Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Who was the Suffering Servant of Isaiah? Chapter 53 by Bart Ehrman here's another post on the Hebrew Bible from The blog in 2012 written while I was first working on the first edition of my Bible introduction.
[00:00:16] It's an excerpt from my rough first draft of a discussion of an unusually important passage in the Book of Isaiah.
[00:00:23] Brief Context at this point I was discussing second Isaiah, so that's Isaiah chapters 40 to 55, almost universally thought by scholars to be written by a different author from chapters one to 39, which themselves were written by Isaiah of Jerusalem in the 8th century BCE.
[00:00:41] Second Isaiah was written after the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem, including the temple in 586bce, while the leaders of the people and many of the elites had been taken off into exile in Babylon in what's known as the Babylonian Captivity.
[00:00:57] No passage of second Isaiah has intrigued readers and interpreters, especially among Christians, more than the four passages that are dedicated to describing a figure known as the suffering servant.
[00:01:09] Some scholars have called these passages songs or songs of the suffering servants. The passages are Isaiah, chapter 42, verses 1 to 4, chapter 49, verses 1 to 6, chapter 50, verses 4 to 11, and chapter 52, verse 13 to chapter 53, verse 12.
[00:01:30] It's not known whether the author of 2 Isaiah has inherited these passages from an earlier tradition that he's incorporated into his book, or if they are his own creation.
[00:01:40] In these passages, the servant of Yahweh is said to have suffered horribly for the sake of others, but God will vindicate him. He is in fact the delight of Yahweh, and will be used by him to accomplish his will on earth.
[00:01:52] I have put my spirit upon him he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not grow faint or be crushed, until he has established justice in the earth.
[00:02:01] That's Isaiah 42:1 6.
[00:02:06] The author believes that this unnamed servant shall prosper he shall be exalted and lifted up. That's Isaiah 52:13.
[00:02:14] But most important, impressive and well known comments involve his horrible sufferings for the sake of others.
[00:02:21] The reason this has been of such importance to Christian interpreters is that since the times of the New Testament, Christian readers have thought that Isaiah was describing the crucifixion of Jesus for the sins of the world.
[00:02:33] He was despised and rejected by others, a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity and as one from whom others hide their faces. He was despised, and with him of no account. Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases.
[00:02:49] Yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God and afflicted 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.
[00:03:04] We all, like sheep, have gone astray we all have turned away to our own way, and the Lord has lain on him the iniquity of us all. That's Isaiah, chapter 53, verses 3 to 6.
[00:03:17] The author goes on to say that he was silent before his oppressors, that he was cut off from the land of the living, that he made his tomb with the rich, and that it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain.
[00:03:28] Doesn't that sound exactly like Jesus?
[00:03:31] Isn't this a prophecy about what would happen to the Messiah?
[00:03:35] In response to that common Christian interpretation, several important points are to be made.
[00:03:42] Number one, it has to be remembered that the prophets of the Hebrew Bible are not predicting things that are to happen hundreds of years in advance.
[00:03:51] They are speaking to their own contexts, and they're delivering a message for their own people to hear about their own immediate futures.
[00:04:00] In this case, the author is not predicting that someone will suffer in the future for other people's sins at all.
[00:04:07] Many readers fail to consider the verb tenses in these passages. They do not indicate that someone will come along at a later time and suffer in the future. They are talking about past suffering.
[00:04:18] The servant has already suffered, although he will be vindicated.
[00:04:24] And so this is not about a future suffering Messiah.
[00:04:28] In fact, it's not about a Messiah at all.
[00:04:32] This this is a point frequently overlooked in discussions of the passage.
[00:04:36] If you will look, you will notice that the term Messiah never occurs in the passage. This is not predicting what the Messiah will be.
[00:04:46] If the passage is not referring to the Messiah and is not referring to someone in the future who is going to suffer, then who is it talking about?
[00:04:55] Here there really should be very little ambiguity.
[00:04:59] As I mentioned, this particular passage, Isaiah chapter 53 is one of four servant songs of second Isaiah.
[00:05:06] And so the question is, who does second Isaiah himself indicate that the servant is?
[00:05:11] A careful reading of the passages makes the identification quite clear.
[00:05:16] But now hear, O Jacob, my servant Israel, whom I have chosen. That's Isaiah 44:1.
[00:05:23] Remember these things, O Jacob and Israel, for you are my servants.
[00:05:27] Isaiah 44:21 and he said to me, you are my servant Israel, in whom I will be glorified. That's Isaiah 49. 3.
[00:05:40] The book of second Isaiah itself indicates who the servant of the Lord is. It is Israel, God's people. In Isaiah 53 when the author describes the servants past sufferings, he is talking about the sufferings they have experienced by being destroyed by the Babylonians.
[00:05:57] This is a suffering that has come about because of sins. But the suffering will be vindicated because God will now restore Israel and bring them back to the land and enter into a new relationship with them.
[00:06:09] It may be fairly objected that the servant is said to suffer for our sins, not his sins.
[00:06:14] Scholars have resolved that problem in a number of ways.
[00:06:17] It may be that the author is thinking that the portion of the people taken into exile have suffered for the sins of those in the land. Some of them taking suffering for the sins of all those who have been taken into captivity, have suffered displacement and loss and exile for the sake of everyone else. But now the servant Israel will be exalted and restored to a close relationship with God and used by him to bring about justice throughout the earth.
[00:06:45] There may be problems with this interpretation, as there always are with every interpretation, but the facts remain that the suffering servant is never described as the Messiah. His suffering is portrayed as past instead of future, and he is explicitly identified on several occasions as Israel.
