial in Moab (criminals)
Why doesn’t Deutero just identify the servant as Moses by name? Because Moses, insisting on receiving the punishment due to Israel, requested that God strike out his name from ‘the book you have written’ because of his Israel’s sins in the wilderness (Exo 32.32). This is hinted at in Isa 48.19.
An identification of the servant with a second Moses figure provides a ready solution for the problem of the corporate vs. individual identity of the servant figure. At Israel’s own request, Moses was the representative of his people (Ex. 20:18–19).44
Aside from Cyrus, Josiah, or Moses, there have been a variety of proposed identities for this individual servant: Hezekiah, Jehoiachin, Jeremiah, Joshua, Uzziah, Zerubbabel, or even the anonymous author himself.
An Ideal as the Servant
A remaining solution to our problem is the possibility that Deutero-Isaiah contains two servants whose identities are interrelated. Under the argument that all of Deutero-Isaiah comes from a single author, positing two servants whose identities are intertwined may be the only way to account for Isa 49’s identification of the servant as both Israel and the agent of Israel’s learning and liberation.
Despite Israel being identified as God’s ‘servant’ outside of the suffering servant songs, the author’s evaluation of each Israel and the suffering servant is different. The suffering servant faces opposition, but remains faithful to God even to death. The servant Israel doubts (40.27), and is unobservant and ignorant (42.18–20). The servant Israel is pictured more negatively than the suffering servant.
This is further seen in the fourth servant song. Isa 52.13–53.12 can be divided into smaller units, with the speaking voice changing between them.
Isaiah 52–53
Comments
The speaker (‘my’) is God. He declares that he will exalt his servant, which will shock the nations because of how lowly the servant appeared to be, and how severe his suffering was.
The speaker (‘we’) reiterates the point in the first unit. If this speaker is the nations, then the ‘others’ who ‘despised and rejected’ the servant would be Israel. Or, this is Israel looking upon the servant, and the ‘others’ are the nations that were ‘astonished at’ the servant in the first unit.
The speaker (‘we’) recounts how the servant appeared to be punished by God, but was actually suffering their punishment vicariously. This speaker most naturally reads as Israel; it makes more sense for them to be the ones who ‘have gone astray’, unlike the nations, which were always outside of God’s ‘flock’. If the speaker in the second unit was Israel, this third unit continues the second.
The text I’ve provided here adapts the NRSV, with pronouns adjusted based on variants found in the Masoretic Text, 1QIsa
The speaker in the final unit is again God. Nothing substantially new is given here, only a reiteration of what has already been said about the servant.
In Deutero-Isaiah’s historical context — the Babylonian exile nearing its end — identifying the servant as a personification of all Israel would lead us to see this song as a theological interpretation of the exile: the nations thought God was punishing Israel with the exile, but Israel was instead redeeming the nations through their own suffering, and Israel’s reward in the end was God restoring the nation after Babylon’s conquest by Cyrus of Persia. Yet the fourth unit of this fourth servant song mentions ‘his people’ alongside the servant himself. This statement is a strong indication that the servant and Israel are distinct; he is a member of a people-group, and he suffers for them. In the end, God will reward the servant for his selfless act.
The contrast between Deutero-Isaiah’s ‘blind and deaf’ servant Israel on the one hand and the painfully obedient servant of the four servant songs on the other hand, as well as the references to the servant interacting with Israel, has led several scholars to interpret the suffering servant as an ideal. In this view, the servant is a personification, but not of the entire nation of Israel. Instead, the servant represents ‘the steadfastly righteous minority’,
Conclusion
I find the Josiah and Moses interpretations somewhat dubious when it comes to their details. However, contrary to some claims that there are no parallels to vicarious suffering in the Hebrew Bible,
Reading the suffering servant as the personification of an ‘ideal Israel’, I think, makes good sense of both Deutero-Isaiah’s overall purpose and its finer details. The author was addressing the exiles who were about to be freed. They were exiled for their ancestor’s sins, but they will return to their homeland in a new exodus, so now is the time to fulfill their role as God’s servant, a light to the nations. And within this message he acknowledges their past failures, giving them a teacher to listen to: the embodiment of Israel’s potential will serve to lead the historical Israel into the future. Their identities were intertwined in the text because the ‘loyal’ and ‘active’ suffering servant is what Deutero-Isaiah thought the ‘disloyal’ and ‘passive’ nation of Israel needed to become.
While we may never completely understand how Deutero-Isaiah came to be written, or what the author intended to mean with his internally conflicting ideas about God’s ‘servant’, the view that the servant songs depict a personified ‘ideal Israel’ is appealing to me.
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