Hebrew religious poetry is supreme in world literature for its beauty, depth, and moral elevation. In words of epic majesty, the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, considered by many the greatest passage in the Old Testament, presents a picture of the suffering Servant of the Lord. Nowhere does the Old Testament contain a more poignant story. The poem fills us with wonder. This Servant holds the key to the greatest moral problem facing man, and his accomplished work in its solution is the challenge of the ages.
The Servant is introduced in the fifty-second chapter, verses 13 to 15:
Behold, my servant prospereth;
He is highly lifted up and greatly exalted.
As many at first were appalled at him—
His visage marred beyond men’s,
His form beyond sons’ of men—,
So doth he startle great nations;
Before him kings keep silence,
Seeing what they never were told,
Perceiving what they never heard.
Then follow the 12 verses of the fifty-third chapter, at once presenting this challenging question: “Who is the Servant?” Scholars have advanced two main theories: 1. that he represents the people of Israel, 2. that he is an unknown individual.
SOURCE OF THE CHALLENGE
What picture does the passage give of the Servant?
1. He is portrayed in detailed features as a human personality.
2. He is an innocent sufferer (vv. 9, 12).
3. He is a voluntary sufferer (v. 7).
4. He is an obedient, humble, and silent sufferer (v. 7).
5. His suffering springs from love for sinners, including his executioners, who act in ignorance (vv. 4, 7, 12).
6. His suffering is ordained by God in love, and fulfills the divine intentional will and purpose (v. 10).
7. His suffering is vicarious, that is, substitutionary (vv. 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12).
8. His suffering is redemptive and spiritual in nature (vv. 5, 11).
9. His suffering ends in death (vv. 8, 10, 12).
10. His death gives way to resurrection (vv. 10, 11).
11. His atoning work leads the straying people to confession and repentance (vv. 4–6).
12. His redemptive work, in which suffering, humiliation, and death are central, inaugurates a life of victory and sublime exaltation (52:13, 15; 53:12).
Can these characteristics be said to designate Israel—viewed historically, or spiritually, or ideally?
1. Could Israel have been personified in poetic language lacking any hint of allegory? Nowhere in Scripture is personification maintained throughout a whole chapter without some distinct suggestion of the meaning of the allegory. Even so liberal a scholar as Bernhard Duhm says: “The Servant of Yahveh is here treated even more individualistically than in the other (Servant) songs, and the interpretation of his person as referring to the actual, or the ‘true,’ Israel is here altogether absurd.”
2. Was Israel as a nation an innocent sufferer? The words in verse 8, “Stricken to death for my people’s rebellion,” make the application to Israel as the Servant untenable, since “my people’s” clearly indicates Israel, and, if the Servant be the actual nation, how can he be stricken for Israel? In Isaiah 1:4, the prophet speaks of Israel as “a sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers,” while in chapter 42 he states that Israel’s affliction is God’s judgment for the nation’s sins.
3. Was Israel a voluntary sufferer? Never did the Jews voluntarily go into captivity; each exile was the result of a humiliating national defeat.
4. Was Israel an obedient, humble, and silent sufferer? George Adam Smith has well observed: “Now silence under suffering is a strange thing in the Old Testament—a thing absolutely new. No other Old Testament personage could stay dumb under pain, but immediately broke into one of two voices—voice of guilt, or voice of doubt. In the Old Testament the sufferer is always either confessing his guilt to God, or, when he feels no guilt, challenging God in argument.”
No sooner was Israel released from Egyptian bondage than she rebelled against privation in the wilderness. The subjugation of Jerusalem by Titus in A.D. 70 was one of the most stubbornly contested sieges in all human history. At various times the Jewish people revolted against their Persian, Syrian, Roman, and Moslem oppressors.
5. Has Israel suffered in love? Since Israel’s suffering was neither innocent, nor voluntary, nor silent, it consequently was not “suffering love.”
6. Was the suffering of Israel divinely ordained in love? Israel’s suffering is the consequence of her transgression, and not of a divine plan and divine love (Deut. 28:62–68; Isa. 40:2).
7. Has Israel suffered for other nations? Nowhere in the Old Testament, or in early rabbinic literature, is this question answered in the affirmative. Yet the idea of substitutionary suffering and atonement has a prominent place in the chapter, being expressed no less than 20 times in 8 out of 12 verses (vv. 4–8, 10–12).
8. Have the sufferings of Israel brought redemption to the world? The sin of man is too great, the holiness of God too sublime, for man to be able to redeem himself, far less others. Scripture nowhere teaches that Israel will be redeemed by her own suffering, far less that she will redeem other nations, and especially not that she will redeem them from the power of sin. Nor does it indicate that a few righteous individuals will redeem either Israel or other nations. Israel’s sufferings not only failed to justify her oppressors but, as history well attests, led to their punishment. Nazi Germany is a case in point. Since Israel’s sufferings have never been voluntary, they could have no intrinsic moral value and no redemptive power.
9. Have the sufferings of Israel ended in death? The Jewish people present a striking exception to the usual course of national development and decline. Every nation that played its role contemporaneously with Israel on the stage of Old Testament history has long since passed into oblivion. But the survival of the Jews is unique, defying fundamental laws observed in the history of nations. In spite of exile, dispersion, attempts at forcible assimilation, persecution—in spite of liberation and toleration, often more disintegrating than persecution—Israel still maintains her racial identity.
10. Has Israel experienced a resurrection? Since neither the ideal nor the historic Israel died, there was naturally no resurrection of the nation.
11. Has Israel’s suffering produced a moral transformation in the nations and caused them to break down in a confession of guilt? The history of the world answers this in the negative. Throughout the ages nations which oppressed Israel were never known to show the attitude expressed in the chapter where a prominent place is given to confession and repentance.
12. Has the humiliation of Israel resulted in glorification? Even if death could be taken as a figure for the exile, the restoration thereafter did not lift Israel from extreme humiliation to sublime exaltation. Neither did Israel win many followers among the nations. It must be noted that the missionary zeal of the Jewish people died out in the early years of the Christian era, when they no longer took an interest in winning converts among the Gentiles. The ancient Khazars, prominent among the secondary powers of the Byzantine state system, present an exception. When the Jews were expelled from Constantinople, they carried on missionary activity among them and succeeded in converting the Khazars to Judaism (c. 740).
For Israel to fit into the prophetic picture of a state of pre-eminence, “He is highly lifted up and greatly exalted.… Before him kings keep silence,” three things must be true:
a. Israel must have made a conscious voluntary atonement—an atonement accepted by men as well as by God—bringing redemption to the world.
b. As a result of this atonement, “because his life he poured out unto death,” Israel must have attained a position of great power and glory in the world.
c. Israel must have made intercession for the transgressors.
Not one of the three is true of Israel, either the real, spiritual, or the ideal.
The corporate theory, which identifies the Servant as Israel, while generally accepted by Judaism, has by no means excluded the individual theory.
Strong voices have been raised in support of the view that the Servant is the Messiah. As is evidenced from rabbinic literature, including the prayers of the synagogue, the Old Synagogue was aware of the fact that the prophet is speaking of a person of transcendent influence, who morally and spiritually ranks above any other character in the Old Testament, and it applied the passage to the Messiah.
August Wünsche, in his book Die Leiden des Messias, made a laborious compilation of extracts from old rabbinical writings from which the conclusion may be drawn that the conception of a suffering Messiah was by no means foreign to the Old Synagogue.
The renowned scholar Emil Schürer makes a similar inference:
It is indisputable that in the second century after Christ, at least in certain circles of Jewry, there was familiarity with the idea of a Messiah who was to suffer, even suffer vicariously, for human sin. The portrayal of Justin makes it sure that Jewish scholars, through disputations with Christians, saw themselves forced to this concession. Thus an idea was applied to the Messiah which was familiar to rabbinic Judaism, that is, that the righteous man not only observes all the laws but through suffering also atones for sins that may have been committed, and that the surplus suffering of the righteous benefits others.
The Targum Yonathan (first century), a paraphrase of the prophets, recognized in Babylonia as early as the third century and generally acknowledged as ancient authority a century later, opens up the prophecy (Isa. 52:13–53:12) thus: “Behold, my Servant, the Messiah, prospereth.” It shows striking inconsistencies, no doubt, because of later emendations, in applying some portions of the passage—the glory—to the Messiah, and other portions—the suffering—to Israel, but nevertheless it leaves no doubt that the Messiah gives his life for the redemption of Israel.
Midrash Cohen, Midrash Rabbah of Rabbi Mosheh Haddarshan, and other midrashim identify the Servant as Messiah.
The Musaph service for the Day of Atonement contains a remarkable ancient prayer:
Messiah our Righteousness has departed from us. Horror has seized us; for there is none to justify us. He bears our sins and the yoke of our iniquities, and is pierced for our transgressions. He bears our guilt on his shoulders, that he may win forgiveness of our sins. He is wounded for our salvation. O, Eternal One, it is time that Thou shouldest create him anew! O, bring him up from the terrestrial sphere. Raise him up from the land of Seir, to assemble us on Mount Lebanon, a second time, by the power of Yinnon!
The celebrated Raymund Martin, in his work Pugio Fidei (c. 1278), made many compilations from old rabbinical manuscripts, now either no longer extant or transmitted to us in emended form, the accuracy of which such an authority as the late Professor E. B. Pusey of Oxford does not doubt, in which Isaiah 53 is applied to the Messiah.
Not only in the Old Synagogue but as late as the seventeenth century leading rabbis, in harmony with the Jewish liturgy, applied the chapter to the Messiah. Rabbi Naphtali Ben Asher Altschuler (late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries) states: “I am surprised that Rashi and David Kimhi likewise have not, with the Targum, also applied them (vv. 52:13–53:12) to the Messiah.”
The following is from the pen of Rabbi Altschuler’s contemporary, Rabbi Mosheh Alshech, a disciple of the renowned Rabbi Joseph Caro, author of the Shulhan ‘Aruk: “I may remark, then, that our rabbis with one voice accept and affirm the opinion that the prophet is speaking of the King-Messiah, and we ourselves shall also adhere to the same view.”
But who is this atoning Messiah of whom the prophet is speaking? History knows of no one but Jesus of Nazareth who fulfilled all the predictions of Isaiah 53. Through him God revealed himself and entered the course of human history. Only he was good enough and great enough to effect the atonement for the whole world. Only as we recognize in the aweinspiring delineation his features do the blurring contradictions vanish away. That the suffering Servant presents a perfect picture of Jesus the Messiah is substantiated by the following:
1. He was a historic person (Matt. 2:1).
2. He was an innocent sufferer (John 8:46).
3. He was a voluntary sufferer (John 10:17, 18).
4. He was an obedient, humble, and silent sufferer (Matt. 27:12, 14; Phil. 2:8; 1 Pet. 2:23).
5. His suffering was grounded in love. In Christ is manifested the redeeming and reconciling love of God (John 3:16), in which his atoning work was accomplished. Hence his words from the cross, “Father forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
6. His suffering was the result of a divine plan and fulfills the divine intentional will. God willed the redemption through Jesus Christ according to the eternal purpose of the aeons (Eph. 3:11). It is Christ who will bring this divine plan to its glorious consummation (Matt. 24:30, 31).
7. His suffering was vicarious (1 Pet. 2:24).
8. His suffering was redemptive—a revelation of the arm of the Lord—that is, divine intervention in the course of history, leading to the justification of the evildoers from their iniquities (1 Cor. 1:30; 1 Pet. 1:18, 19).
9. His suffering ended in death (Matt. 27:50).
10. His death gave way to resurrection (1 Cor. 15:4).
11. The redemptive purpose of God, realized in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, will be brought to full fruition at his second coming, when Israel’s national confession and repentance will take place (Zech. 12:10; Rom. 11:25, 26).
12. He ascended to heaven and is now highly exalted, sitting at the right hand of God (John 1:51; Phil. 2:9–11).
Modern scholarship advocates the composite view which regards the Servant simultaneously as Israel and Jesus Christ. This is a mixture of error and truth. The New Testament clearly applies Isaiah 53 to Jesus Christ (Matt. 8:17; Mark 15:28; Luke 22:37; John 12:37, 38; Acts 8:32, 33, 35; Heb. 9:28; 1 Pet. 2:22–25). Truly the Servant is Jesus Christ, and he alone, who suffered and died, and then rose triumphantly to take his exalted place at the right hand of God, as Isaiah predicted:
Behold, my servant prospereth;
He is highly lifted up and greatly exalted.
Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.
