Behold, my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high.
13. my servant shall deal prudently ] A more appropriate rendering is that of R.V. marg. my servant shall prosper, i.e. his career shall be crowned with complete success. The primary idea of the verb used is no doubt “wisdom” (not mere shrewdness, however, rather “insight,” see Gen 3:6; Isa 44:18), but it also includes the success which is the normal result of wise action, and sometimes this secondary idea almost supplants the original meaning (Jos 1:7 f.; 1Sa 18:5; 1Sa 18:14 f. etc.). This sense seems to be required here by the parallelism with the next line, for there is nothing in the whole prophecy to justify us in regarding the Servant’s elevation as the effect of his wisdom. The verse is “a simple prediction of the exaltation awaiting the Servant, in contrast with his past sorrows and abasement” (Davidson).
he shall be exalted and extolled ] or “high and lifted up.” The same combination used of Jehovah in ch. Isa 57:15; of His throne in Isa 6:1.
14, 15 must be read as a single compound sentence. The protasis is the first line of Isa 52:14 (“According as many were astonied at thee”); the corresponding apodosis follows in Isa 52:15 (“so shall he sprinkle &c.”), the intervening clauses being a parenthesis suggested by the word “astonied.”
as many were astonied at thee ] The word “astonied” expresses the blank amazement, mingled with horror, excited in the minds of beholders by the spectacle of the Servant’s unparalleled sufferings (cf. 1Ki 9:8; Jer 2:12; Jer 18:16). It is natural to suppose that the “many” here referred to are the same as the “many nations” who witness the Servant’s subsequent exaltation ( Isa 52:15), but the point is not to be pressed, and on the hypothesis that the Servant is an individual Israelite, the spectators of the Servant’s abasement could hardly be the nations of the world. Instead of “thee” the Targ. and Pesh. seem to have read “him,” thus avoiding an embarrassing change of person. The LXX., on the other hand, preserve the 2nd pers. throughout Isa 52:14. The change of person may no doubt be explained as caused by the parenthesis, but it is awkward nevertheless, and almost misleading, and many commentators prefer to alter the text in accordance with the Targ.
his visage was so marred, &c.] Render:
so marred from that of man was his aspect,
and his form from that of the sons of men
The sentence is inserted parenthetically to explain the repugnance felt by all who beheld the Servant in his former abject condition. The meaning is that he was so disfigured by disease (see ch. Isa 53:3) as to be no longer human in appearance. The word for “marred” is pointed as a noun (not found elsewhere): “a marred object.” A participle ( moshth) would read more naturally after the adverb “so,” although the punctuators must have had some reason for avoiding the more obvious form.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
13 15. Jehovah utters a brief but pregnant announcement of the brilliant destiny in store for His Servant. Known to many in his misfortunes as an object of aversion and contempt, he shall suddenly be revealed in his true dignity; and the unexpected transformation will startle the whole world into astonishment and reverence. The verses form a prelude to ch. 53, being a summary of what is there described in detail; and they indicate what is the main idea of the whole passage, viz. the unexampled contrast between the present (and past) degradation and the future glory of Jehovah’s Servant.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Ch. Isa 52:13 to Isa 53:12. The Servant’s Sacrifice and His Reward
This is the last and greatest, as well as the most difficult, of the four delineations of the Servant of Jehovah, and in several respects occupies a place apart. In the previous passages the Servant has been described as the ideal prophet or teacher, conscious of a world-wide mission in the service of God, which he prosecutes amid discouragement and persecution with inflexible purpose and the unfaltering assurance of ultimate success. There has been no hint that his activity was interrupted by death. Here the presentation is quite different. The conception of the Prophet is all but displaced by that of the Man of Sorrows, the meek and patient martyr, the sin-bearer. The passage is partly retrospective and partly prophetic. In so far as it is a retrospect there is no allusion to the prophetic activity of the servant; it is only after he has been raised from the dead that he is to assume the function of the great religious guide and authority of the world. But the most striking feature of the passage is the unparalleled sufferings of the Servant, and the effect they produce on the minds of his contemporaries. The tragedy of which they have been spectators makes an impression far more profound and convincing than any direct teaching could have done, compelling them to recognise the mission of the Servant, and at the same time producing penitence and confession of their own sin. The whole conception here given of the Servant of the Lord makes the prophecy the most remarkable anticipation in the Old Testament of the “sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.”
The passage may be divided into three parts:
(1) An introduction, briefly stating the import of all that follows, the coming exaltation of the Servant in contrast to his past abasement (Isa 52:13-15).
(2) A historical review of the Servant’s career, as he had appeared to his contemporaries in the days of his humiliation (Isa 53:1-9).
(3) An announcement of the glorious future and the astonishing success in store for him as the reward of his obedience unto death ( Isa 52:10-12).
The middle section may be further subdivided into three strophes, yielding an arrangement (recognised by most commentators) of the whole in five strophes of three verses each.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Notes on Isa 52:13-15 and Isa 53:1-12
The most important portion of Isaiah, and of the Old Testament, commences here, and here should have been the beginning of a new chapter. It is the description of the suffering Messiah, and is continued to the close of the next chapter. As the closing verses of this chapter are connected with the following chapter, and as it is of great importance to have just views of the design of this portion of Isaiah, it is proper in this place to give an analysis of this part of the prophecy. And as no other part of the Bible has excited so much the attention of the friends and foes of Christianity; as so various and conflicting views have prevailed in regard to its meaning: and as the proper interpretation of the passage must have an important bearing on the controversy with Jews and infidels, and on the practical views of Christians, I shall be justified in going into an examination of its meaning at considerably greater length than has been deemed necessary in other portions of the prophecy. It may be remarked in general:
(1) That if the common interpretation of the passage, as describing a suffering Saviour, be correct, then it settles the controversy with the Jews, and demonstrates that their notions of the Messiah are false.
(2) If this was written at the time when it is claimed by Christians to have been written, then it settles the controversy with infidels. The description is so particular and minute; the correspondence with the life, the character, and the death of the Lord Jesus, is so complete, that it could not have been the result of conjecture or accident. At the same time, it is a correspondence which could not have been brought about by an impostor who meant to avail himself of this ancient prophecy to promote his designs, for a large portion of the circumstances are such as did not depend on himself, but grew out of the feelings and purposes of others. On the supposition that this had been found as an ancient prophecy, it would have been impossible for any impostor so to have shaped the course of events as to have made his character and life appear to be a fulfillment of it. And unless the infidel could either make it out that this prophecy was not in existence, or that, being in existence, it was possible for a deceiver to create an exact coincidence between it and his life and character and death, then, in all honesty, he should admit that it was given by inspiration, and that the Bible is true.
(3) A correct exposition of this will be of inestimable value in giving to the Christian just views of the atonement, and of the whole doctrine of redemption. Probably in no portion of the Bible of the same length, not even in the New Testament, is there to be found so clear an exhibition of the purpose for which the Saviour died. I shall endeavor, therefore, to prepare the way for an exposition of the passage, by a consideration of several points that are necessary to a correct understanding of it.
Section 1. Evidence that It was Written Before
The Birth of Jesus of Nazareth
On this point there will be, and can be, no dispute among Jews and Christians. The general argument to prove this, is the same as that which demonstrates that Isaiah wrote at all before that time. For a view of this, the reader is referred to the Introduction. But this general argument may be presented in a more specific form, and includes the following particulars:
(1) It is quoted in the New Testament as part of the prophetic writings then well known (see Mat 8:17; Joh 12:38; Act 8:28-35; Rom 10:16; 1Pe 2:21-25). That the passage was in existence at the time when the New Testament was written, is manifest from these quotations. So far as the argument with the infidel is concerned, it is immaterial whether it was written 700 years before the events took place, or only fifty, or ten. It would still be prophecy, and it would still be incumbent on him to show how it came to be so accurately accomplished.
(2) It is quoted and translated by writers who undoubtedly lived before the Christian era. Thus, it is found in the Septuagint, and in the Chaldee – both of which can be demonstrated to have been made before Christ was born.
(3) There is not the slightest evidence that it has been interpolated or corrupted, or changed so as to adapt it to the Lord Jesus. It is the same in all copies, and in all versions.
(4) It has never even been pretended that it has been introduced for the purpose of furnishing an argument for the truth of Christianity. No infidel has ever pretended that it does not stand on the same footing as any other portion of Isaiah.
(5) It is such a passage as Jews would not have forged. It is opposed to all their prevailing notions of the Messiah. They have anticipated a magnificent temporal prince and a conqueror: and one of the main reasons why they have rejected the Lord Jesus has been, that he was obscure in his origin, poor, despised, and put to death; in other words, because be has corresponded so entirely with the description here. No passage of the Old Testament has ever given them greater perplexity than this, and it is morally certain that if the Jews had ever forged a pretended prophecy of the Messiah, it would not have been in the language of this portion of Isaiah. They would have described him as the magnificent successor of David and Solomon; as a mighty prince and a warrior; as the head of universal empire, and would have said that by his victorious arms he would subdue the earth to himself, and would make Jerusalem the capital of the world. They never would have described him as despised and rejected by people, and as making his grave with the wicked in his death.
(6) Christians could not have forged and interpolated this. The Jews have always jealously guarded their own Scriptures; and nothing would have so certainly excited their attention as an attempt to interpolate a passage like this, furnishing at once an irrefragable argument against their opinions of the Messiah, and so obviously applicable to Jesus of Nazareth. It is, moreover, true, that no Jewish writer has ever pretended that the passage has either been forged, or changed in any way, so as to accommodate it to the opinions of Christians respecting the Messiah. These remarks may seem to be unnecessary, and this argument useless, to those who have examined the authenticity of the sacred writings. They are of use only in the argument with the enemies of Christianity. For, if this passage was written at the time when it is supposed to have been, and if it had reference to the Lord Jesus, then it demonstrates that Isaiah was inspired, and furnishes an argument for the truth of revelation which is irrefragable. It is incumbent on the unbeliever to destroy all the alleged proofs that it was written by Isaiah, or, as an honest man, he should admit the truth of inspiration and of prophecy, and yield his heart to the influence of the truth of the Bible. In general, it may be observed, that an attempt to destroy the credibility of this portion of Isaiah as having been written several hundred years before the Christian era, would destroy the credibility of all the ancient writings; and that we have as much evidence that this is the production of Isaiah, as we have of the credibility or the authenticity of the writings of Homer or Herodotus.
Section 2. History of the Interpretation of the Passage by the Jews
In order to a clear understanding of the passage, it is proper to give a summary view of the modes of interpretation which have prevailed in regard to it both among Jews and Christians. For this historical view, I am indebted mainly to Hengstenberg, Chris. i. p. 484ff. The several opinions which have prevailed among the Jewish expositors are the following:
There is the fullest evidence that the passage was applied by the early Jews, both before and after the birth of Jesus, to the Messiah, until they were pressed by its application to Jesus of Nazareth, and were compelled ill self-defense to adopt some other mode of interpretation; and even after that, it is evident, also, that not a few of the better and more pious portion of the Jewish nation still continued to regard it as descriptive of the Messiah. So obvious is the application to the Messiah, so clear and full is the description, that many of them have adopted the opinion that there would be two Messiahs, one a suffering Messiah, and the other a glorious and triumphant prince and conqueror. The Old Testament plainly foretold that the Messiah would be God and man; exalted and debased; master and servant; priest and victim; prince and subject; involved in death, and yet a victor over death; rich and poor; a king, a conqueror, glorious; a man of griefs, exposed to infirmities, unknown, and in a state of abjection and humiliation. (Calmet.) All these apparently contradictory qualities bad their fulfillment in the person of Jesus of Nazareth; but they were the source of great difficulty to the Jews, and have led to the great variety of opinions which have prevailed among them in regard to him.
In the Lord Jesus they harmonize; but when the Jews resolved to reject him, they were at once thrown into endless embarrassment in regard to the character, coming, and work of him whom they had so long expected. The following extract from Calmet (Dictionary) will explain some of the modern prevailing views of him, and is neeessary to a clear understanding of the grounds which have been taken in the interpretation of this prophecy: Some of them, as the famous Hillel, who lived, according to the Jews, before Christ, maintain that the Messiah was already come in the person of Hezekiah; others, that the belief of the coming of the Messiah is no article of faith. Buxtorf says, that the greater part of the modern rabbis believe that the Messiah has been come a good while, but keeps himself concealed in some part of the world or other, and will not manifest himself, because of the sins of the Jews. Jarchi affirms, that the Hebrews believe that the Messiah was born on the day of the last destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. Some assign him the terrestrial paradise for his habitation; others the city of Rome, where, according to the Talmudists, he keeps himself concealed among the leprous and infirm, at the gate of the city, expecting Elias to come and manifest him.
A great number believe that he is yet to come, but they are strangely divided about the time and the circumstances of his coming. Some expect him at the end of 6000 years. Kimchi, who lived in the twelfth century, believed that the coming of the Messiah was very near. Some have fixed the time of the end of their misfortunes to a.d. 1492, others to 1598, others to 1600, others yet later. Last of all, tired out with these uncertainties, they have pronounced an anathema against any who shall pretend to calculate the time of the coming of the Messiah.
It is capable, however, of clear demonstration, that the ancient Jews, before the birth of Jesus, were not thus embarrassed in the interpretation of their own prophets. The following extracts from their writings will show that the opinion early prevailed that the passage before us had reference to the Messiah, and that they had to some extent right views of him. Even by the later Jewish interpreters who give a different exposition of the prophecy, it is admitted that it was formerly referred to the Messiah. This is admitted by Aben Ezra, Jarchi, Abarbanel, and Moses Nachmanides. Among the testimonies of the ancient Jews are the following: The Chaldee Paraphrast, Jonathan, expressly refers it to the Messiah. Thus, in Isa 52:13, he renders the first member, Behold, my servant the Messiah shall prosper. Thus, in the Medrasch Tanchuma (an old commentary on the Pentateuch), on the words Behold, my servant shall prosper, it is remarked, This is the king Messiah, who is high, and lifted up, and very exalted, higher than Abraham, exalted above Moses, higher than the ministering angels. Similar is the language of rabbi Moses Haddarschan on Gen 1:3 : Yahweh spake: Messiah, my righteous one, those who are concealed with thee, will be such that their sins will bring a heavy yoke upon thee. The Messiah answered: Lord of the world, I cheerfully take upon myself those plagues and sorrows. Immediately, therefore, the Messiah took upon himself, out of love, all torments and sufferings, as it is written in Isa 53:1-12, He was abused and oppressed. Many other passages may be seen collected by Hengstenberg, Chris. i. 485, 486.
But this interpretation was abandoned by the Jewish interpreters when the passage was urged against them by Christians as demonstrating that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, and when they could not reconcile it with their prevailing notions that the Messiah was to be a magnificent temporal prince. Gesenius asserts that the later Jews, no doubt, relinquished this interpretation in consequence of their controversy with Christians. The Jews early formed the opinion that the Messiah was to be a king like David and Solomon, and was to be distinguished as a conqueror. They, therefore looked exclusively at the passages of the Old Testament which spoke of his exaltation, and they were rendered averse to applying a passage like this to him, which spoke of his poverty, rejection, humiliation, and death. They did not or would not, understand how passages apparently so contradictory, could be applied to the same individual; and they therefore fixed their attention on those which predicted his exaltation and majesty, and rejected the idea that the Messiah would be a sufferer. So long as they applied this portion of Isaiah to the Messiah, they could not deny that there was a remarkable correspondence between it and Jesus of Nazareth, and they were unable to meet the force of the argument thence derived in favor of his claims to the Messiahsip. It became necessary, therefore, for the Jews to seek some other explanation of the passage, and to deny that it had reference to the Messiah. Accordingly, the great effort of the Jewish interpreters has been to ascertain to whom the passage can be made, with any show of probability, to apply. The great mass agree that it is not to be applied to the Messiah, and this is now the prevailing opinion among them.
Among the more modern Jewish expositors who agree that the passage is not to be applied to the Messiah, the following opinions have prevailed:
1. The most commonly received opinion is, that it refers to the Jewish people. This is the opinion of Jarchi, Aben Ezra, Kimchi, Abarbancl, and Lipmann. According to them, the prophecy describes the condition of the Jews in their present calamity and exile; the firmness with which they endure it for the honor of God, and resist every temptation to forsake his law and worship; and the prosperity honor and glory which they shall obtain in the time of their redemption. In Isa 53:1-10, the pagan are regarded as speaking, and making an humble and penitential confession that they have hitherto mistaken the people of God, and unjustly despised them on account of their sufferings, since it now appears front their exaltation that those sufferings have not been inflicted on them on account of their sins.
2. Others take the appellation, salvation of Yahweh, in the passage, to mean, the pious portion of the nation taken collectively, and regarded as making a kind of vicarious satisfaction for the ungodly. This class of interpreters among the Jews, however, has been small. They refer it to those among them who endure much affliction and suffering, but more especially to those who are publicly put to death. They mention particularly rabbi Akiba as one who suffered martyrdom in this manner. This interpretation retains, indeed, the essential idea of substitution Which runs through the passage, and it is not improbable that it is on this account that it has found so little favor with the modern Jews, since they reject with abhorrence the whole doctrine of vicarious sufferings as designed to make an atonement for others.
3. A few others among the Jews make the passage refer to an individual. Abarbanel, besides supposing that it refers to the Jewish people in general, suggests also that it may refer particularly to Isaiah. rabbi Saddias Haggaon explained the whole as referring to Jeremiah. Still the passage is so plain in its general meaning, the reference to the Messiah is so obvious, that the rabbis have not been able, with all their ingenuity, to propose an interpretation that shall be entirely satisfactory to their nation. It has probably been the means of the conversion of more Jews from the errors of their system to Christianity, than any other portion of their Scriptures. We know that, as it was explained and applied by Philip, it was the means of the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch Act 8:27-40. And so Jo. Isaac Levita, a learned Jew, says it was the means of first leading him to the Christian religion. I frankly confess, says he, that this chapter first conducted me to the Christian faith. For more than a thousand times I read this chapter, and accurately compared it with many translations, I found that it contained a hundred more mysteries respecting Christ, than are found in any version. Many similar instances occur, says Hengstenberg, in the reports of Missionaries among the Jews.
Section 3. History of the Interpretation of the Passage by Christians
For seventeen centuries the view which was taken of this passage was uniform. By all the fathers of the Christian church it was regarded as having an indisputable reference to Christ. In their arguments with the Jews, it was quoted as containing a full refutation of their opinions respecting the Messiah, and as demonstrating that Jesus of Nazareth was he who had been so long announced by the prophets as he who was to come. In their arguments with infidels, it was a strong proof to which they appealed of the truth of revelation; and in their homilies and expositions it was referred uniformly to the Lord Jesus. If we except Grotius, who supposed that it referred to Jeremiah, who, he says (note at Isa 52:13), was figura Christi – the type of the Messiah – it was not until the last quarter of the sixteenth century that this interpretation began to be called in question. The reason why the uniform exposition of the Christian church was abandoned then by any was, that it could no longer be retained consistently with the notions which prevailed, especially in Germany, of the Bible. The grand principle which began to prevail in the interpretation of the Bible was, that all which is there recorded is to be accounted for on natural principles. But if this passage refers to the Messiah, it harmonizes so exactly with the life and character of the Redeemer, and it is so entirely removed from the possible range of mere conjecture, that it cannot be accounted for except on the supposition of supernatural revelation. Many professed Christian interpreters, therefore, have sought other ways of explaining it, and have diligently inquired to whom it referred. As a specimen of the manner in which the exposition of the Bible has been conducted in Germany, we may just refer to the opinions which have prevailed in the interpretation of this, the plainest and most splendid of all the prophecies pertaining to the Messiah.
1. Comparatively the greatest number of the non-Messianic interpreters make the whole Jewish people the subject. A large number of German expositors, whose names may be seen in Hengstenbergs Christol. i. 494, have adopted this view. The only difference between this interpretation and that adopted by the later Jews is, that the German critics suppose it refers to the Jews in the Babylonian exile, while the Jews suppose that it refers to their nation suffering in their present exile.
2. It was held by Eckermann that it refers to the Jewish nation in the abstract, in opposition to its individual members. In other words, it seems to have been held that the nation in the abstract was guilty and was suffering, while the individual members were innocent, and escaped suffering and punishment.
3. It has been held that it refers to the pious part of the Jewish people, as contrasted with the ungodly. This opinion was defended by Paulus. His view is the following: The pious part of the Jewish people were carried into captivity with the ungodly, not on account of their own sins, but the sins of the latter. The ungodly inferred that the hope of the pious that Yahweh would help them was in vain, but as the exile came to an end, and the pious returned, they saw that they had erred, and that their hope was wellgrounded. They deeply lament, therefore, that they have not long ago done penance.
4. One author has maintained that the Jewish priesthood is the subject of the prophecy, but in this he stands alone.
5. It has been maintained by others that the prophets collectively are referred to in the passage. This was at first the opinion of Rosenmuller, but was abandoned by him, and was then defended by De Wette, and is maintained by Gesenius.
6. Others have referred it to some individual. Thus Grotius supposes that Jeremiah is meant. Augusti supposed that Uzziah was intended. Others that Hezekiah was meant; and others that Isaiah here referred to himself; and others that it refers to some unknown prophet slain by the Jews in their exile; and others that it refers to the Maccabees!
These strange and absurd opinions are specimens of the unhappy manner of exposition which has prevailed among the German neologists; and they are specimens, too, of the reluctance of the human mind to embrace the truth as it is in Jesus, and of its proneness to the wildest aberrations, where mere human reason is suffered to take the reins in the interpretation of the Bible. Perhaps there is scarcely to be found an instance of interpretation that is more suited to humble us in regard to the proneness of people to err, than in these modes of explaining this beautiful portion of Isaiah. And there is not to be found anywhere a more striking proof of the reluctance of the human mind to contemplate the sufferings and death of the Redeemer of the world, or to embrace the great and glorious truth that people can be saved only by the vicarious sacrifice of the Son of God.
Section 4. Proof that it Refers to the Messiah
More ample proof of this will be furnished in the exposition of the passage itself, than can now be given. But still, it may not be improper to refer to a few of the considerations which go to demonstrate that the prophet here refers to the Lord Jesus Christ.
I. He refers to an individual, and not to a people, or a nation. It is not either to the collective body of the Jewish people, or to the pious portion of the Jewish people, or to the collective body of the prophets. This is evident on the slightest examination of the passage. The prophet speaks of the servant of Yahweh; and the whole representation is that of an individual, and not of any collective body of people. Thus his visage was marred, and his form was disfigured: he was as a tender plant; he was despised; he was rejected; he was smitten, wounded, put to death; he made his grave with the wicked and with the rich. Of what collective body of people could this be said? How absurd to apply this to a nation, or to any portion of a nation! It cannot be applied (A) to the whole people. In Isa 53:3, the subject is called a man, an appellation which cannot be given to a nation.
Nor is there an instance in all the sacred writings where there can be found such an extended allegory as this would be, on the supposition that this refers to the Jewish people. Besides, with what possible propriety can it be said of a nation that it has borne the griefs and carried the sorrows of others; that it was stricken for the transgression of the people of God; that it was made an offering for sin; and that it made intercession for the sin of the transgressors? If this refers to a nation, then all settled views of interpretation are at an end. The circumstances which are usually supposed to mark individual existence may in all other circumstances in like manner be supposed to mean nations, and we shall have no longer any way-marks in guiding us in the interpretation of the plainest writings. Nor (B) can it refer to the pious portion of the Jewish people taken collectively. For the subject of the prophecy suffers voluntarily; he himself innocent, bears the sins of others Isa 53:4-6, Isa 53:9; his sufferings are the efficient cause of the righteousness of his people Isa 53:11; and he suffers quietly and patiently, without allowing himself to be provoked to bitterness against the authors of his sufferings. Of all these four marks, not one belongs to the people of Israel. For
(a) they went not voluntarily into the Babylonian exile, but were carried there by violence.
(b) They did not suffer innocently, but suffered for their sins.
(c) The sufferings of the Jews can in no sense be represented as the cause of the righteousness of others.
(d) Nor did the Jews evince that patience and devotedness to the will of God which is here attributed to the subject of this prophecy.
How can it be said that they were led like a lamb to the slaughter, that they did not open the mouth to complain, when even the noblest and best of them poured out their sadness in complaints and lamentations? Compare Jer 20:7 ff; Jer 15:10-21; Psa 137:8-9. Nor (C) can it refer to the prophets taken collectively, as Gesenius supposes. On this it is sufficient to ask, Where did such a collection of the prophets ever exist? When did they suffer together? What evidence is there that they were in exile? Where and when did they take upon themselves the sins of the people, or suffer for them, or make their grave with the wicked and the rich in their death, or see of the travail of the soul, and become the means of the justification of many? All that has been said in favor of this is so entirely the work of conjecture, and is so manifestly designed to evade the obvious reference to the Messiah, that it is necessary to refer to it only as a specimen of the manner of interpretation which has prevailed, and which still prevails in the explanation of the sacred Scriptures. But if the passage does not refer either to the collective Jewish people, or to the pious portion of them, or to the prophets regarded as a collective body, then it must refer to an individual, and the only question is whether, it refers to the Messiah, or to some individual of the Jewish nation. As a simple and satisfactory argument that it refers to some individual, an appeal might be made to the common sense of the mass of people. Not one in a million – and he not unless he had some favorite hypothesis to defend – would ever suppose, on reading the passage, that it could have any reference to a collection of people of any kind. But the common sense of the mass of people is generally the best criterion of the meaning of any written document, and the best interpreter of the Bible.
II. If it refers to an individual, it must refer to the Messiah. It cannot refer to Isaiah, or Jeremiah, or Uzziah, or Akiba, for the following, among other reasons:
(a) The advocates of this theory have not been able to agree on any individual to whom it can be applied. Grotius suggested Jeremiah, some others Uzziah, or Isaiah, and some of the Jews Akiba. But each of these theories has been confined to the single interpreter who suggested it, and has been rejected by all the rest of the world. What better proof could there be that there is not even plausibility in the statement? What stronger demonstration that it is a theory got up on purpose to avoid the reference to the Messiah?
(b) None of the individuals named had any claim to the statements here made respecting the individual sufferer. Did kings shut their months at them, and stand in awe of them? Did Jeremiah sprinkle many nations? Did Uzziah bear the griefs and the sorrows of people? Did Yahweh lay on Isaiah the iniquity of all people? Did either of them make their grave with the wicked and the rich in their death? But if it cannot be shown to have reference to any other individual, then the fair inference is, that it refers to the Messiah.
III. The argument that it refers to the Messiah has all the force of tradition in its favor. We have seen that the Jews, in more ancient times, referred this prophecy to the Messiah. This fact proves that such is the obvious reference. When their minds were not prejudiced and blinded by their hatred of Jesus of Nazareth, and their opposition to his claims; when they were looking forward with deep anxiety to the coming of a deliverer, they applied this passage to him. And though there were embarrassments in their minds, and they were not well able to explain how this was consistent with what is elsewhere stated of his exalted nature, yet such was its obvious reference to the Messiah, that they did not dare to call it in question. Such was the fact in the Christian church for seventeen hundred years. It was the unbroken and the unvarying voice of interpretation. Now this proves, not indeed that it is necessarily the true interpretation, for that is to be settled on other grounds than mere tradition, but that it is the exposition which the language naturally conveys. The unvarying sense affixed to any written document for seventeen hundred years, is likely to be the true sense. And especially is this so, if the document in question has been in the hands of the learned and the unlearned; the high and the low; the rich and the poor; the bond and the free; and if they concur in giving to it the same interpretation, such an interpretation cannot easily or readily be set aside.
IV. The quotations in the New Testament prove that it refers to the Messiah. They go to demonstrate at the same time two points; first, that such was the prevailing mode of interpretation at that time, otherwise the passage would not have been quoted as proof that Jesus was the Messiah; and secondly, that such is the correct mode of interpretation. The places where it is quoted are the following:
1. In Joh 12:37-38, But though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him; that the saying of Esaias the prophet might be fulfilled which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report? And to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed? In this passage, Isa 53:1 is quoted to explain the unbelief of the Jewish people in the time of the Saviour, with the formula hina plerothe – that it might be fulfilled, the usual formula in quoting a passage from the Old Testament which is fulfilled in the New. No one can doubt that John meant to be understood as affirming that the passage in Isaiah had a designed applicability to the person and the times of the Redeemer. The same passage is quoted by Paul in Rom 10:16 : But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report?
2. The passage in Luk 22:37 is still more decisive. For I say unto you, That this that is written must yet be accomplished me, And he was reckoned among the transgressors: for the things concerning me have an end, that is, a completion, a fulfillment. Here Isa 52:12 is expressly and directly applied by the Saviour himself to his own sufferings and death. No one can doubt that he meant to say that it had original reference to him, and would be fulfilled in him. The same passage is applied, and in the same sense, by Mark Mar 15:28, to the sufferings and death of the Redeemer.
3. In Act 8:35, Isa 53:7-8 is applied by Philip the evangelist to the Redeemer; and is explained as having a reference to him.
4. In Mat 8:17, the declaration of Isaiah Isa 53:4, Himself took our infirmities, and bore our sicknesses, is applied expressly to the Messiah. These passages, directly quoting Isaiah, and applying them to the Messiah, demonstrate that in view of the writers of the New Testament, and of the Saviour himself, Isaiah had reference to the Messiah. To those who admit the inspiration and the divine authority of the New Testament, these proofs are sufficient demonstration of the position.
V. This view is enforced by another consideration. It is, that not only is the passage expressly quoted in the New Testament, but it is alluded to in connection with the death of the Redeemer as an atoning sacrifice for sin, in such a manner as to show that it was regarded by the sacred writers as having reference to the Messiah. It is sufficient here to refer to the following places: Mar 9:12; Joh 3:5; Rom 4:25; 1Co 15:3; 2Co 5:21; 1Pe 1:19; 1Pe 2:21-25. A careful examination of these passages would convince anyone, that the writers of the New Testament were accustomed to regard the passage in Isaiah as having undoubted reference to the Messiah, and that this was so universally the interpretation of the passage in their times, as to make it proper simply to refer to it without formally quoting it. It may be added here, that it accords with the current and uniform statement in the New Testament about the design of the death of the Redeemer.
VI. One other argument may be here referred to, which I propose to state more at length when the exposition of the fifty-third chapter shall have been made. It arises from the exact correspondence between the passage and the events in the life, the sufferings, and the death of the Redeemer – a correspondence so minute that it cannot he the result of accident; so much depending on external circumstances and on the agency of others, that it could not have been Produced by the effort of an impostor; and so unique that it can be found in no other person but the Messiah. We shall he better able to appreciate the force of this argument when we have the correct exposition of the passage before us.
To the view which has thus been taken of the design of this portion of Isaiah, there occurs one objection, often made by infidels, which I deem it important here to notice. It is, that the transactions here referred to are represented as past, and that it must be supposed to refer to some event which had occurred before the time when this was written. This ground has also been taken by Gesenius in proof that it cannot refer to tile Messiah: The suffering, contempt, and death, says he, of the servant of God, are here represented throughout as past, since all in Isa 53:1-10, is in the praeter. Only the glorification is future, and is represented in the future tense. In reply to this, we may observe:
1. That the transactions referred to are not all represented as past. The glorification of the person referred to is described in the future tense, and of course as a future event Isa 52:13-15; Isa 53:11-12. It may be added also here, that those who will examine the Hebrew, will perceive that not everything in regard to his sufferings is represented as past (see Isa 53:7-8, Isa 53:10). But,
2. The true answer to this objection is to be found in a correct view of the nature of prophecy; and the objection has been supposed to have force only because the true character of prophecy has not been apprehended. It is a feature of the true nature of prophecy that the prophet is placed in vision in the midst of the scenes which he describes as future. He describes the events as if they were actually passing before his eyes. See this view of prophecy explained in the Introduction, Section 7. According to this, Isaiah is to be regarded as placed in vision amidst the scenes which he describes. He looks on the suffering Redeemer. He describes his humiliation, his rejection, his trial, his death, and the feelings of those who rejected him, as if it actually occurred before his eyes. He sees him now rejected by people and put to death; but he also casts his eye into the future and sees him exalted, and his religion spreading into all the world. Though, therefore, the events which he describes were to occur several hundred years afterward, yet they are portrayed, as his other prophecies are, as passing before his eyes, and as events which he was permitted in vision to see.
Analysis
In Isa 52:13-15, Yahweh speaks of his servant the Messiah, and describes the state of his humiliation, and of his subsequent exaltation. These verses contain, in fact, an epitome of what is enlarged upon in the next chapter. The sum of it is, that his servant should be, on the whole, prospered and exalted Isa 52:13; yet he would he subjected to the deepest trial and humiliation Isa 52:14; but as the result of this, he would redeem the nations of the earth, and their kings and rulers would regard him with profound reverence Isa 52:15. A display of the divine perfections would accompany the work of the servant of Yahweh such as they had never beheld, and they would be called on to contemplate wonders of which they had not before heard.
Isa 53:1-12 contains a more minute explanation and statement of what is said in general in Isa 52:13-15. For convenience, it may be regarded as divided into the following portions:
I. An expression of amazement and lamentation at the fact that so few had embraced the annunciation respecting the Messiah, and had been properly affected by the important statements respecting his sufferings, his death, and his glorification Isa 53:1.
II. A description of his rejection, his sufferings, his death Isa 53:2-10. Here the prophet describes the scene as actually passing before his eyes. He speaks as if he himself were one of the Jewish nation who had rejected him, and who had procured his death. He describes the misapprehension under which it was done, and the depth of the sorrow to which the Messiah was subjected, and the design which Yahweh had in view in these sufferings.
1. His appearance and rejection are described Isa 53:2-3. He is as a shrub that grows in a parched soil without beauty; he is a man of sorrows, instead of being, as they expected, a magnificent prince; he has disappointed their expectations, and there is nothing that corresponded with their anticipations, and nothing, therefore, which should lead them to desire him.
2. The design for which he endured his sorrows is stated Isa 53:4-6. He was thought by the people to be justly put to death, and they judged that God had judicially smitten and afflicted him Isa 53:4. But this was not the cause. It was because he had borne the sorrows of the nation, and was wounded for their sins Isa 53:4-5. They had all gone astray, but Yahweh had caused to meet on him the iniquity of all.
3. The manner of his sufferings is described Isa 53:7-8. He was patient as a lamb; was taken from prison, and cut off.
4. The manner of his burial is described Isa 53:9. It was with the rich. The reason why his grave was thus distinguished from that of malefactors was, that in fact he had done no evil. God, therefore, took care that that fact should he marked even in his burial, and though he died with malefactors, yet, as the purpose of the atonement did not require ignominy after death, he should not he buried with them.
5. The design for which all this was done is stated Isa 53:10. It was that his soul might be made an offering for sin, and that it was thus well-pleasing or acceptable to God that he should suffer and die.
III. The result of his sufferings and humiliation is described Isa 53:10-12.
1. He would see a numerous spiritual posterity, and be abundantly satisfied for all his pains and sorrows Isa 53:10-11.
2. By the knowledge of him, a great number would be justified and saved Isa 53:11.
3. He would be greatly honored, and proceed to the spiritual conquest of all the world Isa 53:12.
Isa 52:13
Behold, my servant – The word behold. indicates here that a new object is pointed out to view, and that it is one that claims attention on account of its importance. It is designed to direct the mind to the Messiah. The point of view which is here taken, is between his humiliation and his glorification. He sees him as having been humbled and rejected Isa 52:14-15; Isa 53:2-10; about to be exalted and honored Isa 52:13-15; Isa 53:10-12. The word servant refers to the Messiah. Compare the notes at Isa 49:5, where the word servant is applied also to the Messiah. It means that he would be employed in doing the will of God, and that he would submit to him as a servant does to the law of his master.
Shall deal prudently – Margin, Prosper. The word s’akal, is used in a twofold signification. It means either to act wisely, or to be prosperous. In this latter sense it is used in Jos 1:7-8; 2Ki 18:7; Jer 10:21; Pro 17:8. It is not easy to determine what is the meaning here. Jerome renders it, intelligent – Shall be wise or prudent. The Septuagint renders it, Sunesei ho pais mou – My servant shall be intelligent. The Chaldee renders it, Behold my servant the Messiah shall prosper ( yatslach). The Syriac retains the Hebrew word. Jun. and Tremell. render it, Shall prosper; Castellio, Shall be wise. Lowth renders it, Shall prosper; and in this Gesenius and Noyes concur. Hengstenberg proposes to unite the two meanings, and to render it, He shall reign well, as indicative of the prosperous and wise government of the Messiah. It seems to me that the parallelism requires us to understand this not of his personal wisdom and prudence, but of the success of his enterprise. This verse contains a summary statement of what would occur under the Messiah. The general proposition is, that he would be ultimately successful, and to this the prophet comes Isa 53:12. He here sees him in affliction, humble, rejected, and despised. But he says that this was not always to be. He would be ultimately exalted. It is on this that he fixes the eye, and it is this which cheers and sustains the prophet in the contemplation of the sufferings of the Messiah.
He shall be exalted – In this part of the verse, the prophet combines the verbs which denote elevation or exaltation. The idea is, that he would be exalted to the highest pitch of honor. The word exalted, with us, is often synonymous with praise; but here it means, he shall be elevated ( nas’a’), or lifted up. The reference here is, undoubtedly, to the fact that the Redeemer would be greatly honored on earth as the Prince and Saviour of the world Isa 53:12, and that in view of the universe he would be elevated to the highest conceivable rank. This is described in the New Testament by his being placed at the right hand of God Mar 16:19; by the fact that angels and authorities and powers are made subject unto him 1Pe 3:22; by the fact that God has set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named Eph 1:20-22; and by the fact that he will return in great glory to judge the world Matt. 25. The idea is, that as he was the most despised among people, so he would yet be the most honored; as he had voluntarily assumed the lowest place for the redemption of people, so he would be exalted to the highest place to which human nature could be elevated.
Isa 52:14
As many were astonished at thee – This verse is closely connected with the following, and they should be read together. The sense is, as many were shocked at him – his form was so disfigured, and his visage so marred – so he shall sprinkle many nations. That is, the one fact would correspond with the other. The astonishment would be remarkable; the humiliation would be wonderful, and suited to attract the deepest attention; and so his success and his triumph would correspond with the depth of his humiliation and sufferings. As he had in his humiliation been subjected to the lowest condition, so that all despised him; so hereafter the highest possible reverence would be shown him. Kings and nobles would shut their mouths in his presence, and show him the profoundest veneration. A change of person here occurs which is not uncommon in the Hebrew poets. In Isa 52:13, Yahweh speaks of the Messiah in the third person; here he changes the form of the address, and speaks of him in the second person.
In the following verse the mode of address is again changed, and he speaks of him again in the third person. Lowth, however, proposes to read this in the third person, As many were astonished at him, on the authority of two ancient Hebrew manuscripts, and of the Syriac and Chaldee. But the authority is not sufficient to justify a change in the text, nor is it necessary. In the word rendered astonished ( shammu), the primary idea is that of being struck dumb, or put to silence from sudden astonishment. Whether the astonishment is from admiration or abhorrence is to be determined by the connection. In the latter sense, it is used in Jer 18:16; Jer 19:8. Here it evidently refers to the fact that he was disfigured, and destitute of apparent beauty and attractiveness from his abject condition and his sufferings. They were struck with amazement that one so abject, and that had so little that was attractive, should presume to lay claim to the character of the Messiah. This idea is more fully expressed in the following chapter. Here it is stated in general that his appearance was such as to excite universal astonishment, and probably to produce universal disgust. They saw no beauty or comeliness in him (see Isa 53:2). This expression should also be regarded as standing in contrast with what is added in Isa 52:15. Here it is said they were amazed, astonished, silent, at his appearance of poverty and his humiliation; there it is said, kings should shut their mouths at him, that is, they would be so deeply impressed with his majesty and glory that they would remain in perfect silence – the silence not of contempt, but of profound veneration.
His visage – mare‘ehu. This word denotes properly sight, seeing, view; then that which is seen; then appearance, form, looks Exo 24:17; Eze 1:16-28; Dan 10:18. Here it means, his appearance, his looks. It does not necessarily refer to his face, but to his general appearance. It was so disfigured by distress as to retain scarcely the appearance of a man.
Was so marred – ( mishechath). This word properly means destruction. Here it means defaced, destroyed, disfigured. There was a disfiguration, or defacement of his aspect, more than that of man.
More than any man – ( me’iysh). This may either mean, more than any other man, or that he no longer retained the appearance of a man. It probably means the latter – that his visage was so disfigured that it was no longer the aspect of a man. Castellio renders it, Ut non jam sit homo, non sit unus de humano genere.
And his form – ( to’aro). This word denotes a form or a figure of the body 1Sa 28:14. Here it denotes the figure, or the appearance, referring not to the countenance, but to the general aspect of the body.
More than the sons of men – So as to seem not to belong to people, or to be one of the human family. All this evidently refers to the disfiguration which arises from excessive grief and calamity. It means that he was broken down and distressed; that his great sorrows had left their marks on his frame so as to destroy the beautiful symmetry and proportions of the human form. We speak of being crushed with grief; of being borne down with pain; of being laden with sorrow. And we all know the effect of long-continued grief in marring the beauty of the human countenance, and in bowing down the frame. Deep emotion depicts itself on the face, and produces a permanent impression there. The highest beauty fades under long-continued trials, though at first it may seem to be set off to advantage. The rose leaves the cheek, the luster forsakes the eye, vigor departs from the frame, its erect form is bowed, and the countenance, once brilliant and beautiful, becomes marked with the deep furrows of care and anxiety.
Such seems to be the idea here. It is not indeed said that the sufferer before this had been distinguished for any extraordinary beauty – though this may not be improperly supposed – but that excessive grief had almost obliterated the traces of intelligence from the face, and destroyed the aspect of man. How well this applies to the Lord Jesus, needs not to be said. We have, indeed, no positive information in regard to his personal appearance. We are not told that he was distinguished for manliness of form, or beauty of countenance. But it is certainly no improbable supposition that when God prepared for him a body Heb 10:5 in which the divinity should dwell incarnate, the human form would be rendered as fit as it could be for the indwelling of the celestial inhabitant. And it is no unwarrantable supposition that perfect truth, benevolence, and purity, should depict themselves on the countenance of the Redeemer; as they will be manifested in the very aspect wherever they exist – and render him the most beautiful of human beings – for the expression of these principles and feelings in the countenance constitutes beauty (compare the notes at Isa 53:2). Nor is it an improbable supposition, that this beauty was marred by his long-continued and inexpressibly deep sorrows, and that he was so worn down and crushed by the sufferings which he endured as scarcely to have retained the aspect of a man.
Isa 52:15
So – ( ken). This word corresponds to as ( ka’asher) in the former verse. In like manner as many were astonished or shocked at thee – so shall he sprinkle many nations. The one is to be in some respects commensurate with the other. The comparison seems to consist of two points:
1. In regard to the numbers. Many would be shocked: many would be sprinkled by him. Large numbers would be amazed at the fact of his sorrows; and numbers correspondently large would be sprinkled by him.
2. In the effects. Many would be struck dumb with amazement at his appearance; and, in like manner, many would be struck dumb with veneration or respect. He would be regarded on the one hand as having scarce the form of a man; on the other, even kings would be silent before him from profound reverence and awe.
Shall he sprinkle many nations – The word rendered here sprinkle ( yazzeh) has been very variously rendered. Jerome renders it, Asperget – Shall sprinkle. The Septuagint, So shall many nations express admiration ( thaumasontai) at him. The Chaldee, So shall he scatter, or dissipate ( yebaddar) many people. The Syriac renders it, Thus shall he purify, cleanse, make expiation for many nations. The Syriac verb used here means to purify, to cleanse, to make holy; and, in aph., to expiate; and the idea of the translator evidently was, that he would purify by making expiation. See the Syriac word used in Luk 3:17; Act 11:9; Act 24:18; Heb 9:22; Heb 10:4. Castellio renders it as Jerome does; and Jun. and Tremell., He shall sprinkle many nations with stupor. Interpreters have also varied in the sense which they have given to this word. Its usual and proper meaning is to sprinkle, and so it has been here commonly interpreted. But Martini, Rosenmuller, and Gesenius suppose that it is derived from an Arabic word meaning to leap, to spring, to spring up, to leap for joy, to exult; and that the idea here is, that he should cause many nations to exult, or leap for joy. Parallel places, says Gesenius, occur in Isa 49:6-7; Isa 51:5. Against the common interpretation, to sprinkle, he objects:
1. That the verb could not be construed without the accusative, and that if it means that he would sprinkle with blood, the word blood would be specified.
2. That the connection is opposed to the idea of sprinkling, and that the antithesis requires some word that shall correspond with shamam, shall be astonished, and that the phrase they shall be joyful, or he shall cause them to exult with joy, denotes such antithesis.
To this it may be replied, that the usual, the universal signification of the word ( nazah) in the Old Testament is to sprinkle. The word occurs only in the following places, and is in all instances translated sprinkle Exo 29:21; Lev 5:9; Lev 6:6-17, Lev 6:27; Lev 8:11, Lev 8:30; Lev 14:7, Lev 14:16, Lev 14:27, Lev 14:51; Lev 16:14-15, Lev 16:19; Num 8:7; Num 19:4, Num 19:18-19, Num 19:21; 2Ki 9:33; Isa 63:3. It is properly applicable to the act of sprinkling blood, or water; and then comes to be used in the sense of cleansing by the blood that makes expiation for sin, or of cleansing by water as an emblem of purifying. In Eze 36:25, the practice of sprinkling with consecrated water is referred to as synonymous with purifying – though a different word from this is used ( zaraq), and I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean. If the word used here means to sprinkle, it is used in one of the following significations:
1. To sprinkle with blood, in allusion to the Levitical rite of sprinkling the blood of the sacrifice, meaning that in that way sin would be expiated and removed Lev 14:51; Lev 16:14; Heb 9:19; Heb 10:22; or,
2. By an allusion to the custom of sprinkling with water as emblematic of purity, or cleansing Num 8:7; Num 19:18; Eze 36:25. If used in the former sense, it means, that the Redeemer would make expiation for sin, and that his blood of purifying would be sprinkled on the nations.
If in the latter, as is most probable, then it means that he would purify them, as objects were cleansed by the sprinkling of water. If in either sense, it means substantially the same thing – that the Redeemer would purify, or cleanse many nations, that is, from their sins, and make them holy. Still there is a difficulty in the passage which does not seem to be solved. This difficulty has been thus expressed by Taylor (Concord.): It seems here to have a special meaning, which is not exactly collected from the other places where this word is used. The antithesis points to regard, esteem, admiration. So shall he sprinkle, engage the esteem and admiration of many nations. But how to deduce this from the sense of the word I know not. It was to meet this difficulty that Martini, Rosenmuller, and Gesenius, propose the sense of leaping, exulting, filling with joy, from the Arabic. But that signification does not accord with the uniform Hebrew usage, and probably the sense of purifying is to be retained. It may be remarked that whichever of the above senses is assigned, it furnishes no argument for the practice of sprinkling in baptism. It refers to the fact of his purifying or cleansing the nations, and not to the ordinance of Christian baptism; nor should it be used as an argument in reference to the mode in which that should be administered.
The kings shall shut their mouths at him – Or rather, kings. It does not refer to any particular kings; but the idea is, that he would be honored by kings. To shut the mouths here indicates veneration and admiration. See Job 29:9-10, where reverence or respect is indicated in the same way:
The princes refrained talking,
And laid their hand upon their mouth:
The nobles held their peace,
And their tongue cleaved to the roof of their mouth.
See also Mic 7:16; compare Job 5:16; Psa 107:42.
For that which had not been told them – In this part of the verse a reason is given for the veneration which kings would evince. It is, that they should receive intelligence of this wonderful exaltation of the messenger of God which had not before been made known to them as it had been to the Jews. Or, in other words, the great mystery of the incarnation and redemption would contain truths and wonders which they had not contemplated elsewhere. No such events would have occurred within the range of their observation; and the wonders of redemption would stand by themselves as unparalleled in all that they had heard or seen. What is here predicted has been fulfilled. The mystery of the incarnation and the atonement; the sufferings and the death of the Redeemer; his exaltation and his glory, are events which are unparalleled in the history of the world. They are events suited in their nature to excite the profoundest admiration, and to induce kings and nobles to lay their hand on their mouth in token of veneration. No monarch on earth could have evinced such condescension as did the Son of God; none has been elevated to so high a rank in the universe as the Redeemer. That the Son of God should become a man; that his visage should be so disfigured by grief as to have scarcely the aspect of a human being; that he should suffer and die as he did; and that he should be exalted as he is over this whole world, and have the most elevated place in the universe at the right hand of God, are all events suited to excite the profoundest admiration.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Isa 52:13-15
Behold, My Servant shall deal prudently
The humiliation and exaltation of Christ
I.
THE STATE OF CHRISTS HUMILIATION. As many were astonied at Thee, etc.
1. Consider His outward or bodily sufferings.
2. His inward sorrows, the agonies of His mind, have no parallel.
II. OUR SAVIOURS EXALTATION. Behold, My Servant shall deal prudently, etc. The exaltation of Christ may be considered under four particulars.
1. His resurrection from the dead.
2. His ascension into heaven.
3. His glorification at the Fathers right hand.
4. His coming again to judgment.
Practical improvement:
1. What hath been said on the subject of the Redeemer s sufferings, should excite all our gratitude and love to Him, who readily entered upon, and went through, all this scene of sorrow for our sake.
2. Let this excite us to greater zeal and diligence in His service; as the best expression of our gratitude and love.
3. The consideration of Christs love and sufferings for us should inspire us with the firmest fortitude and fidelity, in defending His cause and the honour of His Gospel against all opposition, and in suffering for it.
4. Under every affliction of life let us turn our eyes to our suffering Redeemer, as a perfect pattern of patience.
5. Let us triumph in the faith and views of a triumphant Saviour. (A. Mason, M.A.)
The sure triumph of the crucified One
I. THE CHARACTER OF OUR LORDS DEALINGS. He is called My Servant, a title as honourable as it is condescending, and it is said that He deals prudently. He who took upon Him the form of a servant acts as a wise servant in everything; and indeed it could not be otherwise, for in Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
1. This prudence was manifest in the days of His flesh, from His childhood among the doctors in the temple on to His confession before Pontius Pilate. Our Lord was enthusiastic; but that enthusiasm never carried Him into rashness. Our Saviour was full of love, and that love made Him frank and open-hearted; but for all that He was ,ever prudent, and committed Himself unto no man, for He knew what was in man. Too many who aspire to be leaders of the people study policy, craft and diplomacy. The Friend of sinners had not a fraction of that about Him; and yet He was wiser than if diplomacy had been His study from His youth up.
2. He who on earth became obedient unto death has now gone into the glory, but He is still over the house of God, conducting its affairs; He deals prudently still. Our fears lead us to judge that the affairs of Christs kingdom are going amiss, but we may rest assured that all is well, for the Lord hath put all things under the feet of Jesus. All along through the history of the Church the dealings of the Lord Jesus with His people have been very remarkable. The wisdom in them is often deep, and only discoverable by those who seek it out, and yet frequently it sparkles upon the surface like gold in certain lands across the sea. Note how the Lord has made His Church learn truth by degrees, and purified her first of one error and then of another. The wise physician tolerates disease until it shall have reached the point at which he can grapple with it, so as to eradicate it from the system, so has the good Lord allowed some ills to fester in the midst of His Church, that He may ultimately exterminate them. Study the pages of ecclesiastical history, and you will see how Jesus Christ has dealt wisely in the raising up of fitting men for all times. I could not suppose a better man for Luthers age than Luther, yet Luther alone would have been very incomplete for the full service needed had it not been for Calvin, whose calm intellect was the complement of Luthers fiery soul.
3. Another translation of the passage is, My Servant shall have prosperous success. Let us append that meaning to the other. Prosperity will grow out of our Lord prudent dealings.
4. In consequence of this the Lord shall he exalted and extolled.
II. THE STUMBLING-BLOCK IN THE WAY OF OUR LORD. It is His Cross, which to Jew and Greek is ever a hindrance. As if the prophet saw Him in vision, he cries out, As many were astonied at Thee, etc.
1. He has risen from the grave and gone into His glory, but the offence of the Cross has not ceased, for upon His Gospel there remains the image of His marred visage, and therefore men despise it. The preaching of the Cross is foolishness to many.
2. The practical part of the Gospel is equally a stumbling-block to ungodly men, for when men inquire what they must do to be saved, they are told that they must receive the Gospel as little children, that they must repent of sin, and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Very humbling precepts for human self-sufficiency! And after they are saved, if they inquire what they should do, the precepts are not those which commend themselves to proud human nature–for they are such as these–Be ye kindly affectioned one to another, forbearing one another and forgiving one another even as God for Christs sake has forgiven you. To the world which loves conquerors, and blasts of trumpets, and chaplets of laurel, this kind of teaching has a marred visage, and an uncomely form.
3. Then, what seems even more humbling, the Lord Jesus Christ in His prudent dealing sends this Gospel among us by men who are neither great nor noble, nor even among the wise of this world.
4. Worse still, if worse can be, the people who become converted and follow the Saviour are generally of the poorer sort, and lightly esteemed.
III. THE CERTAINTY OF THE REMOVAL OF THIS STUMBLING-BLOCK and the spread of Christs kingdom. As His face was marred, so surely shall He sprinkle many nations; by which we understand, first, that the doctrines of the Gospel are to fall in a copious shower over all lands. This sprinkling we must interpret according to the Mosaic ceremonies. There was a sprinkling with blood, to set forth pardon of sin, and a sprinkling with water to set forth purification from the power of sin. The influence of His grace and the power of His work shall be extended not over the common people only, but over their leaders and rulers. The kings shall shut their mouths at Him; they shall have no word to say against Him; they shall be so subdued by the majesty of His power that they shall silently pay Him reverence, and prostrate themselves before His throne.
IV. THE MANNER OF ITS ACCOMPLISHMENT. How will it come to pass? Will there be a new machinery? Will the world be converted, and the kings be made to shut their mouths by some new mode of operation? I do not think so. Will the saints take the sword one day? No, the way which has been from the beginning of the dispensation will last to its close. It pleases God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.
1. According to this passage, these kings and nations are first of all to hear. Faith coming by hearing. If they are to hear, we must preach and teach, so that our clear line of duty is to go on spreading the Gospel.
2. These people appear not only to have heard, but to have seen. That which had not been told them shall they see. This seeing is not with their bodily eyes but by the perceptions of their minds. Faith comes by the soul perceiving what the Gospel means.
3. After they had seen, it appears from the text that they considered. That which they had not heard shall they consider. This is how men are saved: they hear the Gospel, they catch the meaning of it, and then they consider it. When they had seen and considered silently, they accepted the Lord as their Lord, for they shut their mouths at Him; they ceased from all opposition; they quietly resigned their wills, and paid allegiance to the great King of kings. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The character and work of the Messiah
I. THE INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY INTO THE WORLD, BY THE MYSTERIOUS SUFFERINGS OF ITS DIVINE FOUNDER. Behold, My Servant! The astonishment of many evidently refers to the inconsistency apparent between the high pretensions and the depressed condition of this Servant of God. In truth, the plan of Christianity, with its introduction into the world, is far above the calculations of human sagacity.
II. THE DECLARATION OF THE PROPHET WITH REGARD TO THE UNIVERSAL DIFFUSION OF THE RELIGION OF CHRIST ON THE EARTH. My Servant shall deal prudently. He shall be exalted, and extolled, and be very high.
1. The expression, He shall deal prudently, is, in the margin, translated, He shall prosper; and thus the whole clause is declarative of the same truth–the triumph and success of the Son of God. If many were astonished at His humiliation, a far greater number shall be astonished at His exaltation.
2. This grand and glorious achievement He effected by means that came not within the range of mortal discernment. It was by death that He conquered death. It was by a perfect obedience in action and in suffering, that He became the second Adam–the spiritual Head of a new and happier race. He planted His religion in the earth, opposed by hostile scorn and relentless malice and despotic power. The cause of Christ achieved its victories by its own inherent power. Its adherents were, indeed, strong; but it was in faith, and purity, and charity. Thus the Servant of God prospered, and was extolled, and became very high.
3. But His reign on the earth is yet very limited, and His conquests incomplete.
III. WHAT WE MAY GATHER FROM THIS PROPHETIC ACCOUNT RESPECTING THE PROCESS BY WHICH THE KINGDOM OF THE MESSIAH SHALL THUS BE FULLY AND FINALLY ESTABLISHED. As many were astonied at Thee: so shall He sprinkle many nations; the kings, etc. We are led to infer–
1. That there shall be a wide dispersion of Divine knowledge over heathen and Mohammedan nations; for men cannot see or consider that which is not first presented to their notice.
2. The nations shall fix their anxious attention on the truths declared to them.
3. Impressed with holy awe, they shall assume the attitude of abasement and submission. I apprehend that the expression, the kings shall shut their mouths at Him, implies the submission of whole nations, here represented by kings; for, as the reception of Christianity on the part of the rulers of a country requires the overthrow of every system of religious polity previously established, such a reception publicly made, implies, more or less, the submission of the mass of the people.
4. He shall forgive their iniquities and sanctify their hearts. He shall sprinkle many nations; that is, in allusion to the aspersions under the law, by which the people were sanctified, the Son of God shall apply to the souls of regenerated multitudes the blood of His great atonement, and the sacred influences of His Holy Spirit. Then, a nation shall be born in a day. (G. T. Noel, M. A.)
A threefold view of the Person and work of Jesus Christ
1. HIS WORK BELOW. He is called the Servant of the Lord. As many were astonied at Thee, etc. The disciples saw Him on the Cross; they gazed on Him with amazement, and scarcely recovered themselves by the third day. The women who followed Him from Galilee to Jerusalem, stood afar off, and smote their breasts as they killed Him; and the thousands of men whom He had healed and cured, looked with astonishment at the ignominious termination of such a life. Even the elements seemed to join in the universal consternation; the sun refused to shine, and hid himself in darkness; the light of the moon was clouded.
II. THINK OF HIM SITTING IN GLORY UPON HIS THRONE. He shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high.
1. He shall be exalted. This relates to His authority and power. Verily, a name is written in His vesture and on His thigh, and that name is KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.
2. He shall be extolled. It has been the delight of every apostle, of every evangelist, of every missionary, of every minister, of every Christian, to extol Him; and when we have done our best, it is our grief and shame and humility that we cannot extol Him more.
3. He shall be very high, or, if you prefer the language of the apostle, In all things He shall have the pre-eminence.
III. The works of mercy which the Saviour is accomplishing IN HIS EXALTED STATE. He sets forth His Gospel according to His promise. He shall sprinkle many nations. This denotes the office of Christ. The kings shall stop their mouths at Him. This text is best explained by quoting, a passage in which Job, speaking of himself as the chief magistrate, says, When I went out to the gate through the city, when I prepared my seat in the street! the young men saw me, etc. (Job 29:7-10). Such was the respect for the dignity of this man of God, that in his presence the nobles and the elders spake not, but imposed silence on their lips; so shall it be with the potentates and monarchs of the earth in the presence of Him who is greater than all. (J. Stratten.)
The face of Christ
Our Lord Jesus Christ bore from of old the name of Wonderful, and the word seems all too poor to set forth His marvellous person and character. It is an astonishing thing that there should have been a Christ at all; the Incarnation is the miracle of miracles; that He who is the Infinite should become an infant.
I. HE WAS A GREAT WONDER IN HIS GRIEFS.
II. HE WAS A GREAT WONDER IN HIS GLORY. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
He shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high
The Saviours exaltation
We obtain the following series of thoughts, He will rise, He will be still more exalted, He will stand high. The three verbs thus signify beginning, progress and result, or the climax of the exaltation. (F. Delitzsch, D.D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 13. My servant shall deal prudently] yaskil, shall prosper, or act prosperously. The subject of Isaiah’s prophecy, from the fortieth chapter inclusive, has hitherto been, in general, the deliverance of the people of God. This includes in it three distinct parts; which, however, have a close connexion with one another; that is,
1. The deliverance of the Jews from the captivity of Babylon;
2. The deliverance of the Gentiles from their miserable state of ignorance and idolatry; and,
3. The deliverance of mankind from the captivity of sin and death.
These three subjects are subordinate to one another; and the two latter are shadowed out under the image of the former. They are covered by it as by a veil; which however is transparent, and suffers them to appear through it.
Cyrus is expressly named as the immediate agent of God in effecting the first deliverance. A greater person is spoken of as the Agent who is to effect the two latter deliverances, called the servant, the elect, of God, in whom his soul delighteth; Israel, in whom God will be glorified. Now these three subjects have a very near relation to one another; for as the Agent who was to effect the two latter deliverances, – that is, the Messiah, – was to be born a Jew, with particular limitations of time, family, and other circumstances; the first deliverance was necessary in the order of providence, and according to the determinate counsel of God, to the accomplishment of the two latter deliverances; and the second deliverance was necessary to the third, or rather was involved in it, and made an essential part of it. This being the case, Isaiah has not treated the three subjects as quite distinct and separate in a methodical and orderly manner, like a philosopher or a logician, but has taken them in their connective view. He has handled them as a prophet and a poet; he has allegorized the former, and under the image of it has shadowed out the two latter: he has thrown them all together, has mixed one with another, has passed from this to that with rapid transitions, and has painted the whole with the strongest and boldest imagery. The restoration of the Jews from captivity, the call of the Gentiles, the redemption by Messiah, have hitherto been handled interchangeably and alternately. Babylon has hitherto been kept pretty much in sight; at the same time, that strong intimations of something much greater have frequently been thrown in. But here Babylon is at once dropped, and I think hardly ever comes in sight again; unless perhaps in Isa 55:12; Isa 57:14. The prophet’s views are almost wholly engrossed by the superior part of his subject. He introduces the Messiah as appearing at first in the lowest state of humiliation, which he had just touched upon before, (Isa 50:5; Isa 50:6,) and obviates the offence which would be occasioned by it, by declaring the important and necessary cause of it, and foreshowing the glory which should follow it.
This seems to me to be the nature and the true design of this part of Isaiah’s prophecies; and this view of them seems to afford the best method of resolving difficulties, in which expositors are frequently engaged, being much divided between what is called the literal and the mystical sense, not very properly; for the mystical or spiritual sense is very often the most literal sense of all.
Abarbanel seems to have had an idea of this kind, as he is quoted by Vitringa on chap. xlix. 1, who thus represents his sentiments: Censet Abarbanel prophetam hic transitum facere a liberatione ex exilio Babylonico ad liberationem ex exilio Romano; et, quod hic animadversu dignum est, observat liberationem ex exilio Babylonico esse oth veraayah, signum et argumentum liberationis futurae; atque adeo orationem prophetae de duabus hisce liberationibus in superioribus concionibus saepe inter se permisceri. Verba ejus: “Et propterea verba, sive res, in prophetic superiore inter se permixtae occurrunt; modo de liberatione Babylonica, modo de liberatione extrema accipiendae, ut orationis necessitas exigit.” Nullum hic vitium, nisi quod redemptionem veram et spiritualem a Messia vero Jesu adductam, non agnoscat. “Abarbanel supposes that the prophet here makes a transition from the deliverance from the Babylonish captivity to the deliverance from the Roman captivity; and (which is worthy of particular note) he observes that the deliverance from the Babylonish captivity is a sign and pledge of the future redemption; and that on this account it is we find in the preceding prophecies the circumstances of the two captivities intimately blended together. His words are the following: ‘And, therefore, the words or subjects in the foregoing prophecy are very much intermixed; in one passage the redemption from the Babylonish captivity being treated of, in another the redemption from the general dispersion, as may be collected from the obvious import of the words.’ No fault can be found with the above remark, except that the true and spiritual redemption procured by Jesus the Messiah is not acknowledged.” – L.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
This is the beginning of a new prophecy, which is continued from hence to the end of the next chapter; and therefore it is well observed by divers, both ancient and modern interpreters, that the fifty-third chapter should have begun here.
My servant.
Quest. Of whom doth the prophet here speak? It is apparent that these three last verses of this chapter, and all the following chapter, speak of one and the same person. And that that person is Christ is so evident, that the Chaldee paraphrast, and other ancient, and some later Hebrew doctors, understand it directly of him, and that divers Jews have been convinced and converted to the Christian faith by the evidence of this prophecy. And there is not a verse in this whole context which doth not afford a clear and convincing proof of this truth, as we shall see. And there needs no other argument to confirm it, than the variety and vanity of the pretended expositions of the Jews, who use all possible wit and art to wrest all these passages to other persons. Those who would seem wiser than the rest, and confute the other expositions of their brethren, understand it either of the Jewish people in general, or of the prophet Jeremiah in particular. But both these conceits are so groundless and absurd, that there is scarce a verse but confutes them, as we shall clearly discern in the exposition of them. And therefore other Jews reject them both, and understand it of Abraham, or Moses, or Josiah, or Ezra, or Zorobabel; and they might as well have named twenty persons more, to whom this place might be applied upon as good grounds as to any of these. But there is not one clause in all this context which is not most truly and fitly applied to Christ, as I shall make apparent, step by step. And first this title of Gods servant is in an eminent and peculiar manner given to Christ in this very prophecy, as Isa 42:1; 49:6; 53:11; Eze 34:23; Zec 3:8. Shall deal prudently; shall manage his kingdom with admirable wisdom. Or, shall prosper, as it is in the margin, and as this word is frequently rendered, and particularly in this very case, and of this same person, Jer 23:5; which also seems best to agree with the following clause, and with Isa 53:10,11; And this intimation concerning the future prosperity and advancement of the Messiah is fitly put in the first place to prevent those scandals which otherwise might arise from the succeeding passages, which largely describe his state of humiliation and deep affliction.
He shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high: here are three words signifying the same thing, to express the height and glory of his exaltation; which agrees most fitly to Christ, but cannot without great force be applied to Jeremiah, who had no greater honour or favour done him by the Chaldeans at the taking of Jerusalem, than to be left at liberty to go where he pleased, Jer 40:4, and who after that time met with great contempt and hardship from his own countrymen, Jer 42; Jer 43; Jer 44.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
13. Here the fifty-third chapterought to begin, and the fifty-second chapter end with Isa52:12. This section, from here to end of the fifty-third chaptersettles the controversy with the Jews, if Messiah be the personmeant; and with infidels, if written by Isaiah, or at any time beforeChrist. The correspondence with the life and death of Jesus Christ isso minute, that it could not have resulted from conjecture oraccident. An impostor could not have shaped the course of eventsso as to have made his character and life appear to be a fulfilmentof it. The writing is, moreover, declaredly prophetic. Thequotations of it in the New Testament show: (1) that it was, beforethe time of Jesus, a recognized part of the Old Testament; (2) thatit refers to Messiah (Mat 8:17;Mar 15:28; Luk 22:37;Joh 12:38; Act 8:28-35;Rom 10:16; 1Pe 2:21-25).The indirect allusions to it still more clearly prove the Messianicinterpretation; so universal was that interpretation, that it issimply referred to in connection with the atoning virtue ofHis death, without being formally quoted (Mar 9:12;Rom 4:25; 1Co 15:3;2Co 5:21; 1Pe 1:19;1Pe 2:21-25; 1Jn 3:5).The genuineness of the passage is certain; for the Jews wouldnot have forged it, since it is opposed to their notion ofMessiah, as a triumphant temporal prince. The Christians couldnot have forged it; for the Jews, the enemies of Christianity, are”our librarians” [PALEY].The Jews try to evade its force by the figment of two Messiahs, one asuffering Messiah (Ben Joseph), the other a triumphant Messiah (BenDavid). HILLEL maintainedthat Messiah has already come in the person of Hezekiah. BUXTORFstates that many of the modern Rabbins believe that He has been comea good while, but will not manifest Himself because of the sins ofthe Jews. But the ancient Jews, as the Chaldee paraphrast, Jonathan,refer it to Messiah; so the Medrasch Tauchuma (a commentary onthe Pentateuch); also Rabbi Moses Haddarschan (see HENGSTENBERG,Christology of the Old Testament). Some explain it of theJewish people, either in the Babylonish exile, or in theirpresent sufferings and dispersion. Others, the pious portionof the nation taken collectively, whose sufferings made a vicarioussatisfaction for the ungodly. Others, Isaiah, or Jeremiah [GESENIUS],the prophets collectively. But an individual is plainlydescribed: he suffers voluntarily, innocently, patiently, andas the efficient cause of the righteousness of His people, whichholds good of none other but Messiah (Isa 53:4-6;Isa 53:9; Isa 53:11;contrast Jer 20:7; Jer 15:10-21;Psa 137:8; Psa 137:9).Isa 53:9 can hold good of noneother. The objection that the sufferings (Isa53:1-10) referred to are represented as past, theglorification alone as future (Isa 52:13-15;Isa 53:11; Isa 53:12)arises from not seeing that the prophet takes his stand in themidst of the scenes which he describes as future. The greaternearness of the first advent, and the interval between it and thesecond, are implied by the use of the past tense as to thefirst, the future as to the second.
Beholdawakeningattention to the striking picture of Messiah that follows (compareJoh 19:5; Joh 19:14).
my servantMessiah (Isa42:1).
deal prudentlyrather,”prosper” [GESENIUS]as the parallel clause favors (Isa53:10). Or, uniting both meanings, “shall reign well”[HENGSTENBERG]. This versesets forth in the beginning the ultimate issue of His sufferings, thedescription of which follows: the conclusion (Isa53:12) corresponds; the section (Isa 52:13;Isa 53:12) begins as it ends withHis final glory.
extolledelevated(Mar 16:19; Eph 1:20-22;1Pe 3:22).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Behold, my servant shall deal prudently,…. Here properly a new chapter should begin, these three last verses treating of the same person and subject as the following chapter; even of Christ, his person, offices, humiliation, and exaltation, and the effects and fruits thereof; for of him undoubtedly the whole is to be understood. The Jews say it is a difficult prophecy; and so it is to them, being contrary to their notions and schemes, or otherwise it is plain and easy, respecting the Messiah; but rather than he should be thought to be meant, the modern ones have invented a variety of interpretations. Some apply this prophecy to Abraham; others to Moses; others to Ezra; others to Zerubbabel; and others to any righteous person: the more principal and prevailing opinions among them are, that it is to be understood either of the whole body of the people of Israel in captivity, as Jarchi, Aben Ezra, and Kimchi; or of King Josiah, slain by Pharaohnecho, as Abarbinel; or of Jeremiah, as Saadiah Gaon; all which are weak and impertinent, and, as they disagree with each other, show the perplexity they are under r. The Targum interprets it of the Messiah; and so did the ancient Rabbins, as Aben Ezra and Alshech confess; and several parts of the prophecy are applied to him, both by ancient and modern ones, as will be seen in the exposition of it. Christ, as man and Mediator, is the servant of God, of his choosing and calling, sending, bringing forth, and supporting; see Isa 42:1, from whom he had both his work and his wages: the principal part of his service lay in working out the redemption and salvation of his people, in which he willingly and cheerfully engaged, and which he diligently and faithfully performed; in which he showed a regard to his Father’s will, love to his people, and great condescension, as well as wisdom; for, as it is here promised he would, so he did deal “prudently”: as in his infancy, when he disputed with the doctors in the temple, so throughout the whole of his public life, in preaching the Gospel, in answering the questions of his enemies, and in his behaviour at his apprehension, arraignment, condemnation, and crucifixion: or “he shall cause to understand s”; make others wise and prudent; he caused them to understand his Father’s mind and will, the Scriptures, and the Gospel in them; he made men wise unto salvation, and instructed in those things which belong to their peace; and he still does by his spirit, through the ministry of the word: or “he shall prosper” t; the pleasure of the Lord prospered in his hands; he rode forth prosperously, destroying his and our enemies was very successful in working out salvation, as he is in his advocacy and intercession for his people, and in the ministration of his Gospel; and is the author of all prosperity in his churches, and to particular believers. The Targum is,
“behold, my servant the Messiah shall prosper;”
and so another Jewish writer says u, that the section which begins with these words is concerning the Messiah:
he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high; as he has been exalted by his Father, by raising him from the dead, and giving him glory; by placing him at his own right hand, and giving him all power in heaven and in earth; by committing all judgment into his hands, that all men may honour him as they do the Father: and he is “extolled” by his people, in his person and offices, by giving him the glory of their salvation, in their hearts, thoughts, and affections, with their mouths and lips; and so he is in his house and ordinances, by his ministers and churches: and is made “very high”; higher than the kings of the earth; higher than the angels of heaven; higher than the heavens themselves. The Jews w say of the Messiah, in reference to these words, that he is exalted above Abraham, extolled above Moses, and made higher than the ministering angels; and in another ancient book x of theirs it is said, the kingdom of Israel shall be exalted in the days of the Messiah, as it is written,
he shall be exalted and extolled, c.
r See my book of the Prophecies of the Old Testament, &c. fulfilled in Jesus, p. 160, &c. s “erudict, sive intelligere faciet”, Morus. t “Prosperabitur”, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Calvin. So Ben Melech interprets it by , “he shall prosper.” “Feliciter agit”, Cocceius “prospere aget”, Vitringa. u Baal Hatturim in Lev. xvi. 14. w Tanchuma apud Yalkut in loc. x Pesikta apud Kettoreth Hassammim in Targum in Numb. fol. 27. 2.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
In this sense there follows here, immediately after the cry. “Go ye out from Babylon,” an index pointing from the suffering of the Servant to His reward in glory. “Behold, my servant will act wisely; he will come forth, and arise, and be very high.” Even apart from Isa 42:1, hinneh ( hen ) is a favourite commencement with Isaiah; and this very first v. contains, according to Isaiah’s custom, a brief, condensed explanation of the theme. The exaltation of the Servant of Jehovah is the theme of the prophecy which follows. In v. 13 a the way is shown, by which He reaches His greatness; in v. 13 b the increasing greatness itself. by itself means simply to gain, prove, or act with intelligence (lxx ); and then, since intelligent action, as a rule, is also effective, it is used as synonymous with , , to act with result, i.e., so as to be successful. Hence it is only by way of sequence that the idea of “prosperously” is connected with that of “prudently” (e.g., Jos 1:8; Jer 10:21). The word is never applied to such prosperity as a man enjoys without any effort of his own, but only to such as he attains by successful action, i.e., by such action as is appropriate to the desired and desirable result. In Jer 23:2, where hiskl is one feature in the picture of the dominion exercised by the Messiah, the idea of intelligent action is quite sufficient, without any further subordinate meaning. But here, where the exaltation is derived from as the immediate consequence, without any intervening , there is naturally associated with the idea of wise action, i.e., of action suited to the great object of his call, that of effective execution or abundant success, which has as its natural sequel an ever-increasing exaltation. Rosenmller observes, in Isa 52:13, “There is no need to discuss, or even to inquire, what precise difference there is in the meaning of the separate words;” but this is a very superficial remark. If we consider that rum signifies not only to be high, but to rise up (Pro 11:11) and become exalted, and also to become manifest as exalted (Ps. 21:14), and that , according to the immediate and original reflective meaning of the niphal, signifies to raise one’s self, whereas gabhah expresses merely the condition, without the subordinate idea of activity, we obtain this chain of thought: he will rise up, he will raise himself still higher, he will stand on high. The three verbs (of which the two perfects are defined by the previous future) consequently denote the commencement, the continuation, and the result or climax of the exaltation; and Stier is not wrong in recalling to mind the three principal steps of the exaltatio in the historical fulfilment, viz., the resurrection, the ascension, and the sitting down at the right hand of God. The addition of the word shows very clearly that is intended to be taken as the final result: the servant of Jehovah, rising from stage to stage, reaches at last an immeasurable height, that towers above everything besides (comp. in Phi 2:9, with in Act 2:33, and for the nature of the , Eph 1:20-23).
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| The Humiliation of the Messiah. | B. C. 706. |
13 Behold, my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high. 14 As many were astonished at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men: 15 So shall he sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at him: for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they consider.
Here, as in other places, for the confirming of the faith of God’s people and the encouraging of their hope in the promises of temporal deliverances, the prophet passes from them to speak of the great salvation which should in the fulness of time be wrought out by the Messiah. As the prophecy of Christ’s incarnation was intended for the ratification of the promise of their deliverance from the Assyrian army, so this of Christ’s death and resurrection is to confirm the promise of their return out of Babylon; for both these salvations were typical of the great redemption and the prophecies of them had a reference to that. This prophecy, which begins here and is continued to the end of the next chapter, points as plainly as can be at Jesus Christ; the ancient Jews understood it of the Messiah, though the modern Jews take a great deal of pains to pervert it, and some of ours (no friends therein to the Christian religion) will have it understood of Jeremiah; but Philip, who hence preached Christ to the eunuch, has put it past dispute that of him speaks the prophet this, of him and of no other man, Act 8:34; Act 8:35. Here,
I. God owns Christ to be both commissioned and qualified for his undertaking. 1. He is appointed to it. “He is my servant, whom I employ and therefore will uphold.” In his undertaking he does his Father’s will, seeks his Father’s honour, and serves the interests of his Father’s kingdom. 2. He is qualified for it. He shall deal prudently, for the spirit of wisdom and understanding shall rest upon him, ch. xi. 2. The word is used concerning David when he behaved himself wisely, 1 Sam. xviii. 14. Christ is wisdom itself, and, in the contriving and carrying on the work of our redemption, there appeared much of the wisdom of God in a mystery, 1 Cor. ii. 7. Christ, when he was here upon earth, dealt very prudently, to the admiration of all.
II. He gives a short prospect both of his humiliation and his exaltation. See here, 1. How he humbled himself: Many were astonished at him, as they were at David when by reason of his sorrows and troubles he became a wonder unto many, Ps. lxxi. 7. Many wondered to see what base usage he met with, how inveterate people were against him, how inhuman, and what indignities were done him: His visage was marred more than any man’s when he was buffeted, smitten on the cheek, and crowned with thorns, and hid not his face from shame and spitting. His face was foul with weeping, for he was a man of sorrows; he that really was fairer than the children of men had his face spoiled with the abuses that were done him. Never was man used so barbarously; his form, when he took upon him the form of a servant, was more mean and abject than that of any of the sons of men. Those that saw him said, “Surely never man looked so miserably, a worm and no man,” Ps. xxii. 6. The nation abhorred him (ch. xlix. 7), treated him as the off-scouring of all things. Never was sorrow like unto his sorrow. 2. How highly God exalted him, and exalted him because he humbled himself. Three words are used for this (v. 13): He shalt be exalted and extolled and be very high. God shall exalt him, men shall extol him, and with both he shall be very high, higher than the highest, higher than the heavens. He shall prosper in his work, and succeed in it, and that shall raise him very high. (1.) Many nations shall be the better for him, for he shall sprinkle them, and not the Jews only; the blood of sprinkling shall be applied to their consciences, to purify them. He suffered, and died, and so sprinkled many nations; for in his death there was a fountain opened, Zech. xiii. 1. He shall sprinkle many nations by his heavenly doctrine, which shall drop as the rain and distil as the dew. Moses’s did so only on one nation (Deut. xxxii. 2), but Christ’s on many nations. He shall do it by baptism, which is the washing of the body with pure water, Heb. x. 22. So that this promise had its accomplishment when Christ sent his apostles to disciple all nations, by baptizing or sprinkling them. (2.) The great ones of the nation shall show him respect: Kings shall shut their mouths at him, that is, they shall not open their mouths against him, as they have done, to contradict and blaspheme his sacred oracles; nay, they shall acquiesce in, and be well pleased with, the methods he takes of setting up his kingdom in the world; they shall with great humility and reverence receive his oracles and laws, as those who, when they heard Job’s wisdom, after his speech spoke not again,Job 29:9; Job 29:22. Kings shall see and arise, ch. xlix. 7. (3.) The mystery which was kept secret from the beginning of the world shall by him be made known to all nations for the obedience of faith, as the apostle speaks, Rom 16:25; Rom 16:26. That which had not been told them shall they see; the gospel brings to light things new and unheard of, which will awaken the attention and engage the reverence of kings and kingdoms. This is applied to the preaching of the gospel in the Gentile world, Rom. xv. 21. These words are there quoted according to the Septuagint translation: To whom he was not spoken of they shall see, and those that have not heard shall understand. As the things revealed had long been kept secret, so the persons to whom they were revealed had long been kept in the dark; but now they shall see and consider the glory of God shining in the face of Christ, which before they had not been told of–they had not heard. That shall be discovered to them by the gospel of Christ which could never be told them by all the learning of their philosophers, or the art of their diviners, or any of their pagan oracles. Much had been said in the Old Testament concerning the Messiah; much had been told them, and they had heard it. But, as the queen of Sheba found concerning Solomon, what they shall see in him, when he comes, shall far exceed what had been told them. Christ disappointed the expectations of those who looked for a Messiah according to their fancies, as the carnal Jews, but outdid theirs who looked for such a Messiah as was promised. According to their faith, nay, and beyond it, it was to them.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
ISAIAH – CHAPTER 52:13 – 53:12
THE VICARIOUS SUFFERING OF THE MESSIANIC SERVANT
The “Servant of Jehovah” is, at all times, described in individual terms. Though the figure sometimes refers to the nation, it is clear that it often surpasses all that Israel, or any individual in Israel, ever was – being descriptive of an Ideal Figure. He is to be Israel’s Redeemer – whose suffering will make the fulfillment of her task possible.
Few, in ancient Israel, considered “the Servant” to be a Messianic figure; but this does not justify one in rejecting an abundance of prophetic testimony which indicates that He was! The nation’s passionate desire for a political Messiah effectively blinded her to the possibility of a Messiah whose very suffering would be the organ through which His task would be accomplished!
It is quite evident that some in Israel (though unable to harmonize Messianic glory and humiliation) DID regard “the Servant” as a Messianic figure; thus, the formulation of the “two-Messiah philosophy”. Messiah ben Joseph would suffer in humiliation (falling in battle), while Messiah ben David would conquer and rule the earth in righteousness. But, in retrospect, the prophecies concerning “the Suffering Servant,” Who will yet be triumphant, are perfectly harmonized in the person and life of Jesus, the Christ!
Vs. 13-15: EXALTATION AND SUFFERING
1. These three verses introduce and summarize the entire prophecy concerning the Suffering Servant.
2. Speaking through the prophet, God calls Israel to “BEHOLD” His servant, (vs. 13a; comp. Isa 49:1-7; Joh 1:29; Joh 19:4-7).
a. He will “deal prudently”: the very personification of wisdom and knowledge, He will, in all things, act in such a way as to glorify God – while providing indescribable and eternal blessing for mankind, (vs. 13b; Isa 11:2; Luk 2:40; Mat 13:54; Col 2:3).
b. Though acquainted with the deepest humiliation, He will arise to a place of exaltation wherein He stands exceedingly high, (vs. 13c; Act 2:36; Rom 14:9; Eph 1:19-23; Col 1:18; Luk 22:69; Php_2:9; Mar 16:19; Rev 5:12).
3. He is foreseen as being a perpetual astonishment to men, (vs. 14; Mat 7:28; Mar 5:42; Mar 7:37; Act 9:6).
a. From His virgin birth to His vicarious death – His sinless life to His substitutionary sacrifice for sinners – men were amazed and astonished regarding Him, (Joh 7:46; Luk 5:26).
b. By the brutality which He suffered at the hands of men, His appearance was disfigured beyond the semblance of humanity!
c. But, through that very suffering, the Servant is triumphant! (vs. 15).
1) By means of this He is able to “sprinkle (cleansing by His blood) many nations”, (Num 19:17-19; Eze 36:24-25; Psa 51:7; Tit 3:5-6; Heb 9:13-14; Heb 9:19-22; Heb 10:19-23).
2) Kings will stand in reverent and awed silence before Him, (Job 21:5; Job 29:9-10).
3) And the mystery of the Suffering Servant will be unfolded in the glory that follows His humiliation, (Php_2:5-11; Rom 15:8-21; 1Ti 3:16).
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
13. Behold, my servant shall have prosperous success (47) After having spoken of the restoration of the Church, Isaiah passes on to Christ, in whom all things are gathered together. Some explain ישכיל ( yashkil) to mean shall “deal prudently;” but, as it is immediately added that he shall be exalted, the context appears to demand that we shall rather understand it to denote “prosperous success,” for שכל ( shakal) also signifies “to be prosperous.” He speaks, therefore, of the prosperity of the Church; and as this was not visible, he draws their attention to the supreme King, by whom all things shall be restored, and bids them wait for him. And here we ought carefully to observe the contrasts which the Prophet lays down; for the mightiness of this king whom the Lord will exalt is contrasted by him with the wretched and debased condition of the people, who were almost in despair. He promises that this king will be the head of the people, so that under him as the leader the people shall flourish, though they be now in a state of the deepest affliction and wretchedness; because he shall have a prosperous course.
He calls Christ “his Servant,” on account of the office committed to him. Christ ought not to be regarded as a private individual, but as holding the office to which the Father has appointed him, to be leader of the people and restorer of all things; so that whatever he affirms concerning himself we ought to understand as belonging also to us. Christ has been given to us, and therefore to us also belongs his ministry, for the Prophet might have said, in a single word, that Christ will be exalted and will be highly honored; but, by giving to him the title of “Servant,” he means that he will be exalted for our sake.
(47) “Here some begin the 53d chapter, and Salmeron says it is so divided in some copies which he had seen; the subject is new, and has nothing ‘which smacks of Babylon,’ ( quod Babylonium olet,) according to the expression of Sanctius, and is to be literally understood of the Messiah, as all expositors that I have met with agree, except Grotius, who thinks the words may in the first lower sense of them be understood of Jeremiah the prophet, considered as a type of Christ.” — White.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
THE PREDICTED CHARACTER AND TRIUMPH OF CHRIST
Isa. 52:13-15. Behold, my servant shall deal prudently, &c.
Our text is a distinct subject from that discussed in the previous parts of the chapter, and evidently ought to have formed a part of chapter 53. It is most clearly a prophecy concerning the Messiah. It relates both to His official character, sufferings, exaltation, and conquests; and, as such, is replete with deeply interesting matter for our profitable meditation.
I. THE OFFICE OF CHRIST. Gods servant. My servant (Isa. 42:1). Christ, in His mediatorial character, was Gods servant, while in His essential glory He was God blessed for evermore (see pp. 8092). Hearken to His own declarations (Mat. 20:28; Joh. 9:4; Joh. 5:30). His feeling at the beginning of life (Luk. 2:49). His declarations at its end (Joh. 17:4). He ever recognised Himself as Gods servant.
Observe how he discharged the office of servant.
(1.) His fidelity. He was faithful in all thingsnever omitted one of the requirements of His Father; did all His will, and that perfectly.
(2.) His zeal. His Fathers honour and glory ever melted His ardent soul. This feeling consumed His sacred spirit. How it burst forth in the Temple (Joh. 2:11-17).
(3.) His perseverance. He held on His course with undeviating constancy; never turned aside; was faithful unto death.
(4.) The text refers to His prudence. The word in the margin is prosper, But our translation would lead us to view one striking feature in His officethe wisdom which distinguished His course. This shone forth as the light of the sun at noonday. In His discourses to His disciples, in His replies to His enemies, never man spake like this man. ever could His foe entangle Him, &c. Infallibility marked all He said and did.
II. HIS SUFFERINGS. As many were astonished. A stonishingthat a personage so illustrious should be so abased (Psa. 22:6; Isa. 53:3-4). How bitterly was He calumniated! How maliciously He was persecuted!
III. HIS EXALTATION. He shall be exalted, &c. Christ was exalted,
1. In His resurrection from the dead.
2. By His elevation to the right hand of the throne of God.
IV. HIS GLORIFICATION. He shall be extolled. That is, praised, His character celebrated, &c. Angels extolled Him as their Lord, heralded Him back again to His kingdom and glory (Psa. 24:7-10). John heard all the celestial hosts of heaven extolling Him in their anthems of praise (Rev. 5:11-14). His ministering servants and people extol Him on earth. He shall be extolled by His redeemed saints for ever.
V. HIS GRACIOUS CONQUESTS.
1. He shall sprinkle, &c. He does so,
(1.) By His doctrines. His blessed word falls as the rain, distils as the dew, &c.
(2.) By His blood. When these doctrines are received, then man partakes of the merits of His death, and the cleansing virtues of His blood. The blood of Christ is called the blood of sprinkling.
(3.) By His spiritual blessings. The outpouring of His Holy Spirit, and the rich communications of His mercy and love.
2. He shall silence the opposition of kings. These shall oppose the Gospel, and employ worldly power and authority against it. But He shall overturn, &c. (Psa. 2:12; Psa. 72:10).
3. His achievements shall be unprecedented and wonderful. Two things shall particularly astonish.
(1.) The simplicity of His means. Not by carnal weapons, not by human power, not by armies, &c., nor by science, but by the word of grace, and the messengers of salvation (1Co. 1:21).
(2.) The completeness of the results. Effective, deep, and universal changes. Men renovatedsociety altered. Ignorance banishedcrime annihilatedmisery extinguished. Purity, joy, and bliss diffused. The days of heaven upon earth.
APPLICATION.
1. Are we the friends or enemies of the Saviour? Do we despise, reject, deride, reproach, &c., or do we hail, receive, and delight in Him? All men act now as His friends or foes.
2. Has He sprinkled your hearts with the blessings of His graceHis wordHis bloodSpirit?
3. Are you aiding Christ in His triumphal career? Accelerating the conversion of the world? The soldiers of His cross?
4. What bright visions are yet to distinguish the cause of the Saviour! Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, &c.The Pulpit Encyclopdia: vol. i. pp. 156160.
I. The work of. Christ on earth, as this prophecy presents it.
1. He is called the Servant of the Lord.
2. He is a servant dealing prudently.
3. Yet was His visage marred more than any man.
II. The glory of Christ upon His mediatorial throne.
1. He shall be exalted. This relates to His authority and power.
2. He shall be extolled.
3. He shall be very high (Php. 2:9-11).
III. The works of mercy which the Saviour is accomplishing in His exalted state.
1. He sets forth His Gospel according to His promise.
2. He shall sprinkle many nations. This denotes the priestly office of Christ. The kings shall shut their mouths at Him, &c.J. Stratten: The Pulpit, vol. iii. pp. 117124.
Modern Jewish writers refuse to see the Messiah in this passage, but their predecessors were not so blind. The Targum and the ancient Rabbins interpreted it of the Messiah, and indeed all attempts to explain it apart from Him are palpable failures. Christian commentators in all ages have seen the Lord Jesus here.
I. THE CHARACTER OF OUR LORDS DEALINGS. He is called in the text, My servant, a title as honourable as it is condescending. Jesus has deigned to become the great servant of God under the present economy; He conducts the affairs of the household of God, and it is said that He deals prudently. He who took upon Him the form of a servant acts as a wise servant in everything. This prudence was manifest in the days of His flesh, from His childhood among the doctors in the Temple on to His confession before Pontius Pilate. Our Lord was enthusiastic (Joh. 2:17); but that enthusiasm never carried Him into rashness; He was as wise and prudent as the most cool-hearted calculator could have been. He was full of love, and that love made Him frank and open-hearted; but for all that He committed Himself unto no man, for He knew what was in man. Too many who aspire to be leaders of the people study policy, craft, and diplomacy. The Friend of sinners had not a fraction of that thing about Him; and yet you see His wisdom when He baffles His adversaries; and when He deals with His friends (Joh. 16:12).
He who on earth became obedient unto death has now gone into His glory, but He is still over the house of God, conducting its affairs. He deals prudently still. Our fears lead us to judge that the affairs of Christs kingdom are going amiss, but we may rest assured that all is well. He has ultimate designs which are not apparent upon the surface, and these He never fails to accomplish.
Another translation of the passage is, my servant shall have prosperous success. Let us append that meaning to the other. Prosperity will grow out of our Lords prudent dealings. The pleasure of the Lord prospers in the hands of Jesus. The Gospel will prosper in the thing whereto God has sent it. All along the line the Captain of our salvation will be victorious, and in every point and detail of the entire business the will of the Lord shall be done, and all heaven and earth shall be filled with praise as they see that it is so.
In consequence of this, the Lord shall be exalted and extolled. How well He deserves to be exalted and extolled for His matchless prudence! The plans which the Lord has adopted are surely working out the growth of His kingdom, and will certainly result in bringing to the front His name, and person, and teaching. The star of Jesus rises higher every hour. He was despised and rejected of men, but now tens of thousands adore Him; and to Him every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that He is Lord.
II. THE STUMBLING-BLOCK IN THE WAY OF OUR LORD. It is His cross, which to Jew and Greek is ever a hindrance. As if the prophet saw Him in vision, he cries out, As many were astonished at Thee; His visage was so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men. When He was here, His personal position and condition and appearance were very much against the spread of His kingdom. He was the son of a carpenter, He wore the smock-frock of a peasant, He associated with publicans and sinners. Therefore the Jews rejected the meek and lowly prince of the house of David, and alas! they persist in their rejection of His claims.
To-day He has risen from the grave and gone into His glory, but the offence of the cross has not ceased, for upon His Gospel there remains the image of His marred visage, and therefore men despise it. The preaching of the cross is foolishness to many. Men will tell you they could believe Christianity, if it were not for the atonement. Here stands the head and front of the difficultythe cross, which is the soul of Christianity, is also its stumbling-block. [1605]
[1605] If any here are offended with Christ because of His cross, I beg them to dismiss the prejudice. Should it lead any man to doubt the Saviour, or withhold his heart from Him because He comes with a visage marred with sorrow? If He came to teach us to be unhappy, and to prescribe to us rules for increasing misery, we might be excused if we shunned His teaching; but if He comes bearing the grief Himself that we may not bear it, and if those lines of agony were wrought in His countenance because He carried our griefs and our sorrows, they ought to be to us the most attractive of all beauties. I reckon that the scar across the warriors face, which he gained in defending his country, is no disfigurement to him; it is a beauty-spot. If my brother had, in saving my life, lost an arm, or received a hideous wound, he would be all the more beautiful in my esteem; certainly I could not shun him on that account. The wounds of Jesus are precious jewels which should charm our eyes, eloquent mouths which should win our hearts.Spurgeon.
The practical part of the Gospel is equally a stumbling-block to ungodly men, for when men inquire what they must do to be saved, they are told that they must receive the Gospel as little children, that they must repent of sin, and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Very humbling precepts for human self-sufficiency! Be kindly affectioned one to another, forgiving one another and forbearing one another, even as God for Christs sake has forgiven you; to the world which loves conquerors, and blasts of trumpets, and chaplets of laurel, this kind of teaching has a marred visage, and an uncomely form.
What seems even more humbling, the Lord sends this Gospel among us by men who are neither great nor noble, nor even among the wise of this world. Very simple is what they say: Believe and live; Christ in your stead suffered for you, trust Him; they say this and little more. Is not this the fools gospel? Is it not worthy to be called the foolishness of preaching? Men do not like this, it is an offence to their dignity. They would hear Csar if he would officiate in his purple, but they cannot endure Peter preaching in his fishermans coat.
Worse still, the people who become converted and follow the Saviour are generally of the poorer sort, and lightly esteemed. Have any of the rulers believed? is still the question. [1608]
[1608] With what scorn do your literary men speak of professed Christians! Have you ever seen the sneer upon the face of your advanced thought gentleman, and of the far-gone school of infidels, when they speak of the old women and the semi-idiots who listen to the pious platitudes of evangelical doctrines? They know how to despise us, if they know nothing else! But is such scorn worthy of men? It is only another version of the old sneer of the Pharisees when they said, Hearest Thou what these say? and pointed to the boys and the rabble, who shouted, Hosanna, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord! Contempt has always followed at the heels of Jesus, and it always will till the day of His glory.Spurgeon.
III. THE CERTAINTY OF THE SPREAD OF CHRISTS KINGDOM. As His face was marred, so surely shall He sprinkle many nations. This sprinkling we must interpret according to the Mosaic ceremonies, and you know there was a sprinkling with blood, to set forth pardon of sin, and a sprinkling with water to set forth purification from the power of sin. Jesus Christ, with
The water and the blood
From His riven side which flowed,
has sprinkled not only men but many nations, and the day will come when all nations shall feel the blessed drops which are scattered from His hands, and know them to be of sin the double cure, cleansing transgressors both from its guilt and power.
The text claims for Christ that the influence of His grace and the power of His work shall be extended over many nations, and shall have power, not over the common people only, but over their rulers and leaders. The kings shall shut their mouths at Him; they shall have no word to say against Him; they shall be so subdued by the majesty of His power that they shall silently pay Him reverence, and prostrate themselves before His throne. The day will come when the mightiest prince shall count it his highest honour to have his name enrolled as a member of the Church of Christ (Psa. 72:11; Jer. 31:34).
IV. THE MANNER OF THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THIS PROPHECY. How will it come to pass? Will there be a new machinery? Will the world be converted, and the kings be made to shut their mouths by some new mode of operation? No, the way which has been from the beginning of the dispensation will last to its close. It pleases God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. To conceive that our Lord will end the present mode of warfare, as though it were admitted that the evil could not be conquered by the use of that instrumentality, is to my mind to do Him great dishonour. To me it is plain that, as He has chosen to magnify His power by using feeble instruments, He will continue to do so till the victory is won.
According to this passage, these kings and nations are first of all to hear. Faith cometh by hearing. Well, brethren, if they are to hear, we must preach and teach, so that our clear line of duty is to go on spreading the Gospel.
These people appear not only to have heard, but to have seen. That which had not been told them shall they see. This seeing is not with their bodily eyes, but by the perceptions of their minds. Faith comes by the soul perceiving what the Gospel means. We cannot believe in that which we do not perceive. Therefore we must go on telling people the Gospel till they see what the Gospel is.
After they had seen, they considered. That which they had not heard shall they consider. This is how men are saved: they hear the Gospel, they catch the meaning of it, and then they consider it. Let us pray that God would set unconverted people considering. If we can but get them to think, we have great hopes of them. (See vol. i. pp. 712.)
It is clear that those people, when they had seen and considered silently, accepted the Lord as their Lord, for they shut their mouths at Him; they ceased from all opposition; they quietly resigned their wills, and paid allegiance to the great King of kings. Now then, let us spread abroad the Saviours blessed name, for He is the worlds only hope. The cross is the banner of our victory. God help us to look to it ourselves, and then to hold it up before the eyes of others, till our Lord shall come upon His throne.C. H. Spurgeon: The Metropolitan Pulpit, No. 1231.
THE HUMILIATION AND EXALTATION OF THE MESSIAH
(Missionary Sermon.)
Isa. 52:13-15. Behold, my servant shall deal prudently, &c.
I. THE INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY INTO THE WORLD BY THE MYSTERIOUS SUFFERINGS OF ITS DIVINE FOUNDER.
Behold my servant! Many were astonished at Thee: His visage was so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men. This astonishment of many evidently refers to the inconsistency apparent between the high pretensions and the depressed condition of this Servant of God. The prophecies concerning Him (Hag. 2:7; Gen. 49:10; Isa. 9:6-7, &c.) A sordid and earthly interpretation had enshrined these promises in the hearts of the Jewish nation. The Jewish patriot hailed, in expectation, the brilliant hour in which the Messiah should break to shivers the chains which held his country in subjection to the Roman yoke; while the man of narrow and selfish ambition rejoiced in the vision that gleamed before his eyes, when the descendants of Abraham should hold dominion over the prostrate nations of the world. When, therefore, the Saviour of the world appeared in the lowly garb of the son of the carpenter of Nazareth; when He shunned every effort for personal aggrandisementresisted every popular movement to advance His regal claimsput forth His power only to heal the diseased and comfort the wretchedand, with a humility without parallel, and a sympathy that knew no exclusion, constantly mingled with the meanest and most despised of His countrymen; then the mortified expectations of the Jewish rulers burst with tremendous efficacy upon His devoted head. The evidence in favour of His high claims was speedily examined; it was strong, clear, obvious (Joh. 7:46; Mat. 9:33; Mat. 27:42); but it was as speedily rejected. The union in Him of power and sufferingof dignity and contemptof riches to others and poverty to Himself, was a source of astonishment to many. Angels looked on, and wondered, and adored. In truth, the plan of Christianity, with its introduction into the world, is far above the calculations of human sagacity (1Co. 1:23-24).
II. THE DECLARATION WITH REGARD TO THE UNIVERSAL DIFFUSION OF THE RELIGION OF CHRIST ON THE EARTH. My servant shall deal prudently; He shall be exalted, and extolled, and be very high.
1. He shall deal prudently is in the margin translated He shall prosper, and thus the whole clause is declarative of the same truththe triumph and success of the Son of God. If many were astonished at His humiliation, a far greater number shall be astonished at, and rejoice in, His exaltation. He has already established upon earth the heavenly kingdom over which He rules.
2. This grand and glorious achievement He effected by means that came not within the expectation of the Jewish people, although they were clearly predicted. It was by death that He conquered death. It was by a perfect obedience in action and suffering that He became the second Adamthe spiritual Head of a new and happier race (Rom. 4:25). He planted His religion on the earth, opposed by hostile scorn, relentless malice, and despotic power. In a few years the banner of the Cross waved upon the conquered fortresses of Paganism, and enlisted under its folds the great and mighty of the earth. Yet no earthly weapon had been raised in its defence nor in its assaults. The cause of Christ had achieved its victories by its own inherent power. It was resistless by its truth, and by the silent operations of the Spirit of truth. Its adherents were indeed strong, but it was in faith, purity, and charity. Thus the Servant of God prospered, was extolled, and became very high.
3. But His reign on the earth is yet very limited, and His conquests incomplete. There remaineth yet much land to be possessed. Three-fourths of the human race are still the prey of idolatry or of imposture; and the ancient people of God are still outcasts from His favour, and the victims of unbelief.
III. WHAT WE MAY GATHER FROM THIS PROPHETIC ACCOUNT RESPECTING THE PROCESS BY WHICH THE KINGDOM OF THE MESSIAH SHALL BE FULLY AND FINALLY ESTABLISHED. As many shall they consider (1 Corinthians 14, 15). These declarations are full of information as to the process by which Christianity shall advance to her sacred and ultimate dominion. We are led to infer
1. That there shall be a wide dispersion of Divine knowledge over heathen and Mohammedan nations; for men cannot see or consider that which is not presented to their notice.
2. The nations shall fix their anxious attention on the truths declared to them. Is there now before our eyes no such symptom of the approaching reign of Christ?
3. Impressed with holy awe, they shall assume the attitude of abasement and submission. The expression, the kings shall shut their mouths at Him, implies the submission of whole nations, here represented by kings; for, as the reception of Christianity on the part of the rulers of a country requires the overthrow of every system of religious polity previously established, such a reception, publicly made, implies, more or less, the submission of the mass of people. Enlightened by the Divine Spirit, they shall recognise His righteous claims, receive His law, trust to His grace, and bow to His sway.
4. He shall forgive their iniquities and sanctify their hearts. He shall sprinkle many nationsthat is, in allusion to the aspersions under the law, by which the people were sanctified,. He shall apply to the souls of regenerated multitudes the blood of His great atonement, and the sacred influences of His Holy Spirit. Then the conquests of the Redeemer shall be visible and splendid (Psa. 72:17).G. T. Noel, M.A., in Sketches of Sermons on Christian Missions, pp. 114119.
Of whom does the prophet speak? Not of the nation, but of an individual. That individual is not himself. No one corresponds, in the circumstances detailed, but the Christ. Behold, my servant shall deal prudently, &c.
I. DESCRIBES HIS HUMILIATION. My servant. He was appointed to a work. He assumed the human body, subjecting Himself to the conditions of a lowly human life, that He might be under law. He was voluntarily a servant under a master. He became subject to the Fathers will, although that will involved His suffering unto death. He was fully acquainted with the solemn necessity for His suffering, in order to the accomplishment of the end, on which His heart was set as much as the Fathers heart. Hence the sweep of His humiliation was all the way from the bosom of the Fatherthe glory which He had with the Fatherin heaven, to the lowliest conditions of an earthly life.
II. COMMENDS HIS CONDUCT. Shall deal prudently. His conduct was uniformly consistent with the end He had in view. He pursued that end steadily from the beginning of His course, both when He eluded the vigilant hostility of His enemies, and when He allowed Himself to fall into their hands. He conducted Himself with perfect wisdom, so that everything happened in the way and at the time He intended.
III. PREDICTS HIS EXALTATION. He shall be exalted, and extolled, and be very high (Isa. 53:11-12).The exaltation follows the humiliation, and is its consequence (Php. 2:6-10). Note how varied are the elements of His exaltation, and how we have in them a complete and glorious fulfilment of this prediction. We see it fulfilled. Let us observe how it has followed His humiliation. Note these facts
1. In His resurrection from the dead. On the third day from His crucifixion He rose from the grave (1Co. 15:4-8). Its moral grandeur as evidence of His truth, and of the Fathers acceptance of the work He had just performed in His death, is enhanced by the circumstance that He had predicted His resurrection on that day. This fact was made prominent in the apostolic ministry, especially at first; it was the main argument for the truth of Christ.
2. In His ascension to heaven. This was also witnessed by the apostolic company. And references to it in their sermons and epistles show how much importance they attached to it in relation to His personal distinction, and also in relation to His continued work and influence on His Church and on the world.
3. In the pre-eminence assigned to Him. He is at the right hand of God, which is the place of honour and prominence at the celestial court (Col. 1:18; 1Pe. 3:22; Eph. 1:20-23). All things are put under His feet.
4. In the functions He discharges. They arise out of the redemptive work which He accomplished on the Cross. They consist in
(1.) The restoration of His Church. To this end He endowed His apostles with power to work miracles in His name. He commissioned them, and still commissions His ministers to preach the Gospel to every creature. He bestows spiritual blessings on sinful men (Act. 5:31; Joh. 17:2; Heb. 7:25; Joh. 14:2).
(2.) In the certain subjugation of His enemies (Psa. 110:1). The gradual extension and final triumph of His empire (H. E. I. 979).
(3.) In the judgment of the world. All judgment is committed to Him. In Matthew 25 there is a representation of the proceedings of the great day of judgment, which represents the Lord Jesus Christ as the most august and illustrious personage in the universe.
5. In the honour He receives. From the Church on earth. The Church honours the Son even as it honours the Father. It renders to Him similar trust, love, and obedience. From the saints in heaven (Rev. 5:9-10). From the angelic ranks (Rev. 5:12). From the whole universe (Rev. 5:13-14).
Christian brethren, see that you exalt your glorified Saviour. Be not ashamed of your connection with Him. Let it be your boast, as it is unquestionably the cause of your real dignity. Glorify and extol Him by your praises, and by the holiness of your lives. And expect the final glorification with Him. For, like your Saviour, your days of conflict, toil, and suffering will be followed by the exaltation to heaven.J. Rawlinson.
I. THE UNPARALLELED HUMILILIATION OF CHRIST.
1. The state of humiliation begins with the stupendous fact of His incarnation (Php. 2:6-8; 2Co. 8:9, &c.) While we believe and teach the supreme divinity of Christ, we also exult in the wondrous fact that He became man. Two natures mysteriously united. Revelation affirms the fact, but not the mode. Great is the mystery of godliness. A stoop of illimitable graciousness! His assumption of humanity was real and complete. It was no God in disguiseno mock assumption of humanity, the whole nature was taken on (H. E. I. 849854).
2. His humiliation is seen in His humble and lowly life, in fixed obedience to the law. He was not born of loins enthroned, or rulers of the earth, but of a poor virgin, &c. (Isa. 7:14; Mat. 1:18-23; Luk. 1:26-35; Mat. 13:55-56; Mar. 6:3-4). He was born in a stable at a common inn, &c. (Luk. 2:1-7; Luk. 12:16). He wrought at the same employment with His reputed father (Mat. 13:55). The Lord of the world was subject to man! The Author of the law became its servantsubmitted Himself to the rite of circumcision, and all the righteousness of the law, and accomplished it by a perfect obedience in deed and suffering. He was always poor (Mat. 8:20; Mat. 17:24-27; Joh. 19:25-27). He toiled, hungered, thirsted, and was weary; tempted of the devil and despised by man. Again and again He was declared to be a deceiver and in league with hell (Mat. 4:1-11; Joh. 7:12, &c.) That He might be the comforter of the poor and wretched, He shunned not the poverty and wretchedness of men, &c.
3. In His sufferings and death. His whole life was one of suffering (Isa. 52:14). His general appearance was so disfigured by excessive grief and distress, as scarcely to retain the appearance of a man (see Barnes, in loco). In every struggle and conflict of which man is capable, the Captain of our salvation shared a part. His humiliation was deeper still: He humbled Himself unto death, even the death of the cross. The agony in the garden (Luk. 23:41-44); the betrayal (Mat. 26:14-16; Mat. 27:3-4); the treachery of His disciples, &c. The weight of a worlds sin; the dread hiding of His Fathers countenance; the shameful, painful, and cursed death of the cross (Mat. 27:46; Isa. 53:10; Joh. 19:16-18; Php. 2:7-8; Gal. 3:13). While we treat of the depth of this suffering, let us meditate upon the dignity of the person undergoing such agony. What immeasurable love and compassion!
4. He was humbled in His burial (Joh. 19:38-42, &c.) The body of the Son of God lay lifeless in the grave until the morning of the third day!
Note carefully and remember well that the humiliation of Christ was perfectly voluntary (Php. 2:6-8, &c.) The will of the Father did not coerce the Son (Joh. 10:11; Joh. 10:17-18). With the entire concurrence of His will He thoughtfully and deliberately yielded Himself up to death, with all its attendant circumstances of shame and suffering, that He might accomplish the Fathers will, and effect the redemption of mankind. He was a willing victim (H. E. I. 918). This was essential. There can be no merit in exacted suffering. Herein we behold the wonderful love of Jesus. In this voluntariness we are called to imitate our great pattern. How willingly we should give ourselves to Him who so willingly gave all He could give for us!
II. HIS UNPARALLELED EXALTATION. A happy transition. He shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high. Concerning the fulfilment of this prediction, see preceding outline.
CONCLUSION.From the wide field of instruction furnished by this subject, two or three reflections deserve particular consideration
1. We have the Divine attributes exhibited in a manner and to a degree they would never otherwise have been.
2. We see the way in which His followers may expect to go to heaven. Like their Master, they must be humbled before they are exalted (Luk. 18:14; Jas. 4:10; 2Ti. 2:11-12). Whatever we may have to pass through, let us remember that Jesus has gone before, &c. He prays that His people may be with Him (Joh. 17:24), and in due time they who have suffered with Him shall also reign with Him.
3. The manner in which these stupendous facts must affect the finally impenitent. What are they to you? Only wonderful events? Is there no intelligent personal interest in them? Your condemnation will not proceed on the evidence that you have profaned Gods holy name, &c., but on the rejection of an offered Saviourthe one great, damning sin into which all other sins are merged (Joh. 3:19). Again, this once humbled but now exalted and glorified Saviour is offered for your acceptance (Psa. 2:12).Alfred Tucker.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
c.
REGENCY
TEXT: Isa. 52:13-15
13
Behold, my servant shall deal wisely, he shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high.
14
Like as many were astonished at thee, (his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men,)
15
so shall he sprinkle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths at him; for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they understand.
QUERIES
a.
How shall the servant deal wisely?
b.
In what way was his visage marred?
c.
How shall he sprinkle many nations?
PARAPHRASE
Behold! My Servant shall succeed. He shall be exalted to the highest degree. At first, many will be shocked at the humiliating physical torture and disfigurement he enduresso much more than is possible for others in human form. But his exaltation will be that much more astounding. His success will cause the hearts of many to leap within them. Kings and great men will be awed by His glory. They will see and understand things they could never know before His coming.
COMMENTS
Isa. 52:13 AFFIRMATION: Chapter and verse numeration (which came many centuries after the original documents were written) obscures the contextual flow of our present passage; Isa. 52:13 through Isa. 53:12 should be read as a unit. Making Isa. 52:15 the end of a chapter and Isa. 53:1 the beginning of another is an unfortunate adumbration which the student of Isaiahs message must be careful to trace out. These verses are all one dissertation on the success of the Suffering Servant.
The Hebrew word yasekkiyl is the infinitive of sakal and may be translated to prosper; to have success, instead of deal wisely. This translation would fit the context. The affirmation of Jehovah is that His Servant shall succeed in fulfilling all the predictions made (through Isaiah) of ultimate deliverance, redemption and glorification of Zion. The Servant-Messenger-Messiah of Jehovah will be exalted to the highest degree. Zion has suffered and will suffer much from the days of Isaiah until God comes and establishes His reign among men. Good tidings are beginning to come through the prophets of God. How beautiful will be the feet of the divine Messenger of God who will not only bring the message of salvation and peace but also accomplish it in Himself (cf. Isa. 52:7). The mighty Jehovah is going to bare His holy arm (power) before all the world (cf. Isa. 52:10). Contrary to Gods apparent default on His covenant promises to the patriarchs by allowing the Babylonian captivity, the Lord is going to send His Servant and He will succeed in re-establishing Zion in divine power and splendor. This Servant will achieve what He sets out to do. Why is it necessary to affirm the success of the Servant? Because even the Servants appearance in history will initially be in such a low, humble, unspectacular, humiliating way, most of the world will not believe. He is a manifestation of the power of Jehovah! (cf. Isa. 53:1 ff). But the success of the Lords Servant will be extraordinary. Three Hebrew verbs (roomexalted; nissalifted up; gavahvery high) are piled one upon another to emphasize that The Servant will not be defeated in the extreme suffering He will have to undergo (including death).
Isa. 52:14-15 AMAZEMENT: Isa. 52:15 is in antithesis to Isa. 52:14 and emphasizes the contrast between what the Servant first appeared to be and what He later was acknowledged to be. The thee of Isa. 52:14 is therefore the Servant-Messiah (not Israel). Men will be shocked at His humble demeanor. He claimed to be the king of the Jewsthe Messiah, but He did not in any way fulfill human presuppositions as to messianic royalty. He was slandered, mocked, accused of blasphemy, arrested, unjustly tried and sentenced as a criminal. He was scourged with a Roman whip and physically mutilated more than most human beings ever suffer, placed on a bloody Roman cross and there tortured both physically and psychologically by mocking rabbis, soldiers, and the multitudes. Some were shocked at His extreme disfigurement (cf. Luk. 23:47-49). But the fact of His absolute innocence contrasted with His willing acceptance of the atonement for the sin of the world is what makes his visage . . . so marred more than any man . . . Php. 2:5-11 expresses it perfectly. The Son of God emptied Himself and took the form of a servant. But God highly exalted Him. As low as His humiliation was, His exaltation was infinitely higher! The Hebrew word yazzeh is kin to the Arabic naza which means the springing or leaping of people caused by excess of emotion. Yazzeh is from the Hebrew root nazah which is usually translated sprinkle, but apparently is better translated here, startle, amaze, cause to jump, scatter. Leupold translates it startle; Todays English Version translates marvel; New International Version footnotes, marvel; RSV is startle; most other translations make it sprinkle. Young comments . . . he will sprinkle many nations . . . As one who is disfigured, the servant does something for others, in that he performs a purifying rite . . . men regarded the servant as himself unclean and in need of purification, whereas he himself as a priest will sprinkle water and blood and so purify many nations. We prefer the translation startle because it seems more appropriate to the intended contrast of the context.
Man will be shocked at His humiliation. But the goiym (nations or Gentiles) will be startled at the totally unexpected development events surrounding His humiliation and exaltation will ultimately take! The consequences will be world-wide. A church will be born; His disciples will be found even in the household of Caesar! The like of what shall result from the humiliation and exaltation of Jehovahs Servant was never imagined by the great (kings, philosophers, theologians). Never was anyone brought so low; never was anyone raised so high as Gods Servant. Emperors, philosophers, rabbis will be awed by His glory. Through Him will come a revelation from God (justification, redemption, sanctification) of things they could never know before His coming, but now they believe, appropriate and experience.
This text (Isa. 52:13 to Isa. 53:12) is written in the predictive present. It is prophecy, but it is so certain to come to pass it can be written as if it had already happened or was then happening. It is almost as if we were listening to two disciples of Jesus standing on a street-corner in Jerusalem reviewing the things that happened on Good Friday in the light of Easter Sunday and the Day of Pentecost. Isaiahs account is so vivid and was fulfilled so minutely it is little wonder that many of the fathers of the church days of old claim that the account reads as though Isaiah had sat at the foot of the cross.
QUIZ
1.
Why emphasize the success of the Servant of Jehovah?
2.
Why were men astonished at the marred visage of the Servant?
3.
What verses of the N.T. shed light on the humiliation of the Servant?
4.
What is the contrast between Isa. 52:14-15?
5.
What is predictive present?
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(13) Behold, my servant . . .There is absolutely no connection between Isa. 52:12-13, absolutely no break between the close of Isa Iii. and the opening of Isaiah 53. The whole must be treated as an entirely distinct section (all the more striking, from its contrast to the triumphant tone of what precedes it), and finds its only adequate explanation in the thought of a new revelation made to the prophets mind. That may have had, like other revelations, a starting-point in the prophets own experience. He had seen partially good kings, like Uzziah and Jotham; one who almost realised his ideal of what a king should be, in Hezekiah. None of these had redeemed or regenerated the people. So far as that work had been done at all, it had been through prophets who spake the word of the Lord and were mocked and persecuted because they spake it. Something like a law was dawning upon his mind, and that law was the power of a vicarious suffering, the might of martyrdom in life and death. Did it not follow from this that that ideal must be wrought out on a yet wider scale in the great work of restoration to which he was looking forward? The Servant of the Lord, in all the concentric developments of the thought which the word implied, the nation, the prophetic kernel of the nation, the individual Servant identifying himself with both, must himself also be made perfect through suffering and conquer through apparent failure. Granting that such a law exists, it will be no wonder that we should find examples of its working both before and after the great fulfilment, in Isaiah himself, in Jeremiah, in the exiles of the captivity, in the heroes of the Maccabean struggle, in the saints and martyrs of the Church of Christ. It remains true that the Christ alone fulfils the idea of the perfect sufferer, as He alone fulfils that of the perfect King. Measuring Isaiah from a purely human stand-point, and by the standard of other poets, this manifold symbolism of the Servant, will hardly seem strange to the student of literature who remembers the many aspects presented by the Beatrice of Dante, the St. George and Gloriana of Spenser, the Piers Plowman of Langland.
Shall deal prudently.The words imply, as in Jos. 1:8; Jer. 10:21, the idea of prospering. The same verb is used of the righteous branch in Jer. 23:5, and is there so translated.
Shall be exalted.It is noteworthy that the phrase impressed itself, through the LXX., on the mind of the Christ in reference to His crucifixion (Joh. 3:14; Joh. 8:28; Joh. 12:32), on that of the Apostles in reference to His ascension (Act. 2:33; Php. 2:9). (Comp. Isa. 6:1; Isa. 57:15; Psa. 89:27.)
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
13. This verse states his career in terms undeniably generic.
My servant shall deal prudently Or, he shall act wisely. Coming from the bosom of Jehovah to redeem the race, he knows its condition and the means to recover it to himself. He will not infringe upon its moral liberty, yet he will institute a system all his own, but open to the free action of men toward him, to own him as their Saviour and King. And this shall result in his exaltation.
He shall be exalted and extolled He will, through results of his mediatorial work, be raised to supreme dignity, or, more specifically, be raised high exceedingly.
The Servant of Yahweh Revealed ( Isa 52:13-15 ).
In Isa 50:9 we left the Servant preparing for His court battle where He expected, after his period of humiliation and ill-treatment, to meet up with His adversaries and be vindicated by Yahweh. Here we find the conclusion of the case. The Servant is humiliated, tried and finally vindicated and lifted up to the throne of Yahweh. For ‘high’ and ‘lifted up’ compare Isa 6:1. This can only have in mind the One Who was the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace (Isa 9:6) for He alone was worthy to be raised to the throne of Yahweh.
So following as it does the command to Zion to go out to the nations with God’s word we are justified in seeing in these verses the content of that word, the exaltation of the coming Davidic king Who would be born into a background of poverty and need (Isa 7:14-16), but His exaltation would only come after facing deep humiliation for the sins of many.
The continuation of the song in chapter 53 makes it quite clear that the Servant here is primarily not Isaiah and Israel, for in chapter 53 Isaiah speaks of ‘we’ in contra-position to the Servant and ‘we’ regularly denotes, in Isaiah, the prophet as conjoining himself with Israel.
Isa 52:13-15
“Behold, my servant will deal wisely,
He will be exalted and lifted up and be very high.
In the same way as many were astonished at you,
(His appearance was so marred more than any man,
And his form more than the sons of men),
So will he sprinkle many nations.
Kings will shut their mouths at him,
For that which has not been told them will they see,
And that which they have not heard they will understand.”
‘Behold, my servant.’ Compare Isa 42:1. In Isa 42:1 He was upheld. Here He is uplifted. But here also He first ‘deals wisely’, which summarises Isa 42:1 a-4 and Isa 49:2-3. He will be upheld in His service and will carry out His appointed task of bringing righteousness to the world with wisdom and forethought, and bring it to a satisfactory end, and then He will be uplifted.
We may also see the ‘behold’ as following the ‘listen — attend — listen — awake — awake — awake’ of Isa 51:1; Isa 51:4; Isa 51:7; Isa 51:9; Isa 51:17; Isa 52:1). Thus the message to His people is, ‘Listen, awake, behold.’
‘He will be exalted and lifted up and be very high.’ The first two verbs both indicate being lifted up. There is probably intended to be a progression. We could translate ‘raised and lifted up and made very high’. He will be raised from among men, then He will be lifted up further, then He will be set ‘very high’. Elsewhere in Isaiah it is Yahweh Who is ‘raised and lifted up’ (Isa 6:1; Isa 57:15 – same verbs – compare Isa 33:10). Earlier we have seen the Davidic king described as the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father (Isa 9:6), which again were God-like titles, indicating also His lifting up. The two are surely therefore to be seen as parallels. This exactly describes a similar idea to that in the New Testament where we read that Jesus, having been raised from the dead, was set at the right hand of God (Act 7:55; Rom 8:34; Col 3:1; Heb 1:3; Heb 10:12). Nothing could be higher than that.
But this exaltation is to follow a period of humiliation (compare Isa 49:7; Isa 50:6), when men will be astonished at Him because His face and appearance will be so marred, and His body will be so wasted, that men could not have believed it if they had not seen it. The thought here is of bearing the consequences of sin as in Isa 1:5-6 (compare Jer 5:3), so that He is like a sick and wasted man (compare Isa 1:5), so dreadful to the sight that men cannot look at Him, and they say of Him, is this really a human being? (His form more than the sons of men’). The intention is to bring out the extreme depths of His suffering (compare Isa 50:3-8). That this would be the appearance of Jesus on the cross is unquestionable. The sight of the crucifixion of a bloodstained maltreated victim was excruciating. Under the justice of those days the transition from a healthy man to a crumpled, broken, wasted wreck did not take long. And Jesus was not only bearing that but was also engaged in a battle with the forces of darkness that tore at His inner soul.
‘Many were astonished (appalled) at you.’ That is, because of the awfulness of what He suffered. The use of ‘many’ in this way is restricted to this section from Isa 52:13 to Isa 53:12 in Isaiah. It is in contrast with ‘the One’ being referred to. In the end ‘the many’ refers to the faithful among the rebellious people of God, those who respond to Him having recognised that they have gone astray (Isa 53:6). It is those who are justified through what the Servant accomplishes and whose sins He bears (Isa 53:11-12), thus bringing out His uniqueness as separate from them and acting on their behalf.
‘So will He sprinkle many nations.’ The verb would normally signify ‘sprinkle’ (cause to spurt) although, on the basis of the Arabic, ‘startle’ (cause to leap’) has been suggested as an alternative, but even in the Arabic it is not really used in this sense. The meaning ‘sprinkle’ is thus paramount in the Old Testament. The connection must then be – ‘as many were astonished at Him — so will He sprinkle many nations, kings will shut their mouths at Him.’ They were astonished at His appearance, they were even more astonished when He sprinkled many nations. The movement from sacrificed offering to atoning priest, from Lamb of God to great High Priest took all by surprise.
In the sprinkling of many nations we see the priestly work of the Servant hinted at, as in Isa 52:1; Isa 52:11-12. Here it is ‘the priest’ Himself (the High Priest) Who is at work. His followers will then take what He has done, in making atonement and establishing the new covenant, out to the world in ‘the vessels of Yahweh’. Sprinkling was the means of application of the sacrificial blood to the people in establishing the covenant (Exo 24:6-8), and of the water of purification with which God would sprinkle His people to thoroughly cleanse them from all their iniquity and give them a new heart and a new spirit (Eze 36:25; Num 8:7). There too ‘the vessels of Yahweh’ (compare Exo 24:6; Num 19:17) were used to apply the sacrificial blood and the purifying ‘water of purification’ that contained the ashes of a heifer (which Ezekiel uses as a symbol of the Holy Spirit – Eze 36:25). So the Servant is both king and priest, bringing the nations into the covenant through the offering of blood and purifying and revivifying them.
‘Kings will shut their mouths at him, for that which has not been told them will they see, and that which they have not heard they will understand.’ That kings will shut their mouths at Him stresses His own royalty. It is fellow-kings about whom kings receive reports. And they will be astounded because they will see something outside what has been reported to them, and understand what has not been told to them. They will see through the reports to the remarkable account of His deep humiliation followed by His rise to supreme glory and royalty, and learn what this Servant of Yahweh has done, not only for His own people but also for the world.
Isa 52:13 Behold, my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high.
Isa 52:13 Word Study on “shall deal prudently” Strong says the Hebrew word “shall deal prudently” ( ) (H7919) is a primitive root meaning, “to be circumspect, hence, intelligent, wisdom, to understand, to prosper.” The Enhanced Strong says it is used 63 times in the Old Testament, being translated in the KJV as, “understand 12, wise 12, prosper 8, wisely 6, understanding 5, consider 4, instruct 3, prudent 2, skill 2, teach 2, misc 7.” This word occurs 13 times in the book of Proverbs.
Comments – “Behold, my servant” – This servant, Jesus Christ, becomes the Deliverer. Who He is and how He delivers God’s people follows in Isa 52:13 to Isa 53:1-12.
Isa 52:13 “he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high” – Word Study on “he shall be exalted” Strong says the Hebrew word “exalted” ( ) (H7311) is a primitive root meaning, “to be high, to rise, to raise, to bring up, to exalt.” The Enhanced Strong says it is used 194 times in the Old Testament, being translated in the KJV as “(lift, hold, etc…) up 63, exalt 47, high 25, offer 13, give 5, heave 3, extol 3, lofty 3, take 3, tall 3, higher 2, misc 24.”
Word Study on “extolled” Strong says the Hebrew word “extolled” ( ) (H5375) is a primitive root meaning, “to lift, arise, to bear.” The Enhanced Strong says it is used 654 times in the Old Testament, being translated in the KJV, “(bare, lift, etc…) up 219, bear 115, take 58, bare 34, carry 30, (take, carry)..away 22, borne 22, armourbearer 18, forgive 16, accept 12, exalt 8, regard 5, obtained 4, respect 3, misc 74.”
Word Study on “very” Strong says the Hebrew word “very” ( ) (H3966) means, “vehemence, vehemently, wholly, speedily.” The Enhanced Strong says it is used 299 times in the Old Testament, being translated in the KJV, “very 137, greatly 49, sore 23, exceeding 18, great 12, exceedingly 11, much 10, exceeding + 03966 6, exceedingly +03966 5, diligently 4, good 3, might 2, mightily 2, misc 17.”
Word Study on “be high” Strong says the Hebrew word “be high” ( ) (H1361) is a primitive root meaning, “to soar, to be lofty, to be haughty.” The Enhanced Strong says it is used 34 times in the Old Testament, being translated in the KJV as “exalt 9, …up 9, haughty 5, higher 4, high 3, above 1, height 1, proud 1, upward 1.”
Comments – The first description of the Messiah in this lengthy passage on the suffering servant is the fact that servanthood brings exaltation. Because Jesus Christ humbled Himself more than any man, He has been exalted above all men. This divine principle teaches us that the degree we humble ourselves in submission to God will determine the height that He exalts us before man. We also find this same description of Jesus Christ in Php 2:5-11, where we are told that Jesus Christ humbled himself as a servant and became obedient unto death. Therefore, God has highly exalted Him above all.
Isa 52:14 As many were astonied at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men:
Isa 52:14 Isa 52:14 Word Study on “visage” Strong says the Hebrew word ( ) (H4758) means, “a view, an appearance, a shape, a vision.” The Enhanced Strong says this word is used 103 times in the Old Testament, being translated in the KJV, “appearance 35, sight 18, countenance 11, vision 11, favoured 7, look upon 4, fair + 02896 2, misc 15; 103.”
Isa 52:14 Word Study on “marred” Strong says the Hebrew word ( ) (H4893) means, “disfigurement, corruption, marred.” The Enhanced Strong says it is used 2 times in the Old Testament, being translated in the KJV, “marred 1, corruption 1.”
It comes from the primitive Hebrew root ( ) (H7843), which means, “to decay, to ruin.” The Enhanced Strong says it is used 147 times in the Old Testament, being translated in the KJV, “destroy 96, corrupt 22, Mark 7, destroyer 3, corrupters 2, waster 2, spoilers 2, battered 1, corruptly 1, misc 11.”
Isa 52:14 Word Study on “form” Strong says the Hebrew word ( ) (H8389) This word means, “outline, figure, appearance.” The Enhanced Strong says it is used 15 times in the Old Testament, being translated in the KJV, “form 3, goodly 2, beautiful + 03303 2, favoured 2, comely 1, countenance 1, fair + 03303 1, goodly + 02896 1, resembled 1, visage 1.”
Isa 52:14 Comments – The Shroud of Turin is believed to be the actual burial cloth of the Lord Jesus Christ. In this cloth is the image of a man that has been crucified. Scientists have revealed that the face of this man was severely marred. One eye is swollen shut from bruises below that eye. The nose shows signs of being broken. The face shows signs of being bruised, cut and beaten. From head to toe on both sides of the body’s image are marks of a severe lashing with a whip tipped with bone or metal. [70]
[70] Grant R. Jeffery, “The Mysterious Shroud of Turin,” [on-line]; accessed 1 September 2009; available from http://www.grantjeffrey.com/article/shroud.htm; Internet.
The Passion of the Messiah Isa 52:13 to Isa 53:12 reveals the sufferings of Christ Jesus on the Cross to the greatest degree of any place found in Holy Scriptures. When such a description of God’s great sacrifice is placed with a book of judgment against His children, we begin to see how great is God’s love towards them. Even while God was judging them, He was preparing to send His Only Begotten Son to Calvary in order to pay the penalty for their wicked sins. Such love is summed up in Joh 3:16.
Joh 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
I saw this tremendous truth found with this passage as was comforting our three-year old child. My wife had sent our child out of the kitchen because of her misbehavior. I heard her crying in the hallway and went to comfort her. Although I stood with my wife in the need for discipline, I felt a father’s love within me. I wanted restoration. The child had been banished from the kitchen and I was trying to bring restoration so that she could be reunited in fellowship with her mother and thus, reenter the kitchen. (February 2, 2004)
It is in this fullness of love that the God of Israel can both judge His people while preparing to send His Beloved Son to atone for their sins. The tremendous judgment in the book of Isaiah reveals God’s depth of holiness that is beyond our capacity to understand. But in the same way, His tremendous love in sending His Son is also beyond our ability to comprehend. Such a contrast of God’s holiness and love will only be understood as we spend eternity in Heaven getting to know our loving Heavenly Father and as we are taught of the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made in leaving Heaven to die on the Cross for the sins of a disobedient people.
The Suffering of Jehovah’s Servant.
v. 13. Behold, My servant shall deal prudently v. 14. As many were astonied at thee, v. 15. so, Isa 52:13-15. Behold, my servant shall deal prudently The prophet having proceeded thus far in setting forth the redemption designed for true believers, and the manner and means of manifesting this great work, as well as the success of it, in the conversion of the Gentiles; he now introduces God the Father declaring the foundation and cause of what had been already foretold; namely, the obedience paid by the Messiah to the Father in extreme humiliation, and in its subsequent glorious exaltation:to the end of this chapter. This argument being of the greatest importance, and containing a doctrine absolutely necessary to faith in Christ Jesus as the Messiah, Isaiah treats of this mystery more as an evangelist than as a prophet, and explains it in the fullest and clearest manner in the following sections; which are so connected with the present period as to contain the elucidation, confirmation, and more complete detail of it. Many commentators join these three verses with the following chapter, the whole of which the ancient Jews have applied to the Messiah, though they would not acknowledge in our Jesus those characters which we discern so manifestly in him from this prophesy. The Chaldee, instead of servant, Isa 52:13 reads, the Messiah. The word iaskiil, translated shall deal prudently, is rendered both by Vitringa and Bishop Chandler, shall prosper, or go on prosperously. See Jer 23:5. The bishop paraphrases the three verses thus: “Behold the Messiah, my servant, who comes to do my will, and therefore appears in the form of my servant, he shall at the last go on prosperously; he shall be exalted in his kingdom, and appear in majesty, honour, and power, far above the greatest earthly potentate, Isa 52:14. This exaltation is a just reward of his abasement, which was lower than that of the lowest man. As many shall be struck with wonder and despondency at his mean, inglorious appearance, whom they expected to find in the form of the kings of the earth; Isa 52:15 so he, in his turn, shall sprinkle many nations with astonishment at his advancement, and the surprising instances he shall give of his authority and power, and thereupon they shall become his disciples by baptism. Out of respect or fear of him, Gentile kings shall keep silence; and they to whom no prophets were sent, nor promises made of a Saviour, shall consider and receive his doctrine when it shall be preached to them, and confirmed by miracles and other extraordinary demonstrations of divine power.” The Hebrew word iazzeh, rendered sprinkle, has properly that signification. See Lev 16:34. Num 8:7, and so the Messiah is promised to sprinkle with clean water, &c. Eze 36:25. From hence it is used for to surprise and astonish, as people are who have much water thrown upon them; and this sense is followed by the LXX. The Jews, who asked John, (ch. Isa 1:25.) why he baptized, if he were not the Christ? plainly shew that they understood this text as indicating one of the offices of the Messiah; which was, to sprinkle with water, or baptize. See 1Pe 1:2. Heb 10:22; Heb 12:24 and Bishop Chandler’s Defence, p. 147.
REFLECTIONS.1st, By an elegant figure Jerusalem is here described as a mourner in the most abject distress, sitting in the dust, stripped of every ornament, wasted with sorrow, and ready to sleep the sleep of death. And herein she is the figure of the church, under the prevalence of antichrist, when the power of true religion is reduced to the lowest ebb. In this afflicted state,
1. God awakens her with his calls; bids her arise, and shake herself from the dust; put on her beautiful garments, recover her decayed strength, and loose the captive bands from her neck; and what he commands, he will enable his faithful followers to perform. Note; When the calls of Gospel grace reach the sinner, he is the deplorable captive of sin, stripped of all righteousness and strength, and doomed to the dust of death and hell; but, awakened by the voice of God, the beautiful garments of salvation are provided for him, strength ministered to break the bands of sin; and, rising from the dust of spiritual death, he sits down among the living saints of God.
2. He promises to preserve her from the future power of her enemies. For, henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised, and the unclean; which can only agree with Jerusalem mystical, the church of God in the latter day, see Rev 21:27 since Jerusalem, after the return from the captivity, was profaned by Antiochus and the Romans, and is possessed by the Turks at this day.
3. God will redeem his faithful Israel freely. Ye have sold yourselves for nought; for, whatever pleasure and enjoyment sin promises, misery and vanity are found the only fruits of it: and ye shall be redeemed without money; corruptible things, such as silver and gold, were of no avail to redeem the soul, but the precious blood of Christ alone; and, though the purchase was dearly made by him, yet the salvation obtained by his blood-shedding, comes to us entirely free, without money and without price.
4. The Lord will magnify his own glory in the deliverance of his people from the antichristian bondage, as he did of old from the prison of Egypt, when the Jews, who went to sojourn there, were oppressed; and as he rescued them from the yoke of the Assyrians, who unreasonably and cruelly afflicted them. God’s glory suffered while they were enslaved: tyrannically treated, they howled for anguish, and their proud masters, far from acknowledging God in their conquests, blasphemed his name, as if unable to deliver his people. Therefore he will make his glory appear, and his people shall know his salvation, and acknowledge, in the day of their deliverance, the faithfulness of God in his promises. Thus when Babylon mystical is fallen, then Jesus will be especially adored by his saints, as the faithful and true witness.
2nd, Great was the joy which Cyrus’s proclamation occasioned, and happy were the Jews to spread the report; but the apostle, Rom 10:15 plainly intimates, that a greater cause of joy is here signified, even the coming of Christ, and the preaching of his Gospel, to which these words are to be referred.
1. A blessed messenger is sent publishing the happiest tidings that ever greeted mortal ear. Some refer this to John the Baptist, but it should rather be applied to the Redeemer himself and his apostles. The tidings they bring are tidings of peace, tidings of good things, tidings of salvation; pardon of sin obtained, God’s favour restored, victory over our spiritual foes, deliverance from the bondage of corruption; and, above all, our God reigneth; Jesus is risen, is ascended up on high, hath led captivity captive, sits on the throne of glory to bless, preserve, protect his believing people, and to bring those who faithfully cleave to him to be with him, where he is, that they may behold his glory. These are the tidings published in the mountains publicly, and beautiful are the feet of those who bring them, worthy to be had in honour for their works’ sake.
2. With greatest joy the message is received. Thy watch-men, the ministers of the Gospel, shall lift up the voice, and publish aloud the glad news which is arrived of pardon, peace, and salvation through Jesus. With the voice together shall they sing; with delight and joy shall they execute their ministry: for they shall see eye to eye, clearly and distinctly, the great truths which they are authorised to proclaim, so as to have the fullest conviction of them in their own souls, when the Lord shall bring again Zion, revive his work, enlarge his church, and, by an abundant out-pouring of his Spirit in the latter day, call in Jews as well as Gentiles to the communion of his saints.
3. The waste places of Jerusalem are called upon to rejoice and sing for this great and general redemption. Long had desolations been spread around, but now God will build up her breaches. For the Lord hath comforted his people, with the discoveries of his rich grace in the Gospel of his Son: he hath redeemed Jerusalem, his church, his faithful people, by the offering of the body of Jesus once for all. The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, displayed his power and holiness in the work of the Redeemer; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God, manifest in the flesh, whose redemption is general, not confined to one nation or people, but free for all; whosoever will, may come and partake of it. Note; The subject of redeeming love will afford matter for praise that never will be exhausted.
4. An instant and urgent command is given to depart, and the Lord himself promises to be their rereward, that their march may be safe and uninterrupted. This may in some sense refer to the return from Babylon, but is applied by the apostle, 2Co 6:17 to the separation from sin and idolatry, which, by the preaching of the Gospel, would be effected in the Gentile world. Depart ye, depart ye; make no delay: go ye out from thence, from the kingdom of darkness: touch no unclean thing; keep back no allowed sin, nor have fellowship with the workers of iniquity: go ye out of the midst of her, of Babylon, or rather the house of Satan’s bondage; be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord; not merely be ceremonially clean, ye Jewish priests, who bear the vessels of the sanctuary which Cyrus restored. It belongs rather to Gospel ministers, whose purity of life must adorn the doctrines they preach; or to every Christian who is consecrated a priest unto God, and keeps himself pure in his ordinances and worship. For ye shall not go out with haste, nor go by flight, but openly, and boldly casting off the yoke of sin, and asserting their glorious liberty wherewith Christ had made them free; for the Lord will go before you, as in the pillar of fire of old, to guide and lead you safe from every danger; and the God of Israel will be your rereward, to guard them every way against Satan’s power and wiles. May we trust in him, and cheerfully and steadily hold on, and hold out!
3rdly, The three last verses of this chapter, together with the following chapter, set forth the person, offices, humiliation, and exaltation of the Lord Christ, and may justly be reckoned among the clearest prophesies of the sufferings of the Son of God, and of the glory which should follow. 2. His humiliation and exaltation are described. [1.] His humiliation. As many were astonished at thee, to see him who was so high abased so low, to the form of a servant, to the death of a malefactor. His visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men; though fairer than the children of men, yet worn down with sorrows, like unto which were no sorrows; his temples pierced with thorns; his face buffeted and spit upon; the form of his countenance was changed, and he appeared a spectacle of woe. [2.] His exaltation. He shall be exalted, by his resurrection from the dead, ascension into heaven, and session on the throne of glory; and extolled; men and angels shall adore him: and be very high; all things in heaven and earth being made subject unto him. So shall he sprinkle many nations, by the word of his Gospel, see Deu 32:2 and the effusion of his Spirit which he sent down from on high, by the application of his Blood to men’s consciences, and by the ordinance of baptism, which he instituted as the sign and seal of admission into his kingdom. The kings shall shut their mouths at him, with reverence silent before him, and submissive to his will: for that which had not been told them, shall they see; and that which they had not heard, shall they consider; glorious truths hid from ages and generations, which the light of nature could not teach, nor any of their wise men and philosophers discover, concerning the Trinity in Unity, the incarnation of Jesus, the justification of the sinner through his atonement and infinite merit, the resurrection of the body, and the like; these, by the preaching of the Gospel, were brought to light; and they now became acquainted with the unknown God, and saw his glorious salvation in the Redeemer.
DISCOURSE: 963 Isa 52:13. Behold, my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high.
IN the writings of Moses, the enjoyment of the land of Canaan was held forth as the great incentive to obedience; and spiritual blessings were but obscurely intimated. But in the prophetic writings, the greatest of temporal blessings were promised rather as pledges of infinitely richer benefits, which they typically represented: and frequently the very language in which they were promised, clearly shewed, that their mystical sense was, in fact, the most literal. Sometimes, as in the prophecy before us, the inspired writer entirely loses sight of all temporal considerations, and is wholly wrapt up in the contemplation of that spiritual kingdom, which the Messiah was in due season to erect. From the redemption of the Jews out of their captivity in Babylon, he goes on to speak of a more glorious redemption to be effected for all the nations of the world from the dominion of sin and Satan, of death and hell. The means of its accomplishment are described at large from this verse to the end of the following chapter. The Messiah, by whom it was to be effected, is set forth in all that variety of character which he was to assume, and in those diversified states of humiliation and glory which he was to pass through, in order to fulfil the work assigned him. That a passage so decisive for the establishment of Christianity should be wrested by the Jews, and be applied to any one rather than to Christ, is nothing more than what might be expected. But so harsh and incongruous are their interpretations, that they need only to be stated, and the absurdity of them immediately appears. Besides, the numerous applications of this prophecy to Christ, which occur in the New Testament, leave us no room to doubt respecting its true import. The portion, which now demands our attention, declares to us,
I.
The success with which he executed the work assigned him
The office which Christ sustained was that of a servant. He was to do his Fathers will, to seek his Fathers glory, and to advance the interests of his Fathers kingdom. On this account the Scriptures frequently speak of him as a servant: Behold my servant whom I uphold; by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; I will bring forth my servant the Branch [Note: Isa 42:1; Isa 53:11 and Zec 3:8.]. Our Lord himself also often speaks of himself under this character: I have not spoken of myself, says he, but the Father who sent me, he gave me a commandment what I should say, and what I should speak [Note: Joh 12:49.]. In above thirty other passages in St. Johns gospel he represents himself as sent by the Father, and as receiving a commandment from him. We must not, however, conceive from hence that he is only a creature; for though in his official capacity he was inferior to the Father, in his own nature he was equal to the Father, as St. Paul tells us; He was in the form of God, and thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant [Note: Php 2:6-7.].
Christs work as a servant was, to reveal the Fathers will to mankind, to make atonement for their sins, and to reduce them to a state of holy obedience; or, in other words, to execute the offices of a prophet, a priest, and a king, in compliance with the Fathers appointment, and in subserviency to his honour. Now that he delivered his doctrines in the capacity of a servant, is evident from his own repeated confessions; My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me: Whatsoever I speak, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak [Note: Joh 7:16; Joh 12:50]. It was also in obedience to his Fathers will that he offered himself a sacrifice for sin. Our Lord himself says, Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I might take it again: no man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself: I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again: this commandment have I received of the Father [Note: Joh 10:17-18.]: and St. Paul also says, that being found in fashion as a man, he became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross [Note: Php 2:8.]. Thus also in the manifold exercises of his regal power, whether he cured diseases, rectified abuses, or forgave sins, he acted by an authority delegated to him for that purpose. When, at the very beginning of his ministry he took the sacred volume into his hands to read out of it to the people in the synagogue, he selected this passage, which fully declared to them by what authority he acted; The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted: and at another time he told his disciples, that the Father had appointed unto him a kingdom. Thus plain is it, that whether he executed the office of a prophet, priest, or king, he acted in the capacity of a servant.
In the whole of his work he prospered. The text says, My servant shall deal prudently; but in the margin of the Bible it is put, shall prosper. This rendering of the word seems rather better to agree with the context, and with that expression in the following chapter, the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. The very same word also is used in reference to Christ by Jeremiah, where our translators have given this sense to it; I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper [Note: Jer 23:5.]. Let us view this servant of Jehovah in the various offices he performed, and we shall see that he prospered in them all. Was he teaching the people? behold, what wonderful things he brought to light; things, which from eternity had been hidden in the bosom of the Father! How did the clouds of ignorance and superstition vanish before him! the corrupt glosses, with which the Jewish doctors had obscured the law, were refuted: the truths of God were established on the firmest basis; the most subtle objectors were put to silence; the most ignorant were instructed in the deepest mysteries; and all, with such condescension, such ease, such wisdom, and such authority, that his very enemies were constrained to say, Never man spake like this man. Was he setting up his kingdom? he rejected with disdain the pomp of earthly monarchs, and laid the foundations of his throne in the hearts of his people. Nor did he bring any into subjection by outward force: a single word was sufficient to subdue the stoutest heart. If he said to Matthew, Follow me, not all the wealth of kingdoms could detain the willing captive. If he said, Come down, Zaccheus, behold, a covetous extortioner is instantly transformed into a benevolent and obedient servant. Whomsoever he would, he called: and such was the constraining power of his voice, that, without hesitation, they left all that they had, and followed him. And though he commanded his subjects to make no account even of their own lives when standing in competition with his will, and promised them nothing but poverty and persecution in this world, yet they all delighted in his law, and gloried in the cross for his sake. So entirely did they yield up themselves to him, that opposition served but to rivet their affections to him, and to confirm them in their determination to live and die in his service. Did he expiate his peoples sins? behold, there was not any thing wanting either to complete his obedience, or to fill up the measure of his sufferings. He fulfilled all righteousness, even though by so doing he made himself appear to be a sinner like unto us: he not only was circumcised by his parents, but voluntarily submitted to the ordinance of baptism, as though he had needed it for the washing away of his own iniquities. Nor was there any kind of suffering which he did not endure, that he might fully expiate our guilt by bearing in our stead all that our sins had merited. He never ceased from his labours, till he could say in reference to all that he had undertaken to do or suffer for us, It is finished.
But must we confine our views of his success to past or future times? Are there not many living witnesses of his power and grace? Is he not teaching some amongst us by his good Spirit, and revealing unto babes the things that are hidden from the wise and prudent? Do not many of us also experience the virtue of his blood, and reap the fruits of his continual intercession? Is not his almighty arm yet stretched out to deliver us from our spiritual enemies, and to bring our hearts into captivity to his will? Wherever there is one who is brought out of darkness into marvellous light, one who enjoys peace with God through the blood of sprinkling, and whose corruptions are mortified through the influence of divine truth, there is a monument of our Lords success, an epistle of Christ known and read of all men. II.
The recompence that was awarded him for his fidelity
Our Lord, as a servant, had respect unto the recompence of reward: for the joy that was set before him he endured the cross and despised the shame. Nor was this reward withheld from him, when he had finished his work. St. Paul tells us expressly, that his resurrection and consequent ascension are to be regarded in this view: He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross; therefore God hath highly exalted him. Of this also the prophet spake in the words before us: he shall be exalted, and extolled, and be very high. Whether the prophet meant to point out three different steps of our Lords advancement, we cannot positively say: but his words may well bear that interpretation; he shall be exalted by God to a throne of glory; he shall be extolled by men with adoration and thanksgiving; and he shall be very high, reigning as Head over men and angels for ever and ever. In this view his advancement may be considered as immediate, progressive, final.
His immediate advancement consisted in his resurrection from the dead, and his elevation to the right hand of the Majesty on high, according to what is said by the Apostle; God hath highly exalted him, and given him a name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth. He, who left his glory for our good, resumed it again; and his human nature is made to participate his glory: yes; that very body, which endured fatigue and hunger, which was torn with scourges, and pierced with nails, which agonized in the garden, and expired on the cross, is now at the right hand of God in the highest seat of dignity and honour. That human soul also, that once was harassed with the temptations of Satan, and that endured the wrath of a sin-avenging God, is now assumed into such an union with the godhead, as to be exalted infinitely above the highest archangel. It is in his human nature that the brightest effulgence of the Deity is seen: so that, while he appears as a lamb that has been slain, he is the very joy and glory of heaven, the sun that illumines the regions of the blest; the glory of God doth lighten them, and the Lamb is the light thereof.
And who does not rejoice that the Saviour should be thus glorified? Who does not even leap for joy at the thought, that he, who loved us unto death, should be thus exalted far above all principalities and powers? Surely, independent of the interest which we ourselves have in his advancement, we ought to be exceeding glad that our greatest friend and benefactor should be thus gloriously rewarded. O that this glorious season might speedily begin; that his kingdom might come, and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven! But if we be not favoured to behold this period, let us at least make him the most acceptable return we can for his kindness, by devoting ourselves to his service, and endeavouring to bring others to the obedience of faith. In improving this subject, we shall find abundant matter of reproof to the ungodly, of encouragement to the humble, and of direction to all.
1.
Reproof to the ungodly
On the most diligent inquiry into the life and conduct of our Lord, we shall find that he omitted nothing that was necessary for the effecting of our reconciliation with God. Yet how ill is he requited by the generality of mankind I Notwithstanding he has come down from heaven for our salvation, and accomplished the work which had been given him to do, the ungodly world will scarcely bestow a thought upon him. Instead of exalting him in their minds, and extolling him with their lips, and setting him very high in their affections, they regard him little more, than if all that is related of him were a mere fable. Every earthly vanity can fix their attention, and engage their favour; but he, whose condescension and grace have filled all heaven with wonder, can attract no notice. What base ingratitude is this on the part of man! What is it but practically to deny the Redeemers excellency, and to frustrate, as far as in us lies, the purposes of God respecting him? It is, in fact, to say that, whatever reward God has decreed to give him for his services, he shall receive no part of it from us. And who amongst us has not been guilty of this conduct? Who has not passed months and years without any admiration of his love, any zeal for his honour? If he were as much forgotten by all, as he has been by the generality, his very name would soon be put out of remembrance. What more awful proof of our fallen nature can we have; what greater evidence of our apostasy from God? If God were our Father, we should love Christ; if we were true believers, he would be precious to our souls. And if God has said that all who forget him shall be turned into hell, shall our forgetfulness of his dear Son involve us in no danger? Is it without reason that the Apostle asks, How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation? Surely if we exalt him not willingly, he shall be exalted against our will; for he will reign, till he has put every enemy under his feet. If we will not bow to the sceptre of his grace, we shall be broken in pieces with the rod of his indignation.
2.
Encouragement to the humble
They who are humbly endeavouring to serve God, may, on the other hand, derive from this subject much comfort and encouragement. As Christ was, so are all his followers, servants of the most high God. Like him too, in spite of men and devils, they prosper in their work. And is there no reward prepared for them? Shall they not, like him, be exalted to thrones of glory? Shall they not be extolled by men, as the excellent of the earth; and by God, as good and faithful servants? Shall they not be very high, even heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ? Yes; God is not ashamed to be called their God: and, as soon as they have overcome, they shall be carried by angels into Abrahams bosom, and inherit the glory prepared for them. Let the believer then look forward to the recompence of reward. Let him rest assured that the felicity which awaits him will abundantly compensate his labours and sufferings in the pursuit of it: let him be faithful unto death, and God will give him a crown of life. In the meantime, however, they who expect the wages, must be careful to execute the work assigned them. They must deal prudently, that they may prosper; and prosper, that they may obtain the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give them. But it is not in their own strength that they are to proceed, but in the strength of their exalted Saviour; of him, who, having endured the same trials, can sympathize with them; and, having all power in heaven and in earth committed to him, can succour them. To him then let every eye be directed; to him, in whom all fulness is deposited, and our life itself is hid: and when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall we also appear with him in glory.
3.
Direction to all
While the words before us prophetically declare what Christ shall receive as the reward of his labours, they serve as a direction to every one that names the name of Christ: they virtually enjoin us to pay him the tribute which is so justly due. What shall I render unto the Lord, was the reflection that inspired the breast of David on a review of the mercies which he had experienced. And can we call to mind what our blessed Lord has done, and is yet doing, for our salvation, and not feel the liveliest emotions of gratitude in our hearts? Are we not constrained to break forth in the language of the Psalmist, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits; bless the Lord, O my soul, and let all that is within me bless his holy name? Yes; let us abundantly utter the memory of his great goodness, and sing of his praise without ceasing. It is the most reasonable, and surely the most delightful, of all duties to exalt his name, and magnify it with thanksgiving. Let this then be the disposition of our minds, and the practice of our lives. Let us say, Awake up, my glory, awake, lute and harp, I myself will awake right early; I will sing of his righteousness all the day long; I will praise his name while I have my being. Then, at whatever period we shall be summoned into his immediate presence, we shall change our place, but not our employment; for the song, which we began on earth, shall be continued by us to all eternity: To him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and has made us kings and priests unto God, and the Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
The Prophet could not help following up what he had said in the preceding verse, of the Lord’s presence, with somewhat of the Lord’s person. And what a lovely, though short account, hath he given of him! How he speaks of his person, his visage, his form; and how of his conduct and humble demeanor! How he describes the treatment he should meet with, and his lamb-like deportment under it! Precious Lord Jesus! is it so? Was it so? – Is it said that Moses was exceeding fair; and that thou, Moses’ Lord, hadst a form marred more that of any man! Lord, teach me to distrust all I see in man, and seek for nothing of comfort or of hope, but in thee only! Rom 15:21 .
XXII
THE BOOK OF ISAIAH PART 14
Isa 52:13-54:17
The special theme of this section is the priestly office of the Servant and the happy results of his priestly work to Zion. Some have called it the “Great Passional.” Polycarp calls this section “the golden passional of the Old Testament Evangelist.” Delitzsch says, “It is the center of this wonderful book of consolation (Isaiah 40-66), and is the most central, the deepest, and the loftiest thing that the Old Testament prophecy, outstripping itself, has ever achieved.” Another has said, “Here we seem to enter the holy of holies of the Old Testament prophecy, that sacred chamber wherein are pictured and foretold the sufferings of Christ and the glory which should follow.” This section contains the very heart of the gospel and the preacher who leaves it out of his preaching is a preacher of “airy nothings.” The success or failure of the preacher is determined as he relates his preaching to the truth of this great passage.
There are several different interpretations of Isa 52:13-53:12 :
1. The earliest Jewish authorities, even down to Aben Ezra, A.D.1150, stood for the messianic interpretation of this passage. Their later writers abandoned this explanation on account of its bearing on the Christian controversy. It was assumed as indisputable by the Christian Fathers, and almost all Christian expositors down to the commencement of the nineteenth century took the same view.
2. The later Jews under the pressure of the Christian controversy abandoned the traditional interpretation and applied this prophecy to Jeremiah, Josiah, or to the people of Israel.
3. In the present century a number of Christian commentators have adopted one or the other of the later Jewish theories, either absolutely or with modifications.
The argument for the messianic theory and against the later Jewish theories is as follows:
1. The portraiture of the “Servant of Jehovah” here has so strong an individuality and such marked personal features that it cannot be a mere personified collection, whether Israel, faithful Israel, or ideal Israel, or the collective body of the prophets.
2. That it could not be the nation at large appears from the fact that the calamities which Israel suffered are always spoken of as sent upon them for their own sins.
3. That it could not refer to their prophets or righteous men, who made expiation for the nation’s guilt, appears from the following considerations: (1) Such a position is against the whole tenor of Scriptures. (2) Their most righteous in their prayers did not plead their own merit but Jehovah’s righteousness and mercy. (3) Many parts of this section are manifestly such as cannot be applied to either the nation or any body of men inside of it.
4. It goes so infinitely beyond anything of which a mere man was ever capable, that it can only refer to the unique man, the God-man, Christ Jesus our Lord.
The proof from the New Testament that this is the true interpretation is abundant. Passages from this section are quoted in Mat 8:17 ; Luk 22:37 ; Joh 12:37-38 ; Act 7:32-33 ; Rom 10:16 ‘and 1Pe 2:24-25 , all of which are unmistakably applied to Christ. This ought to settle the question once for all that this passage is distinctly messianic.
This great passage divides itself into five paragraphs of three verses each, as follows: (1) Isa 52:13-15 , the introduction, a general view of the whole subject; (2) Isa 53:1-3 , the prevailing unbelief and his unpromising appearance; (3) Isa 53:4-6 , a substitute for sinners; (4) Isa 53:7-9 , his submissiveness and his purity; (5) Isa 53:10-12 , the glorious success of his completed propitiation and also his intercession.
We have the general view of the whole subject presented in Isa 52:13-15 . This passage is a prelude to Isa 53 and is closely connected with it. In these three verses we have, (1) the Servant’s exaltations, (2) his humiliation preceding, (3) the far-reaching blessings which shall result to the whole world. This includes the whole of his redemptive work, stated generally. In Phi 2:5-11 we have our Lord’s humiliation, exaltation, and success, in which there is a graphic picture of his suffering on the cross. The prophet here gets three views of the Servant of Jehovah: First, he sees him exalted, lifted up, very high; secondly, he sits at the foot of the cross and there sees the Lord as he hung upon the accursed tree, after he had been buffeted, crowned with thorns, smitten, scourged, crucified, his face covered with bruises and with blood, and his frame and features distorted with agony, so that “his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men,” but the picture changes and, thirdly, the prophet sees this suffering Christ as he startles many nations and receives honor at the hands of kings. This is a brief view of a preview or introduction to the more clearly outlined picture in the next chapter.
The first question in Isa 53:1 “Who hath believed our report?” seems to sound a discouraging note from the standpoint of the prophet. The messengers have gone forth to publish peace (Isa 52:7 ), and many nations have received the tidings with reverence (Isa 52:15 ), but Israel in the midst of whom this wondrous work of atonement has been effected, refused to believe the message. While the immediate reference is doubtless to Isa 52:7 this complaint is applicable to the whole revelation of the prophet. He had brought them the good tidings concerning “Immanuel,” the “Prince of Peace,” the “Rod out of the stem of Jesse,” the “Sure Foundation,” the “Righteous King,” and the “revealed glory of the Lord.” He surely felt that he spoke, mainly, to unbelieving ears, and this unbelief was likely to be intensified when so marvelous a prophecy was delivered as that which he was now to put forth. There is, of course, a rhetorical exaggeration in the question, which seems to imply that no one would believe.
The prophet’s second question, “To whom hath the arm of Jehovah been revealed” raises the question of the recognition of Jehovah’s displays of power in behalf of Israel. He has made bare his holy arm before all the nations and the ends of the earth are made to see the salvation of Jehovah, but where is the spiritual discernment of these things in Israel? Many Jews had failed to recognize Jehovah’s marvelous dealings with them and the nations around because of their unbelief. But there is a more far-reaching application of these questions to Israel, as indicated by Paul in Rom 10:16 . They did not recognize the “Arm of Jehovah,” the Lord Jesus Christ, as their Messiah. His mighty works were not recognized by them as attestations of the One that was to come, but with blinded eyes they rejected him, as the prophet here foresaw.
Here it is said that he grew up as a “tender plant” before Jehovah, i.e., the Messiah was a fresh sprout from the stump of a tree that had been felled, the tree of the Davidic monarchy. Yet he was before Jehovah with his loving favor upon him. He was also as a “root growing up out of dry ground,” just like the tall succulent plant in the east, growing from the soil utterly devoid of moisture. The roots of such plants in the desert are full of fluid, though the surrounding air is very dry. The “dry ground” here refers to the corrupt age and nation, and the arid soil of humanity in general.
“He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we see him there is no beauty that we should desire him.” He had no regal pomp nor splendor, nothing to attract the multitudes, but his attractive qualities were to the spiritual rather than to the carnal. The spiritual beauties of a holy, sweet expression and a majestic calmness could only have been spiritually discerned. “He was despised”; men had contempt for his teaching and verily they hated him because his teaching and life were BO contrary to them. “He was rejected,” by the Jewish nation and was not reckoned with men by them. “A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”; his whole ministry illustrates this. His sorrows appear on every page of the Gospels. Men hid their faces from him when they met him, because they saw only the external expression of sorrow and grief. Thus he is pictured as a “tender plant, a root growing up out of dry ground, without comeliness, no beauty, despised and rejected, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief,” men hiding their faces from him as one despised and not esteemed.
In Isa 52:4-11 we have the very heart of the vicarious work of our Lord, but there are other expressions in the passage that bear on this phase of his work. So we will consider them all together. There are eleven of these unmistakable expressions of our Lord’s vicarious sufferings: (1) “He hath borne our griefs”; (2) “he hath carried our sorrows”; (3) “he was wounded for our transgressions”; (4) “he was bruised for our iniquities”; (5) “the chastisement of our peace was upon him”; (6) “with his stripes we are healed”; (7) “Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all”; (8) “he was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people”; (9) “when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin”; (10) “he shall bear their iniquities”; (11) “yet he bare the sins of many.”
In the ninth item above, the sacrificial nature of these sufferings is directly stated. To a people whose approach to God was limited throughout by the indispensable condition of the expiatory offering, all these sayings were calculated to suggest to them that in such a one they might realize all their hopes of righteousness. The terms, “iniquities,” “transgressions” and “sins” which occur here, gather around the work of the high priest on the ‘”day of atonement,” and indicate the priestly work of Christ, which is the theme of this section. This doctrine thus taught in the Old Testament is set forth with equal distinctness in the New Testament, and forms the hope, the trust, and the consolation of all Christians.
While thus suffering for a lost world his suffering was regarded by those who witnessed it as a smiting from God for his own sin. Hence they scoffed at him and reviled him in his greatest agonies. To one only, and him not one of God’s people, was it given to see the contrary, who declared aloud, “Certainly this was a righteous man” (Luk 23:47 ).
The prophet here shows that he was oppressed and afflicted, though he did not open his mouth. Like the Passover lamb led to the slaughter, he was dumb, which has a remarkable fulfilment in the deportment of our Lord under trial.
He was taken away by oppression and judgment, i.e., by a violence which cloaked itself under the formalities of a legal process. The people of his generation considered that this stroke fell upon him, not because of the transgression of God’s people, but thought that the stroke came because of his own sins.
His innocence and purity are set forth in Isa 52:9 . The prophet shows that the intent of the executioners was to make his grave with the wicked, as was the case of all criminals who were crucified on the “Hill of Skull” and buried in a grave in the midst, but through the providence of Jehovah he had the rich man’s tomb because there was no violence done by him nor was any deceit found in his mouth. “Violence” here refers to his overt acts and “deceit” refers to the inward state of the heart. He was free from both the guilt of sin and the bondage of sin. He was pure both in life and in character.
It may be truly said that God bruised Christ and put him to grief, the explanation of which is found in Act 2:23 : “Him, being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye by the hand of lawless men did crucify and slay.” The crucifixion of Christ was not an after-thought with God. It was divinely decreed, and permissively carried out by the hands of wicked men. He was put to death by the divine stroke, on the charge of sin.
But how shall we sufficiently realize all the significance of earth’s greatest tragedy? Even when we beggar language we but bring somewhat nearer the heights and depths of its import. If all the crises in human affairs since Adam first hesitated over the tender of forbidden fruit in the hand of his wife to the present crisis in the affairs of the Oriental nations could pool their hazards, they would not surpass the momentous issues involved when he said, “Now is the crisis of this world.” Indeed there has never been and never will be but this one real crisis for this world. Since that time we use only relative terms when we talk about a crisis.
If all the cups of woe ever pressed to shrinking human lips since the first sad pair were banished from Eden to the wailing over the victims of the Eastland disaster were condensed into one measure of gall and wormwood, they would not exceed the bitterness enforced on our great substitute when he cried out in Gethsemane’s bloody sweat: “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” If all the floods from Noah’s deluge to the last Mississippi overflow could merge their waters into one swollen tide of horror, we might not compare it with his baptism of suffering forecast by the prophets: “All thy billows have rolled over me. Deep calleth unto deep at the voice of thy waterspouts.” If all the fires since sulphur and brimstone were rained on Sodom and Gomorrah to the burning of San Francisco were combined into one lurid conflagration “painting hell on the sky,” its devouring flame could not be so intense and searing as the fire of which he speaks: “I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled?” If all the wars since Abraham dispersed the foray of Chedorlaorner to the strife by land and sea now raging in the Orient were massed into one universal conflict, the shock of arms would make but on echo of his fight with principalities and powers in the realm of the Spirit and of death from which he emerged “leading captivity captive” and with head-crushed Satan chained to his chariot wheels. If all the darkness since in creation’s dawn, “darkness was upon the face of the deep,” to the Egyptian darkness which might be felt and thence to the sun’s latest eclipse, or Byron’s poetic dream, was woven into one funeral pall of gloom, it might not equal that “hour of the power of darkness” which enveloped his cross. If all the loneliness of the exiled since Cain as a fugitive went away from the presence of God to Croly’s Wandering Jew , or to Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe , were merged into one desert of solitude, it could not be compared to his isolation when “of the people there were none With him,” and when he cried: “My God, why hast thou forsaken me.” If all the tragedies since Cain slew his brother Abel, to the last victim of the Inquisition were grouped into one horrible auto de fe, this concentrated martyrdom of all time should not measure the vicarious expiation of him who died as a felon at the hand of God. Yes, “His soul, being made an offering for sin,” because “He bear the sin of many,” was poured out unto death.
And because “the chastisement of our peace was laid on him” it pleased the Father to bruise him and to put him to grief, “for he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him,” and because when “found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, therefore hath God highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of beings in heaven and beings on earth and beings under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
The outcome of it all (Isa 52:10-12 ), and its bearing on the evangelization of the world are as follows: (1) “He shall see his seed,” i.e., his disciples, who are said in the Scriptures to be the begotten of the teacher, as Paul speaking of Onesimus, “whom I have begotten in my bonds.” (2) “He shall prolong his days,” i.e., he shall continue to live by the resurrection and thus extend the time of his work in the salvation of men. (3) “The pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in his hand,” i.e., God’s ultimate aim and end with respect to the universe shall be accomplished through him as the instrumentality. (4) “He shall see the travail of his soul and be satisfied,” i.e., because of the travail of his soul he shall be satisfied. This is exactly parallel to Phi 2:5-11 which emphasized the thought, “No cross No crown.” (See the author’s sermon on this theme, Evangelistic Sermons, p. 15.) (5) “Shall justify many,” i.e., shall turn many from sin unto righteousness, which corresponds to Paul’s great discussion in Rom 5:18-19 . (6) “A portion with the great,” i.e., he shall be a great conqueror, shall have a great kingdom and overcome the strong, making the kingdoms of this world his own, or it may refer to his mighty champions of evangelism with whom he will divide the possessions.
These are not contingent promises. All their preceding conditions have been fully met. Hence they are absolute promises made by the Almighty Father to his divine Son. Every attribute of deity is pledged to their literal and complete fulfilment. We might doubt the stability of the material heavens, the indestructibility of matter, and the persistence of the law of gravitation, but these promises lie beyond the realm of question and peradventure.
The imperiousness of the “shall see” is the ground of positiveness in the “shall come,” applied to all sinners given to our Lord by the Father. And the “shall be satisfied” guarantees and necessitates the salvation of all the elect. And though a thousand portents forebode a dissolution of the earth before his satisfaction be complete, it cannot be prematurely dissolved, for the messianic days of salvation shall be prolonged until his purposes be fully accomplished. Some Christians, indeed, consulting their own selfish desires to be relieved at once from trouble may cry out: “Come on, Lord Jesus, come quickly the time of the second advent is at hand do not tarry do not be slack concerning thy promise to come quickly.”
But the Lord, unwilling that any of his elect should perish and unsatisfied until they shall repent and live) prolongs his days. We may not propound to a weary and cowardly church the question, “Are you satisfied?” The church might consult its selfish greed and fear and stop the good work of salvation too soon. We may not carry the question to death and hell, “Are you satisfied?” But only one may answer that question, our Lord himself. Men must be saved and saved and saved until he is satisfied men of all grades of personal guilt, men of all nations and tribes and tongues. Poor, outcast, wandering Israel must be saved. We may be assured he will not be satisfied until the redeemed constitute a host that no man can number, a host whose hallelujah will be louder than mighty thunderings, louder than the voice of many waters. If the “great” and the “strong” of this context refer to Satan, we may be sure Christ will not be content with the present division of these spoils. Though Satan’s goods be now at peace the stronger than he will bind him and despoil him. But if “strong” and “great” refer to Christ’s mighty champions of evangelism, it is equally sure he will make their portion far greater than their present possession. Thus the context illumines the text and makes it reasonable.
The last clause of Isa 52:12 gives us the intercessory work of Christ as priest. It began when he said on the cross, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” But it has continued ever since and will continue until lie leaves the mediatorial throne and returns to this world to wind up the affairs of time and turn over the kingdom to the Father.
The special theme of Isa 54 is the vast growth and blessedness of Zion, as the result of the Servant’s work. From Isa 54:1-3 , at Nottingham, England, May 30, 1792, William Carey sounded forth that bugle note of modern missions, “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God,” which waked a sleeping world and whose echoes yet linger on every shore of time.
The mighty mandates of this passage stagger all reason, all probability, all philosophy, indeed everything but superhuman faith. And even superhuman faith must have some solid foundation on which to rest, otherwise it becomes blind credulity As the great commission, to disciple all nations and preach the gospel to every creature, rested upon the preceding assurance, “All power in heaven and in earth is given unto me,” and the succeeding assurance, “Lo, I am with you all the days even unto the end of the world,” so these mighty mandates must have a substantial predicate. That predicate lies in the context.
The verses immediately preceding the text declare: “When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul unto death; and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” This passage rests on that context.
There is no break in the thread of continuity between Isaiah 53-54.Isa 54 is unthinkable without Isa 53 . Yes, let it be affirmed with uplifted hand and eyes and heart: This passage enjoins impossibilities apart from the awful tragedy set forth in the preceding context. But on that predicate of vicarious atonement all it enjoins is both easy and delightful.
There are seven of these mandates, as follows:
1. The barren are commanded to rejoice in heart over unborn children promised of God contrary to nature. In its spiritual application this does not refer to the active, working, fruit-bearing churches. The reason of their joy is evident and every way rational. They have not been barren hitherto. The call is to the barren churches, whose members so far have been as fig trees producing nothing but leaves. It implies a marvelous gift of faith to them, for the heart cannot break forth in praise over a blessing promised, unless it believe the promise. Yea, for such praise the faith must be the very substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. At such a promise the barren Sarai once laughed in derision until through faith she became Sarah and laughed now with joy and even named her child “Laughter.”
2. They are commanded not merely to rejoice in heart, but to provide instant, and abundant house room for the coming of these multitudinous children of promise: “Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thy habitations.” This injunction reminds us of the vision of Zechariah: A young man went forth with a measuring line to lay off the site of the messianic Jerusalem. But an angel from God appears with the injunction: “Run, speak to that young man.” Tell him, “Jerusalem shall be immeasurable. It shall expand until it takes in all the neighboring towns and villages. Let him roll up his insignificant tape line. That cannot measure this enlarged city of promise. No walls can enclose it. It shall be as big as the country itself.”
3. In making provision for this enlargement there must be no regard for the cost. No miserly calculations. No selfish economy shall restrict the outlay: “Spare not; lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes.”
4. Enlargement shall be in every direction: “For thou shalt break forth upon thy right hand and thy left.” The heresy that giving to one object, or working in one direction precludes other gifts and objects must die out of the heart.
5. This enlargement in all directions must be without foreboding as to the outcome. The heart must not dread the humiliation of possible failure, for says the passage: “Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed.”
6. There must be no premature dread of the possible character and destiny of the numerous progeny after they have come: “For all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children.”
7. This great enlargement must be undertaken in absolute fearlessness of any fighting opposition or talking opposition. For, “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that riseth against thee thou shalt condemn.”
The imagery here employed is very suggestive and impressive to those of us familiar with tent life. We know that a little squad needs but a little tent, and it needs only a small place with small curtains, short cords and weak tent pins. But when we lay off a wide space, that means a big tent and broad curtains and long ropes and strong, deeply driven stakes to anchor it securely against storms. Then, with a little tent we need only a short central tent pole, but with a big tent we need a tent pole like the mast of a ship. This pole is the center of unity. When we suddenly and greatly increase our tent our tent pole must either grow to fit the new conditions or we must get out a new one.
We are commanded to sing not to croak sing for blessings past, sing more for blessings promised, sing if we suffer, as Paul and Silas at midnight in the jail at Philippi. Rejoice that God has counted us worthy to suffer for his name and cause. Let faith that never staggers at the magnitude of commands and promises fire our heart to expect great things from God and to attempt great things for God. Let us learn to make large prayers, prayers for mighty favors. Let us open our mouths wide and God will fill them. It ministers to the self-respect of a people to cut out a big piece of work for them to do. Let us heed these words adapted from Whittier: What Hell may be, we know not; this we know: We cannot lose the presence of the Lord: One arm, Humility, takes hold upon His dear Humanity; the other, Love, Clasps his Divinity. So where we go He goes; and better fire-walled Hell with Him Than golden-gated Paradise without.
QUESTIONS
1. What is the special theme of this section and how does it rank in importance with other scripture?
2. What is the different interpretations of Isa 52:13-53:12 ?
3. What is the argument for the messianic theory and against the later Jewish theories?
4. What is the proof from the New Testament that this is the true interpretation?
5. Give an analysis of Isa 52:13-53:12 .
6. What is the general view of the whole subject as presented in Isa 52:13-15 ?
7. What is the import of the prophet’s double question in Isa 53:1 ?
8. Explain his unpromising appearance.
9. What is the proof from this passage that Christ was made a substitute for sinners?
10. While thus suffering for a lost world how was this suffering regarded by those who witnessed it?
11. How, according to this prophecy, did he deport himself under such trials?
12. What is the meaning of Isa 53:8 ?
13. How is his innocence and purity set forth in Isa 53:9 ?
14. How may it be truly said that God bruised Christ and put him to grief, and what the significance of this great tragedy?
15. What is the outcome of it all (Isa 10:12 ) and what its bearing on the evangelization of the world?
16. When was the last clause of Isa 10:12 , “and made intercession for the transgressors,” fulfilled?
17. What is the special theme of Isa 54 ?
18. What great sermon was preached from Isa 54:1-3 , and what of its lasting effect?
19. What can you say of this passage, and what its relation to the preceding chapter?
20. What are the mandates enjoined in Isa 54 and what their application?
21. What can you say of the imagery here employed?
22. What is the chief note of exhortation in this chapter?
Isa 52:13 Behold, my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high.
Ver. 13. Behold, my servant shall deal prudently. ] Or, Shall prosper. Isa 53:10 Here some, a and not unfitly, begin the next chapter, which hath Christ also for its subject, as the Chaldee paraphrast and some old Jewish doctors acknowledge. Johannes Isaac, a Jew, was converted by reading it. This I confess ingenuously, saith he, that that chapter brought me to the faith of Jesus Christ. And well it might; for, taken together with these three last verses, it is an entire prophecy, or rather a history of Christ’s person and acts, both in the state of his humiliation and exaltation.
He shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high. a Aug. De Civ. Dei, lib. xviii, cap. 29; Justin, contra Tryphon.; Orig., lib. i. contra Cels.
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Isa 52:13-15
13Behold, My servant will prosper,
He will be high and lifted up and greatly exalted.
14Just as many were astonished at you, My people,
So His appearance was marred more than any man
And His form more than the sons of men.
15Thus He will sprinkle many nations,
Kings will shut their mouths on account of Him;
For what had not been told them they will see,
And what they had not heard they will understand.
Isa 52:13 will prosper This VERB (BDB 968, KB 1328, Hiphil IMPERFECT) has two connotations.
1. to consider, to give attention to, to ponder – Isa 41:20; Isa 44:18; Deu 32:29; Psa 64:9
2. to prosper, to have success – 1Sa 18:15; Isa 52:13; Jer 20:11; Jer 23:5
The question is which of these best parallel the series of VERBS high, lifted, and greatly exalted. Will the Servant be
1. listened to
2. lifted up
Both fit the context of chapters 44-55.
He will be high and lifted up and greatly exalted The threefold question of these VERBS with similar meaning intensifies the idea.
1. will be high – BDB 926, KB 1202, Qal IMPERFECT, cf. Isa 6:1; Isa 57:15
2. will be lifted up – BDB 669, KB 724, Niphal PERFECT (with waw), cf. Isa 6:1; Isa 33:10; Isa 57:15
3. will be greatly exalted – BDB 146, KB 170, Qal PERFECT (with waw), cf. Isa 5:16
Isa 52:14
NASB, NKJV,
LXXwere astonished at you
NRSVwere astonished at him
NJBwere aghast at him
JPSOAwere appalled at him
REBrecoil at the sight of him
PESHITTAamazed at him
The MT has you, (also LXX), but him, is read by the Targums and some Syriac versions. The UBS Text Project gives you a B rating, p. 142.
There is a fluidity between the corporate focus (you) and the individual (him) in the Servant Songs. The individual ideal Israelite paid the price for corporate Israel (cf. Isa 53:8) and corporate humanity!
My people This is not in the Masoretic Hebrew text. The Servant is not identified with corporate Israel but an individual, ideal Israelite.
His appearance was marred more than any man,
And His form more than the sons of men Jesus was beaten very badly, almost unrecognizable, first by the Sanhedrin and then by the Roman soldiers. The rabbis used this verse to say that the Messiah will have leprosy.
Isa 52:15
NASB, NKJVsprinkle
NRSV, JPSOA,
NETstartle
NJB, LXXastonished
PESHITTApurify
This is a sacrificial term (BDB 633 I, KB 683, Hiphil IMPERFECT, cf. Exo 29:21 : Lev 4:6; Lev 8:11; Lev 14:7). Many modern translations have startle (BDB 633 II, cause to leap), which comes from an Arabic root. This follows the LXX and the Vulgate.
The question is What do the kings hear and see?
1. a marred man (Isa 52:14; Isa 52:5)
2. a high, lifted up, and greatly exalted man (Isa 52:13)
Does the VERB of Isa 52:15 a mean:
1. startle with joy
2. startle with shock
3. sprinkled as a sacrifice (cf. Isa 52:4-5; Isa 52:10)
My Servant. The Messiah. See note on Isa 37:35.
humbled.
exalted. extrolled. be very high. Figure of speech Anabasis, for great emphasis = riseth. is lifted up. becometh very high (compare Php 1:2, Php 1:9-11).
deal prudently = prosper. Compare 1Sa 18:14.
Isa 52:13-15
Isa 52:13-15
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE FOURTH SONG OF THE SERVANT
“Behold, my servant shall deal wisely; he shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high. Like as many were astonished at thee, this visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men, so shall he sprinkle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths at him: for that which had been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they understand.”
Here is the introduction to the several revelations in this Great Passional, as it was called by Rawlinson. (1) The superlative exaltation of The Servant; (2) the marred visage of the Servant brought on by his extensive suffering; (3) the sprinkling of all nations, a reference to the incredible success of his kingdom; and (4) the patronage of kings, and the adherence of the great men of the earth to his teachings, are all subjects that are treated in Isaiah 53.
As Rawlinson said, “Some would attach these verses to Isaiah 53, but that is not necessary. These verses are complete in themselves and form a link to the following chapter.
“He shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high …” (Isa 52:13). This places the emphasis of this presentation of the Servant where it belongs, namely, upon the exaltation of Christ, not merely upon his sufferings. Instead of viewing these passages as an account of Jesus’ sufferings, we should rather see the picture of His Marvelous Victory and Exaltation Through Suffering. The best comment ever made upon this verse is that of Paul:
“(Christ) emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross. Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth. and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. See Php 2:7-11.”
The significant thing, is that by means of his terrible sufferings, Christ attained to his glorious victory and exaltation to the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Right here is the reason that we know that these songs of the Servant were not produced by the Hebrew people, but given of Almighty God through Isaiah. The conception of a suffering, humiliated, chastised, rejected, crucified Saviour was contrary to absolutely everything that the Jews desired; and when the Christ came, it was his faithful adherence to the pattern laid down here that caused their rejection and their clamoring for his death.
Paul’s remarks quoted above, “Suggest Psa 89:27 where Jehovah said of the Messiah, `I also will make him the Firstborn, supreme above the kings of the earth.’
Jamieson remarked that, The genuineness of this passage is certain; “Because the Jews would not have forged it, since it is opposed to their notions of a Messiah; and the Christians could not have forged it”, because the prophecy of Isaiah that contains it has never been in the custody of Christians. The Jews, enemies of Christianity, were “our librarians,” as stated by an apostle (Rom 3:2).
As Lowth stated, “From Isaiah 40 to the end of the prophecy, three great deliverances make up the theme, all of them closely connected,” namely, (1) the deliverance of the Jews from Babylon, (2) the deliverance of the Gentiles from their ignorance and idolatry, and (3) the deliverance of all mankind from the captivity of sin and death. But here in this Servant Song the third of these, the Great Deliverance, is in focus. Kidner’s comment is, “Here we turn to the solitary figure whose agony was the price of it. We are at the heart of the book, the very center of its whole pattern of sin and righteousness, grace and judgment.”[20] Kelley was also impressed with accolades given to this portion of the Sacred Scriptures:
“This Servant Song has been described as the most influential poem in any literature, the highest peak of Old Testament revelation, and the heart of the Old Testament. If it were to be taken out of the Old Testament, it could. be almost completely reconstructed from the quotations taken from it in the New Testament.
Homer Hailey was impressed with the fact that the outline of Isaiah 53, which appears here in Isa 52:13-15, mentions the great themes in the reverse order of their treatment in the following chapter. “Here exaltation is followed by suffering; and in Isaiah 53, the suffering is followed by exaltation. This is a significant perception by Hailey, because exactly the same phenomenon occurs in other portions of the Bible, as for example, in the prophecy of Revelation where the great enemies of mankind, (1) Satan; (2) persecuting godless government; and (3) apostate religion are introduced in Isaiah 12-13 in the reverse order of the record of their destruction prophesied in successive chapters!
“This visage was so marred …” (Isa 52:14). “We know that this was to be the result of his maltreatment at the hands of Pilate’s soldiers.” They were the ones who mocked him, platted the crown of thorns, and were the instruments of his brutal scourging.
“So shall he sprinkle many nations …” (Isa 52:15). We find no objection whatever to the translation “sprinkle all nations,” which to us seems far more appropriate than “startle all nations.” As a matter of fact, before any man shall ever be saved, he must have his heart sprinkled from an evil conscience, and his body washed in pure water” (Heb 9:22), the same being twin references to faith in Christ through knowledge of Christ’s sufferings and the consequent repentance and also to Christian baptism which constitutes the ceremonial gateway into the Christian religion. We are “baptized into Christ.” (Gal 3:17). We still wonder why so much controversy has been stirred up over this translation. Of course, the passage has no reference whatever to any “alleged form” of baptism. Christ and all the apostles were immersed; and sprinkling as a “baptism” was never known until centuries after the founding of the Church.
“Kings shall shut their mouths at him …” (Isa 52:15). “Here Yahweh announces that his Servant Israel (the New Israel, Christ) shall be raised to a position so glorious, that even as many were appalled at his pitiable sight, so nations shall do him homage and kings shall be reverently silent in his presence, beholding so wonderful, so unheard-of a transformation.
“That which had not been told them…and that which they had not heard …” (Isa 52:15). This means that, “Men, even kings, will learn the facts of Christ’s humiliation, sufferings, death, resurrection, and ascension to heaven, events which had never even entered into the hearts (imaginations) of men, and of which, therefore, no tongue had ever spoken.
Isa 52:13 AFFIRMATION: Chapter and verse numeration (which came many centuries after the original documents were written) obscures the contextual flow of our present passage; Isa 52:13 through Isa 53:12 should be read as a unit. Making Isa 52:15 the end of a chapter and Isa 53:1 the beginning of another is an unfortunate adumbration which the student of Isaiahs message must be careful to trace out. These verses are all one dissertation on the success of the Suffering Servant.
The Hebrew word yasekkiyl is the infinitive of sakal and may be translated to prosper; to have success, instead of deal wisely. This translation would fit the context. The affirmation of Jehovah is that His Servant shall succeed in fulfilling all the predictions made (through Isaiah) of ultimate deliverance, redemption and glorification of Zion. The Servant-Messenger-Messiah of Jehovah will be exalted to the highest degree. Zion has suffered and will suffer much from the days of Isaiah until God comes and establishes His reign among men. Good tidings are beginning to come through the prophets of God. How beautiful will be the feet of the divine Messenger of God who will not only bring the message of salvation and peace but also accomplish it in Himself (cf. Isa 52:7). The mighty Jehovah is going to bare His holy arm (power) before all the world (cf. Isa 52:10). Contrary to Gods apparent default on His covenant promises to the patriarchs by allowing the Babylonian captivity, the Lord is going to send His Servant and He will succeed in re-establishing Zion in divine power and splendor. This Servant will achieve what He sets out to do. Why is it necessary to affirm the success of the Servant? Because even the Servants appearance in history will initially be in such a low, humble, unspectacular, humiliating way, most of the world will not believe. He is a manifestation of the power of Jehovah! (cf. Isa 53:1 ff). But the success of the Lords Servant will be extraordinary. Three Hebrew verbs (room-exalted; nissa-lifted up; gavah-very high) are piled one upon another to emphasize that The Servant will not be defeated in the extreme suffering He will have to undergo (including death).
Isa 52:14-15 AMAZEMENT: Isa 52:15 is in antithesis to Isa 52:14 and emphasizes the contrast between what the Servant first appeared to be and what He later was acknowledged to be. The thee of Isa 52:14 is therefore the Servant-Messiah (not Israel). Men will be shocked at His humble demeanor. He claimed to be the king of the Jews-the Messiah, but He did not in any way fulfill human presuppositions as to messianic royalty. He was slandered, mocked, accused of blasphemy, arrested, unjustly tried and sentenced as a criminal. He was scourged with a Roman whip and physically mutilated more than most human beings ever suffer, placed on a bloody Roman cross and there tortured both physically and psychologically by mocking rabbis, soldiers, and the multitudes. Some were shocked at His extreme disfigurement (cf. Luk 23:47-49). But the fact of His absolute innocence contrasted with His willing acceptance of the atonement for the sin of the world is what makes his visage . . . so marred more than any man . . . Php 2:5-11 expresses it perfectly. The Son of God emptied Himself and took the form of a servant. But God highly exalted Him. As low as His humiliation was, His exaltation was infinitely higher! The Hebrew word yazzeh is kin to the Arabic naza which means the springing or leaping of people caused by excess of emotion. Yazzeh is from the Hebrew root nazah which is usually translated sprinkle, but apparently is better translated here, startle, amaze, cause to jump, scatter. Leupold translates it startle; Todays English Version translates marvel; New International Version footnotes, marvel; RSV is startle; most other translations make it sprinkle. Young comments . . . he will sprinkle many nations . . . As one who is disfigured, the servant does something for others, in that he performs a purifying rite . . . men regarded the servant as himself unclean and in need of purification, whereas he himself as a priest will sprinkle water and blood and so purify many nations. We prefer the translation startle because it seems more appropriate to the intended contrast of the context.
Man will be shocked at His humiliation. But the goiym (nations or Gentiles) will be startled at the totally unexpected development events surrounding His humiliation and exaltation will ultimately take! The consequences will be world-wide. A church will be born; His disciples will be found even in the household of Caesar! The like of what shall result from the humiliation and exaltation of Jehovahs Servant was never imagined by the great (kings, philosophers, theologians). Never was anyone brought so low; never was anyone raised so high as Gods Servant. Emperors, philosophers, rabbis will be awed by His glory. Through Him will come a revelation from God (justification, redemption, sanctification) of things they could never know before His coming, but now they believe, appropriate and experience.
This text (Isa 52:13 to Isa 53:12) is written in the predictive present. It is prophecy, but it is so certain to come to pass it can be written as if it had already happened or was then happening. It is almost as if we were listening to two disciples of Jesus standing on a street-corner in Jerusalem reviewing the things that happened on Good Friday in the light of Easter Sunday and the Day of Pentecost. Isaiahs account is so vivid and was fulfilled so minutely it is little wonder that many of the fathers of the church days of old claim that the account reads as though Isaiah had sat at the foot of the cross.
We begin our reading here because the last three verses of chapter 52 so evidently belong to chapter 53. In this section the prophet describes the completion and issue of the suffering of the Servant of God. He is first seen as exalted and lifted up, and this exaltation is put into contrast with the day of humiliation (Isa 52:13-15).
A description of the pathway of suffering (Isa 53:1-9) follows. First, the rejected ministry: the Messenger is despised, and His report is not believed. Second, the vicarious suffering, which men looked on as a visitation of God, whereas it was the mystery in which He bore the sins of the people. Finally, the atoning death, in which the Messenger humbled Himself, and was “cut off out of the land of the living,” although He was the sinless One who “had done no violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth.”
The description ends with another declaration of His ultimate triumph, which clearly reveals the fact that it is based on the suffering which has been described. The Servant of God is seen passing through pain to prosperity, through travail to triumph, through humbling to exaltation. This whole description is absolutely without fulfilment save in the person of the Son of God, for whom the ultimate triumph has not yet been won.
my servant: Isa 11:2, Isa 11:3, Isa 42:1, Isa 49:6, Isa 53:11, Eze 34:23, Zec 3:8, Phi 2:7, Phi 2:8
deal prudently: or, prosper, Isa 53:10, Jos 1:7, Jos 1:8, *marg. Jer 23:5
he shall: Isa 9:6, Isa 9:7, Isa 49:6, Psa 2:6-9, Psa 110:1, Psa 110:2, Mat 28:18, Joh 3:31, Joh 5:22, Joh 5:23, Eph 1:20-23, Phi 2:9-11, Heb 1:3, Rev 5:6-13
Reciprocal: Pro 13:16 – prudent Son 5:14 – hands Isa 42:4 – shall not Isa 49:3 – General Mat 9:30 – their Mat 12:18 – my servant Mar 11:29 – I will Luk 4:37 – the fame Luk 24:27 – and all Luk 24:44 – in the prophets Act 2:33 – by 1Co 11:3 – and the head of Christ Eph 1:8 – in Col 1:18 – in all 1Pe 1:11 – the sufferings
Isa 52:13. Behold, my servant, &c. This is the beginning of a new prophecy, continued from hence to the end of the next chapter, which, as has been justly observed by many, both ancient and modern interpreters, should have begun here. The subject of Isaiahs prophecy, from the fortieth chapter inclusive, has hitherto been, in general, the deliverance of the people of God. This includes in it three distinct parts: the deliverance of the Jews from the captivity of Babylon, the deliverance of the Gentiles from their miserable state of ignorance and idolatry, and the deliverance of mankind from the captivity of sin and death. These three subjects are subordinate to one another, and the two latter are shadowed out under the image of the former. Cyrus is expressly named as the immediate agent of God in effecting the first deliverance. A greater person is spoken of as the agent who is to effect the two latter deliverances, called the Servant, the Elect, of God, in whom his soul delighteth. Now these three subjects have a very near relation to one another; for, as the agent who was to effect the two latter deliverances, that is, the Messiah, was to be born a Jew, with particular limitations of time, family, and other circumstances, the first deliverance was necessary in the order of providence, and, according to the determinate counsel of God, to the accomplishment of the two latter deliverances; and the second deliverance was necessary to the third, or, rather, was involved in it, and made an essential part of it. This being the case, Isaiah has not treated the three subjects as quite distinct and separate, in a methodical and orderly manner, like a philosopher or a logician, but has taken them in their connective view; he has handled them as a prophet and a poet; he has allegorized the former, and, under the image of it, has shadowed out the two latter; he has thrown them all together, has mixed one with another, has passed from this to that with rapid transitions, and has painted the whole with the strongest and boldest imagery. The restoration of the Jews from captivity, the call of the Gentiles, the redemption by Messiah, have hitherto been handled interchangeably and alternately. Babylon has hitherto been kept pretty much in sight, at the same time that strong intimations of something much greater have been frequently thrown in. But here Babylon is at once dropped, and hardly ever comes in sight again. The prophets views are almost wholly engrossed by the superior part of his subject. He introduces the Messiah as appearing at first in the lowest state of humiliation, which he had just touched upon before, (Isa 50:5-6,) and obviates the offence which would be occasioned by it, by declaring the important and necessary cause of it, and foreshowing the glory which should follow it. Bishop Lowth. My servant That it is Christ who is here spoken of, is so evident, that the Chaldee paraphrast, and other ancient, and some later Hebrew doctors, understand it directly of him, and that divers Jews have been convinced and converted to the Christian faith by the evidence of this prophecy. Shall deal prudently Shall manage the affairs of his kingdom with admirable wisdom. Or, shall prosper, as it is in the margin; and as the word , here used, is frequently rendered: which also agrees best with the following clause. And this intimation concerning the future prosperity and advancement of the Messiah, is fitly put, in the first place, to prevent those scandals which otherwise might arise from the succeeding passages, which describe his state of humiliation and deep affliction. Shall be exalted, and extolled, and be very high Here are three words signifying the same thing, to express the height and glory of his exaltation.
Isa 52:13 Isa 53:12. The Vindication of the Servant of Yahweh (the fourth of the Songs of the Servant of Yahweh).
Isa 52:13-15. Yahweh announces that His Servant Israel shall be raised to a position so glorious that, even as many were appalled at his pitiable plight, so nations shall do him homage and kings be reverently silent in his presence, beholding so wonderful, so unheard-of a transformation.
Isa 52:13. shall deal wisely: translate prosper (mg.), but probably the easy emendation Israel is to be accepted.
Isa 52:14. thee: read him, with Targum and Syr. A parallel line such as and princes shuddered at him seems to have been lost.The words in brackets are introduced in Heb. by so. The picture seems to be that of a leper so disfigured as hardly to seem human (mg.). Possibly they should follow Isa 53:2. If retained here, read for his visage was marred.
Isa 52:15. sprinkle: an impossible translation, nor is mg. well based. Read shall do homage, with nations as subject.shut their mouths: cf. Job 29:9 f.
Isa 53:1-3. At this point the nations begin to speak, their words continuing apparently as far as Isa 53:11 a. First they utter their thoughts concerning the change in Israels fortunes. Who, they ask, could have believed what we have heard (mg.)? To whom was the working of Yahweh revealed? Why, Israel aforetime (so emend before him) grew up like a shoot from the roots of a tree that has been cut down, or a feeble plant in an arid soil. Far from possessing beauty such as fascinates, he was despised, pain-stricken, and diseased, so that men turned from him in revulsion, and we paid him no regard.
Isa 53:2. nor comeliness: delete as a gloss, and render following words as mg.
Isa 53:3. rejected of men: a fine thought, but the Heb. is very dubious; possibly emend, lightly esteemed.sorrows . . . grief: render, pains . . . sickness, and so in Isa 53:4.
Isa 53:4-6. But now we recognise that it was our sicknesses and pains which he was bearing when we thought him stricken with leprosy by God as the punishment of his sins. Not his sins but ours were the cause of his suffering: he suffered chastisement in order to bring us prosperity and healing. We, not knowing Yahweh the shepherd, wandered as sheep having no shepherd: but upon him Yahweh made to light the sin of us all.
Isa 53:4. Stricken: this term is used especially of a leper.
Isa 53:5. bruised: render, crushed.of our peace: i.e. which was to bring us peace = prosperity.
Isa 53:7-9. Though he was oppressed he made no protest, but suffered with the meekness of a sheep led to slaughter or shearing. Debarred from (so emend by oppression and) justice he was taken off (i.e. by death) and who considered his fate (so emending simply and as for his generation who among them considered), cut off from life and stricken to death (LXX) for our (reading our transgressions by an easy emendation for the transgressions of my people) rebellions! His grave was made with the wicked, and with evil-doers (so emend rich) his tomb, despite his life of innocence. The last words are probably a metaphorical way of saying that Israel had lost its national existence in exile.
Isa 53:7. yet he humbled himself: possibly the text, which is awkward, originally read, but he made no answer for himself (welo for wehu), and the words and opened not his mouth, the repetition of which is suspicious, are a correct gloss.
Isa 53:9. in his death: literally as mg. This seems almost absurd; the text by a slight alteration might perhaps be translated his burial-mound; in any case some such parallel is needed here.
Isa 53:10-12. The text of these verses is so corrupt that any translation is hazardous. This is apparent even in the English, in which Yahweh is, according to the usual interpretation third (the Lord), second (thou), and first (I) person.
But though men regarded him with scorn, Yahweh took pleasure in His Servant, and delivered his soul (= him, in Heb. idiom) from trouble. He caused him to see light and be satisfied, in his descendants brought him justice. (The foregoing is an attempt, removing doublets, emending, and using hints from LXX, to give approximately what is now rendered by Isa 53:10 f, down to justify, except the words my righteous servant which in Heb. follow justify. From this point it would seem that the nations cease to speak and Yahweh pronounces His verdict upon His Servant.) An object of scorn (so emending righteous) my servant may be to the many, though he is bearing their iniquities; therefore he shall inherit (so LXX for I will divide him a portion) with the great, and with earths rulers shall he share dominion (this seems to be the meaning of dividing the spoil with the strong) since he poured out his life-blood, and was numbered with the rebellious, when all the while he was bearing the sins of the many, interposing for the rebellious.
52:13 Behold, my {n} servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high.
(n) Meaning Christ, by whom our spiritual deliverance would be wrought of which this was a sign.
The Servant exalted 52:13-15
"Behold, My Servant" marks a new section in the development of Isaiah’s argument, but it also directs the reader to fix his or her attention carefully on the Servant (cf. Isa 42:1; Zec 3:8; Zec 6:12; Zec 9:9). The Servant would succeed in the sense of fulfilling the purpose to which God had called Him (cf. Isa 42:1; Isa 49:2-3; Isa 50:7-9). Watts identified this servant as the Persian king Darius I (Hystaspes, 521-486 B.C.) in the whole passage (Isa 52:13 to Isa 53:12). He took this servant song as describing the unlikely Persian king whom God had raised up to bring His people back into their land following the exile. [Note: Watts, Isaiah 34-66, pp. 229-33.]
"The implication is that he would act with such intelligence as to succeed in his objectives." [Note: Archer, p. 646.]
In view of this success, He would be high, lifted up, and greatly exalted.
"Some commentators see in these three verbs a hint of the stages in the exaltation of our Lord, His resurrection, ascension, and session at the right hand of the Father. Yet the prophet’s purpose seems not so much to present the actual details of our Lord’s life as to set forth a picture of the suffering servant as such." [Note: Young, 3:336.]
The terms high, lifted up, and greatly exalted describe God elsewhere (cf .v. 17; Isa 6:1; Isa 33:10; Isa 57:15). One writer noted several similarities between these two sections of the book and used them to argue for a single writer of the entire prophecy. [Note: Herbert M. Wolf, "The Relationship Between Isaiah’s Final Servant Song (52:13-53:12) and Chapters 1-6," in A Tribute to Gleason Archer, pp. 251-59.] Thus the Servant would take a place of equality with God (cf. Act 2:33; Act 3:13; Act 3:26; Php 2:9; Col 3:1; Heb 1:3; Heb 8:1; Heb 10:12; Heb 12:2; 1Pe 3:22). This could in no way refer to Israel, the remnant in Israel, or any merely human person.
2. Announcement of salvation 52:13-53:12
The second segment of the section in Isaiah dealing with God’s atonement of Israel (chs. 49-55), after the anticipation of salvation (Isa 49:1 to Isa 52:12), is the announcement of salvation. This is the fourth and most famous Servant Song.
"The profoundest thoughts in the Old Testament revelation are to be found in this section. It is a vindication of the Servant, so clear and so true, and wrought out with such a pathos and potency, that it holds first place in Messianic prophecy." [Note: Robinson, p. 145.]
"The exaltation of the Servant of Jehovah is the theme of the prophecy which follows." [Note: Delitzsch, 2:304.]
The reader of the promises that God would redeem His people with His mighty arm (cf. Isa 50:2; Isa 51:5; Isa 51:9; Isa 52:10) could reasonably expect that redemption to come with a great display of overwhelming power. But the careful reader of the previous Servant Songs has picked up some hints that the Servant would not fit the mold of the traditional action hero. In this passage, Isaiah filled out the previously sketchy picture of the Servant with more detail concerning His work, character, and nature. God’s greatest power is evident in His ability to return love and forgiveness for hatred and injustice, not in His ability to crush all opposition.
"No subject connected with the Old Testament has been more discussed than the question of the identity of the Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah." [Note: H. H. Rowley, "The Servant of the Lord in the Light of Three Decades of Criticism," in The Servant of the Lord and other Essays on the Old Testament, p. 3.]
This Song consists of five stanzas of three verses each. The first and last stanzas record God’s commendation of the Servant, and the middle three describe the Servant’s commitment to God’s will. The central one focuses on His substitute death. Two key contrasts mark the passage: the contrast between the Servant’s humiliation and His exaltation, and the contrast between the reader’s expectations of the Servant and reality. [Note: For a study of the rhetorical variations that stress the Servant’s sufferings and exaltation, see Ronald Bergey, "The Rhetorical Role of Reiteration in the Suffering Servant Poem (Isaiah 52:13-53:12)," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 40:2 (June 1997):177-88.]
CHAPTER XX
THE SUFFERING SERVANT
Isa 52:13-15; Isa 53:1-12
WE are now arrived at the last of the passages on the Servant of the Lord. It is known to Christendom as the Fifty-third of Isaiah, but its verses have, unfortunately, been divided between two chapters, Isa 52:13-15; Isa 53:1-12. Before we attempt the interpretation of this high and solemn passage of Revelation, let us look at its position in our prophecy, and examine its structure.
The peculiarities of the style and of the vocabulary of Isa 52:13-15; Isa 53:1-12, along with the fact that, if it be omitted, the prophecies on either side readily flow together, have led some critics to suppose it to be an insertion, borrowed from an earlier writer. The style-broken, sobbing, and recurrent-is certainly a change from the forward, flowing sentences, on which we have been carried up till now, and there are a number of words that we find quite new to us. Yet surely both style and words are fully accounted for by the novel and tragic nature of the subject to which the prophet has brought us: regret and remorse though they speak through the same lips as hope and the assurance of salvation, must necessarily do so with a very different accent and set of terms. Criticism surely overreaches itself, when it suggests that a writer, so versatile and dramatic as our prophet, could not have written Isa 52:13-15 through Isa 53:1-12 along with, say, chapter 50 or Isa 52:1-12 or chapter 54. We might as well be asked to assign to different authors Hamlets soliloquy, and the Kings conversation, in the same play, with the ambassadors from Norway. To aver that if Isa 52:13-15 through Isa 53:1-12 were left out, no one who had not seen it would miss it, so closely does chapter 54. follow on to Isa 52:12, is to aver what means nothing. In any dramatic work you may leave out the finest passage, -from a Greek tragedy its grandest chorus, or from a play of Shakespeares the heros soliloquy, -without seeming, to eyes that have not seen what you have done, to have disturbed the connection of the whole. Observe the juncture in our prophecy at which this last passage on the Servant appears. It is one exactly the same as that at which another great passage on the Servant was inserted, {Isa 49:1-9} viz., just after a call to the people to seize the redemption achieved for them and to come forth from Babylon. It is the kind of climax or pause in their tale, which dramatic writers of all kinds employ for the solemn utterance of principles lying at the back, or transcending the scope, of the events of which they treat. To say the least, it is surely more probable that our prophet himself employed so natural an opportunity to give expression to his highest truths about the Servant, than that some one else took his work, broke up another already extant work on the Servant and thrust the pieces of the latter into the former. Moreover, we shall find many of the ideas, as well as of the phrases, of Isa 52:13-15 through Isa 53:1-12 to be essentially the same as some we have already encountered in our prophecy.
There is then no evidence that this singular prophecy ever stood apart from its present context, or that it was written by another writer than the prophet, by whom we have hitherto found ourselves conducted. On the contrary, while it has links with what goes before it, we see good reasons why the prophet should choose just this moment for uttering its unique and transcendent contents, as well as why he should employ in it a style and a vocabulary so different from his usual.
Turning now to the structure of Isa 52:13-15 through Isa 53:1-12, we observe that, as arranged in the Canon, there are fifteen verses in the prophecy. These fifteen verses fall into five strophes of three verses each, as printed by the Revised English Version. When set in their own original lines, however, the strophes appear, not of equal, but of increasing length. As will be seen from the version given below, the first {Isa 52:13-15} has nine lines, the second {Isa 53:1-3} has ten lines, the third (Isa 53:4-6) has eleven lines, the fourth (Isa 53:7-9) thirteen lines, the fifth (Isa 53:10-12) fourteen lines. This increase would be absolutely regular, if, in the fourth strophe, we made either the first two lines one, or the last two one, and if in the fifth again we ran the first two lines together, -changes which the metre allows and some translators have adopted. But, in either case, we perceive a regular increase from strophe to strophe, that is not only one of the many marks with which this most artistic of poems has been elaborated, but gives the reader the very solemn impression of a truth that is ever gathering more of human life into itself, and sweeping forward with fuller and more resistless volume.
Each strophe, it is well to notice, begins with one word or two words which summarise the meaning of the whole strophe and form a title for it. Thus, after the opening exclamation “Behold,” the words “My Servant shall prosper” form, as we shall see, not only a summary of the first strophe, in which his ultimate exaltation is described, but the theme of the whole prophecy. Strophe 2 begins “Who hath believed,” and accordingly in this strophe the unbelief and thoughtlessness of them who saw the Servant without feeling the meaning of his suffering is confessed. “Surely our sicknesses” fitly entitles strophe 3, in which the people describe how the Servant in his suffering was their substitute. “Oppressed yet he humbled himself” is the headline of strophe 4, and that strophe deals with the humility and innocence of the Servant in contrast to the injustice accorded him; while the headline of strophe 5, “But Jehovah had purposed,” brings us back to the main theme of the poem, that behind mens treatment of the Servant is Gods holy will; which theme is elaborated and brought to its conclusion in strophe 5. These opening and entitling words of each strophe are printed, in the following translation, in larger type than the rest.
As in the rest of Hebrew poetry, so here, the measure is neither regular nor smooth, and does not depend on rhyme. Yet there is an amount of assonance which at times approaches to rhyme. Much of the meaning of the poem depends on the use of the personal pronouns-we and he stand contrasted to each other-and it is these coming in a lengthened form at the end of many of the lines that suggest to the ear something like rhyme. For instance, in Isa 53:5-6, the second and third verses of the third strophe, two of the lines run out on the bi-syllable enu, two on inu, and two on the word lanu, while the third has enu, not at the end, but in the middle; in each case, the pronominal suffix of the first person plural. We transcribe these lines to show the effect of this.
Wehu meholal mippesha enu
Medhukka me awonothenu
Musar shelomenu alaw
Ubhahabhuratho nirpa-lanu
Kullanu kass-sson tainu
ish ledharko paninu
Wa Jahweh hiphgi a bo ethawon kullanu.
This is the strophe in which the assonance comes oftenest to rhyme; but in strophe 1 ehu ends two lines, and in strophe 2 it ends three. These and other assonants occur also at the beginning and in the middle of lines. We must remember that in all the cases quoted it is the personal pronouns, which give the assonance, -the personal pronouns on which so much of the meaning of the poem turns; and that, therefore, the parallelism primarily intended by the writer is one rather of meaning than of sound. The pair of lines, parallel in meaning, though not in sound, which forms so large a part of Hebrew poetry, is used throughout this poem; but the use of it is varied and elaborated to a unique degree. The very same words and phrases are repeated, and placed on points, from which they seem to call to each other; as, for instance, the double “many” in strophe 1, the “of us all “in strophe 3, and “nor opened he his mouth” in strophe 4. The ideas are very few and very simple: the words “he, we, his, ours, see, hear, know, bear, sickness, strike, stroke,” and “many” form, with prepositions and participles, the bulk of the prophecy. It will be evident how singularly suitable this recurrence is for the expression of reproach, and of sorrowful recollection. It is the nature of grief and remorse to harp upon the one dear form, the one most vivid pain. The finest instance of this repetition is verse 6, with its opening keynote “kullanu” “of us all like sheep went astray,” with its close on that keynote “guilt of us all,” “kullanu.” But throughout notes are repeated, and bars recur, expressive of what was done to the Servant, or what the Servant did for man, which seem in their recurrence to say, You cannot hear too much of me: I am the very Gospel. A peculiar sadness is lent to the music by the letters h and i in “holie” and “hehelie,” the word for sickness or ailing (ailing is the English equivalent in sense and sound), which happens so often in the poem. The new words, which have been brought to vary this recurrence of a few simple features, are mostly of a sombre type. The heavier letters throng the lines: grievous bs and ms are multiplied, and syllables with long vowels before m and w. But the words sob as well as tramp; and here and there one has a wrench and one a cry in it.
Most wonderful and mysterious of all is the spectral fashion in which the prophecy presents its Hero. He is named only in the first line and once again: elsewhere He is spoken of as He. We never hear or see Himself. But all the more solemnly is He there: a shadow upon countless faces, a grievous memory on the hearts of the speakers. He so haunts all we see and all we hear, that we feel it is not Art, but Conscience, that speaks of Him.
Here is now the prophecy itself, rendered into English quite literally, except for a conjunction here and there, and, as far as possible, in the rhythm of the original. A few necessary notes on difficult words and phrases are given.
I.
Isa 52:13 : Behold, my Servant shall prosper,
Shall rise, be lift up, be exceedingly high
Like as they that were astonied before thee were many,
-So marred from a mans was his visage,
And his form from the children of men!
-So shall the nations he startles be many,
Before him shall kings shut their mouths.
For that which had never been told them they see,
And what they had heard not, they have to consider.
II.
Who gave believing to that which we heard,
And the arm of Jehovah to whom was it bared?
For he sprang like a sapling before Him,
As a root from the ground that is parched;
He had no form nor beauty that we should regard him,
Nor aspect that we should desire him.
Despised and rejected of men
Man of pains and familiar with ailing,
And as one we do cover the face from,
Despised, and we did not esteem him.
III.
Surely our ailments he bore,
And our pains he did take for his burden.
But we-we accounted him stricken,
Smitten of God and degraded.
Yet he-he was pierced for crimes that were ours,
He was crushed for guilt that was ours,
The chastisement of our peace was upon him,
By his stripes healing is ours.
Of us all like to sheep went astray,
Every man to his way we did turn,
And Jehovah made light upon him
The guilt of us all.
IV.
Oppressed, he did humble himself,
Nor opened his mouth-
As a lamb to the slaughter is led.
As a sheep ‘fore her shearers is dumb-
Nor opened his mouth.
By tyranny and law was he taken;
And of his age who reflected,
That he was wrenched from the land of the living,
For My peoples transgressions the stroke was on him?
So they made with the wicked his grave,
Yea, with the felon his tomb.
Though never harm had he done,
Neither was guile in his mouth.
V.
But Jehovah had purposed to bruise him,
Had laid on him sickness; if his life should offer guilt offering,
A seed he should see, he should lengthen his days.
And the purpose of Jehovah by his hand should prosper,
From the travail of his soul shall he see,
By his knowledge be satisfied.
My Servant, the Righteous, righteousness wins he for many,
And their guilt he takes for his load.
Therefore I set him a share with the great,
Yea, with the strong shall he share the spoil:
Because that he poured out his life unto death,
Let himself with transgressors be reckoned;
Yea, he the sin of the many hath borne,
And for the transgressors he interposes.
Let us now take the interpretation strophe by strophe.
1. Isa 52:13-15. When last our eyes were directed to the Servant, he was suffering unexplained and unvindicated. {Isa 50:4-6} His sufferings seemed to have fallen upon him as the consequence of his fidelity to the Word committed to him; the Prophet had inevitably become the Martyr. Further than this his sufferings were not explained, and the Servant was left in them, calling upon God indeed, and sure that God would hear and vindicate him, but as yet unanswered by word of God or word of man. It is these words, words both of God and of man, which are given in Isa 52:13-15 through Isa 53:1-12. The Sufferer is explained and vindicated, first by God in the first strophe, Isa 52:13-15, and then by the Conscience of Men, His own people, in the second and third; {Isa 53:1-6} and then, as it appears, the Divine Voice, or the Prophet speaking for it, resumes in strophes 4 and 5, and concludes in a strain similar to strophe 1.
Gods explanation and vindication of the Sufferer is, then, given in the first strophe. It is summed up in the first line, and in one very pregnant word. Jeremiah had said of the Messiah, “He shall reign as a King and deal wisely” or “prosper”; {Jer 23:5} and so God says here of the Servant, “Behold he shall deal wisely” or “prosper.” The Hebrew verb does not get full expression in any English one. In rendering it “shall deal wisely” or “prudently” our translators undoubtedly touch the quick of it. For it is originally a mental process or quality: “has insight, understands, is farseeing.” But then it also includes the effect of this-“understands so as to get on, deals wisely so as to succeed, is practical” both in his way of working and in being sure of his end. Ewald has found an almost exact equivalent in German, “hat Geschick”; for Geschick means both “skill” or “address” and “fate” or “destiny.” The Hebrew verb is the most practical in the whole language, for this is precisely the point which the prophecy seeks to bring out about the Servants sufferings. They are practical. He is practical in them. He endures them, not for their own sake, but for some practical end of which he is aware and to which they must assuredly bring him. His failure to convince men by his word, the pain and spite which seem to be his only wage, are not the last of him, but the beginning and the way to what is higher. So “shall he rise and be lift up and be very high.” The suffering, which in chapter 1 seemed to be the Servants misfortune, is here seen as his wisdom which shall issue in his glory.
But of themselves men do not see this, and they need to be convinced. Pain, the blessed means of God, is mans abhorrence and perplexity. All along the history of the world the Sufferer has been the astonishment and stumbling-block of humanity. The barbarian gets rid of him; he is the first difficulty with which every young literature wrestles; to the end he remains the problem of philosophy and the sore test of faith. It is not native to men to see meaning or profit in the Sufferer; they are staggered by him, they see no reason or promise in him. So did men receive this unique Sufferer, this Servant of Jehovah. The many were astonied at him; his visage was so marred more than men, and his form than the children of men. But his life is to teach them the opposite of their impressions, and to bring them out of their perplexity into reverence before the revealed purpose of God in the Sufferer. “As they that were astonied at thee were many, so shall the nations he startles be many; kings shall shut their mouths at him, for that which was not told them they see, and that which they have heard not they have to consider,”-viz., the triumph and influence to which the Servant was consciously led through suffering. There may be some reflection here of the way in which the Gentiles regarded the Suffering Israel, but the reference is vague, and perhaps purposely so.
The first strophe, then, gives us just the general theme. In contrast to human experience God reveals in His servant that suffering is fruitful, that sacrifice is practical. Pain, in Gods service, shall lead to glory.
II. Isa 53:1-3. God never speaks but in man He wakens conscience, and the second strophe of the prophecy (along with the third) is the answer of conscience to God. Penitent men, looking back from the light of the Servants exaltation to the time when his humiliation was before their eyes, say, “Yes; what God has said is true of us. We were the deaf and the indifferent. We heard, but who of us believed what we heard, and to whom was the arm of the Lord-His purpose, the hand He had in the Servants sufferings-revealed?” Who are these penitent speakers? Some critics have held them to be the heathen, more have said that they are Israel. But none have pointed out that the writer gives himself no trouble to define them, but seems more anxious to impress us with their consciousness of their moral relation to the Servant. On the whole, it would appear that it is Israel, whom the prophet has in mind as the speakers of Isa 53:1-6. For, besides the fact that the Old Testament knows nothing of a bearing by Israel of the sins of the Gentiles, it is expressly said in Isa 53:8, that the sins for which the Servant was stricken were the sins of “my people”; which people must be the same as the speakers, for they own in Isa 53:4-6 that the Servant bore their sins. For these and other reasons the mass of Christian critics at the present day are probably right when they assume that Israel are the speakers in Isa 53:1-6; but the reader must beware of allowing his attention to be lost in questions of that kind. The art of the poem seems intentionally to leave vague the national relation of the speakers to the Servant, in order the more impressively to bring out their moral attitude towards him. There is an utter disappearance of all lines of separation between Jew and Gentile, -both in the first strophe, where, although Gentile names are used, Jews may yet be meant to be included, and in the rest of the poem, -as if the writer wished us to feel that all men stood over against that solitary Servant in a common indifference to his suffering and a common conscience of the guilt he bears. In short, it is no historical situation, such as some critics seem anxious to fasten him down upon, that the prophet reflects; but a certain moral situation, ideal in so far as it was not yet realised, -the state of the quickened human conscience over against a certain Human Suffering, in which, having noted it at the time, that conscience now realises that the purpose of God was at work.
In Isa 53:2 and Isa 53:3 the penitent speakers give us the reasons of their disregard of the Servant in the days of his suffering. In these reasons there is nothing peculiar to Israel, and no special experience of Jewish history is reflected by the terms in which they are conveyed. They are the confession, in general language, of a universal human habit, -the habit of letting the eye cheat the heart and conscience, of allowing the aspect of suffering to blind us to its meaning; of forgetting in our sense of the ugliness and helplessness of pain, that it has a motive, a future, and a God. It took ages to wean mankind from those native feelings of aversion and resentment, which caused them at first to abandon or destroy their sick. And, even now, scorn for the weak and incredulity in the heroism or in the profitableness of suffering are strong in the best of us. We judge by looks; we are hurried by the physical impression which the sufferer makes on us, or by our pride that we are not as he is, into peremptory and harsh judgments upon him. Every day we allow the dulness of poverty, the ugliness of disease, the unprofitableness of misfortune, the ludicrousness of failure, to keep back conscience from discovering to us our share of responsibility for them, and to repel our hearts from that sympathy and patience with them, which along with conscience would assuredly discover to us their place in Gods Providence and their special significance for ourselves. It is this original sin of man, of which these penitent speakers own themselves guilty.
But no one is ever permitted to rest with a physical or intellectual impression of suffering. The race, the individual, has always been forced by conscience to the task of finding a moral reason for pain and nothing so marks mans progress as the successive solutions he has attempted to this problem. The speakers, therefore, proceed in the next part of their confession, strophe 3., to tell us what they first falsely accounted the moral reason of the Servants suffering and what they afterwards found to be the truth.
III. Isa 53:4-6. The earliest and most common moral judgment which men pass upon pain is that which is implied in its name-that it is penal. A man suffers because God is angry with him and has stricken him. So Jobs friends judged him, and so these speakers tell us they had at first judged the Servant. “We had accounted him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted,”-“stricken,” that is, with a plague of sickness, as Job was, for the simile of the sick man is still kept up; “smitten of God and degraded” or “humbled,” for it seemed to them that Gods hand was in the Servants sickness, to punish and disgrace him for his own sins. But now they know they were wrong. The hand of God was indeed upon the Servant, and the reason was sin; yet the sin was not his, but theirs. “Surely our sicknesses he bore, and our pains he took as his burden. He was pierced for iniquities that were ours. He was crushed for crimes that were ours.” Strictly interpreted, these verses mean no more than that the Servant was involved in the consequences of his peoples sins. The verbs “bore” and “made his burden” are indeed taken by some to mean, necessarily, removal or expiation; but in themselves, as is clear from their application to Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the whole of the generation of Exile, they mean no more than implication in the reproach and the punishment of the peoples sins. Nevertheless, as we have explained in a note below, it is really impossible to separate the suffering of a Servant, who has been announced as practical and prosperous in his suffering, from the end for which it is endured. We cannot separate the Servants bearing of the peoples guilt from his removal of it. And, indeed, this practical end of his passion springs forth, past all doubt, from the rest of the strophe, which declares that the Servants sufferings are not only vicarious but redemptive; “The discipline of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed.” Translators agree that “discipline of our peace” must mean discipline which procures our peace. The peace, the healing, is ours, in consequence of the chastisement and the scourging that was his. The next verse gives us the obverse and complement of the same thought. The pain was his in consequence of the sin that was ours. “All we like sheep had gone astray, and the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all,”-literally “iniquity,” but inclusive of its guilt and consequences. Nothing could be plainer than these words. The speakers confess that they know that the Servants suffering was both vicarious and redemptive.
But how did they get this knowledge? They do not describe any special means by which it came to them. They state this high and novel truth simply as the last step in a process of their consciousness. At first they were bewildered by the Servants suffering; then they thought it contemptible, thus “passing upon it an intellectual judgment”; then, forced to seek a moral reason for it, they accounted it as penal and due to the Servant for his own sins; then they recognised that. its penalty was vicarious, that the Servant was suffering for them; and finally, they knew that it was redemptive, the means of their own healing and peace. This is a natural climax, a logical and moral progress of thought. The last two steps are stated simply as facts of experience following on other facts. Now our prophet usually publishes the truths, with which he is charged, as the very words of God, introducing them with a solemn and authoritative “Thus saith Jehovah.” But this novel and supreme truth of vicarious and redemptive suffering, this passion and virtue which crowns the Servants office, is introduced to us, not by the mouth of God, but by the lips of penitent men; not as all oracle, but as a confession; not as the commission of Divine authority laid beforehand upon the Servant like his other duties, but as the conviction of the human conscience after the Servant has been lifted up before it. In short, by this unusual turn of his art, the prophet seeks to teach us that vicarious suffering is not a dogmatic, but an experimental truth. The substitution of the Servant for the guilty people, and the redemptive force of that substitution, are no arbitrary doctrine, for which God requires from man a mere intellectual assent; they are no such formal institution of religion as mental indolence and superstition delight to have prepared for their mechanical adherence: but substitutive suffering is a great living fact of human experience, whose outward features are not more evident to mens eyes than its inner meaning is appreciable by their conscience, and of irresistible effect upon their whole moral nature.
Is this lesson of our prophets art not needed? Men have always been apt to think of vicarious suffering, and of its function in their salvation, as something above and apart from their moral nature, with a value known only to God and not calculable in the terms of conscience or of mans moral experience; nay, rather as something that conflicts with mans ideas of morality and justice; whereas both the fact and the virtue of vicarious suffering come upon us all, as these speakers describe the vicarious sufferings of the Servant to have come upon them, as a part of inevitable experience, If it be natural, as we saw, for men to be bewildered by the first sight of suffering, to scorn it as futile and to count it the fault of the sufferer himself, it is equally natural and inevitable that these first and hasty theories should be dispelled by the longer experience of life and the more thorough working of conscience. The stricken are not always bearing their own sin. “Suffering is the minister of justice. This is true in part, yet it also is inadequate to explain the facts. Of all the sorrow which befalls humanity, how small a part falls upon the specially guilty; how much seems rather to seek out the good! We might almost ask whether it is not weakness rather than wrong that is punished in this world.” In every nation, in every family, the innocent suffer for the guilty. Vicarious suffering is not arbitrary or accidental; it comes with our growth; It is of the very nature of things. It is that part of the Service of Man, to which we are all born, and of the reality of which we daily grow more aware.
But even more than its necessity life teaches us its virtue. Vicarious suffering is not a curse. It is Service-Service for God. It proves a power where every other moral force has failed. By it men are redeemed, on whom justice and their proper punishment have been able to effect nothing. Why this should be is very intelligible. We are not so capable of measuring the physical or moral results of our actions upon our own characters or in our own fortunes as we are upon the lives of others; nor do we so awaken to the guilt and heinousness of our sin as when it reaches and implicates lives which were not partners with us in it. Moreover, while a mans punishment is apt to give him an excuse for saying, I have expiated my sin myself, and so to leave him self-satisfied and with nothing for which to be grateful or obliged to a higher will; or while it may make him reckless or plunge him into despair; so, on the contrary, when he recognises that others feel the pain of his sin and have come under its weight, then shame is quickly born within him, and pity and every ether passion that can melt a hard heart. If, moreover, the others who bear his sin do so voluntarily and for loves sake, then how quickly on the back of shame and pity does gratitude rise, and the sense of debt and of constraint to their will! For all these very intelligible reasons, vicarious suffering has been a powerful redemptive force in the experience of the race. Both the fact of its beneficence and the moral reasons for this are clear enough to lift us above a question, which sometimes gives trouble regarding it, -the question of its justice. Such a question is futile about any service for man, which succeeds as this does where all others have failed, and which proves itself so much in harmony with mans moral nature. But the last shred of objection to the justice of vicarious suffering is surely removed when the sufferer is voluntary as well as vicarious. And, in truth, human experience feels that it has found its highest and its holiest fact in the love that, being innocent itself, stoops to bear its fellows sins, -not only the anxiety and reproach of them, but even the cost and the curse of them. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”; and greater service can no man do to men than to serve them in this way.
Now in this universal human experience of the inevitableness and the virtue of vicarious suffering, Israel had been deeply baptised. The nation had been “served” by suffering in all the ways we have just described. Beginning with the belief that all righteousness prospered, Israel had come to see the righteous afflicted in her midst; the best Israelites had set their minds to the problem, and learned to believe, at least, that such affliction was of Gods will, -part of His Providence, and not an interruption to it. Israel, too, knew the moral solidarity of a people: that citizens share each others sorrows, and that one generation rolls over its guilt upon the next. Frequently had the whole nation been spared for a pious remnants sake; and in the Exile, while all the people were formally afflicted by God, it was but a portion of them whose conscience was quick to the meaning of the chastisement, and of them alone, in their submissive and intelligent sufferance of the Lords wrath, could the opening gospel of the prophecy be spoken, that they “had accomplished their warfare, and had received of the Lords hands double for all their sins.” But still more vivid than these collective substitutes for the people were the individuals, who, at different points in Israels history, had stood forth and taken up as their own the nations conscience and stooped to bear the nations curse. Far away back, a Moses had offered himself for destruction, if for his sake God would spare his sinful and thoughtless countrymen. In a psalm of the Exile it is remembered that,
He said, that He would destroy them,
Had not Moses His chosen stood before Him in the breach,
To turn away His wrath, lest He should destroy.
And Jeremiah, not by a single heroic resolve, but by the slow agony and martyrdom of a long life, had taken Jerusalems sin upon his own heart, had felt himself forsaken of God, and had voluntarily shared his citys doom, while his generation, unconscious of their guilt and blind to their fate, despised him and esteemed him not. And Ezekiel, who is Jeremiahs far-off reflection, who could only do in symbol what Jeremiah did in reality, was commanded to lie on his side for days, and so “bear the guilt” of his people.
But in Israels experience it was not only the human Servant who served the nation by suffering, for God Himself had come down to “carry” His distressed and accursed people, and “to load Himself with them.” Our prophet uses the same two verbs of Jehovah as are used of the Servant. {Isa 46:3-4} Like the Servant, too, God “was afflicted in all their affliction”; and His love towards them was expended in passion and agony for their sins. Vicarious suffering was not only human, it was Divine.
Was it very wonderful that a people with such an experience, and with such examples, both human and Divine, should at last be led to the thought of One Sufferer, who would exhibit in Himself all the meaning, and procure for His people all the virtue, of that vicarious reproach and sorrow, which a long line of their martyrs had illustrated, and which God had revealed as the passion of His own love? If they had had every example that could fit them to understand the power of such a sufferer, they had also every reason to feel their need of Him. For the Exile had not healed the nation; it had been for the most of them an illustration of that evil effect of punishment to which we alluded above. Penal servitude in Babylon had but hardened Israel. “God poured on him the fury of anger, and the strength of battle: it set him on fire round about, yet he knew not, and it burned him, yet he laid it not to heart.” {Isa 42:25} What the Exile, then, had failed to do, when it brought upon the people their own sins, the Servant, taking these sins upon himself, would surely effect. The people, whom the Exile had only hardened, his vicarious suffering should strike into penitence and lift to peace.
IV. Isa 53:7-9. It is probable that with Isa 53:6 the penitent people have ceased speaking, and that the parable is now taken up by the prophet himself. The voice of God, which uttered the first strophe, does not seem to resume till Isa 53:11. If strophe 3 confessed that it was for the peoples sins the Servant suffered, strophe 4 declares that he himself was sinless, and yet silently submitted to all which injustice laid upon him.
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. David, Hezekiah, Jeremiah, Job, and the nameless martyred and moribund of the Psalms, all strive and are loud under pain. Why was this Servant the unique and solitary instance of silence under suffering? Because he had a secret which they had not. It had been said of him: “My Servant shall deal wisely” or “intelligently,” shall know what he is about. He had no guilt of his own, no doubts of his God. But he was conscious of the end God had in his pain, an end not to be served in any other way, and with all his heart he had given himself to it. It was not punishment he was enduring; it was not the throes of the birth into higher experience, which he was feeling: it was a Service he was performing, -a service laid on him by God, a service for mans redemption, a service sure of results and of glory. Therefore “as a lamb to the slaughter is led, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, he opened not his mouth.”
The next two verses (Isa 53:8-9) describe how the Servants Passion was fulfilled. The figure of a sick man was changed in Isa 53:5 to that of a punished one, and the punishment we now see carried on to death. The two verses are difficult, the readings and renderings of most of the words being very various. But the sense is clear. The Servants death was accomplished, not on some far hill top by a stroke out of heaven, but in the forms of human law and by mens hands. It was a judicial murder. “By tyranny and by judgment,”-that is, by a forced and tyrannous judgment, -“he was taken.” To this abuse of law the next verse adds the indifference of public opinion: “and as for his contemporaries, who of them reflected that he was cut off from,” or “cut down in, the land of the living,”-that in spite of the form of law that condemned him he was a murdered man, -that “for the transgression of my people the stroke was his?” So, having conceived him to have been lawfully put to death, they consistently gave him a convicts grave: “they made his grave with the wicked, and he was with the felon in his death,” though-and on this the strophe emphatically ends-he was an innocent man, “he had done no harm, neither was guile in his mouth.”
Premature sickness and the miscarriage of justice, -these to Orientals are the two outstanding misfortunes of the individuals life. Take the Psalter, set aside its complaints of the horrors of war and of invasion, and you will find almost: all the rest of its sighs rising either from sickness or from the sense of injustice. These were the classic forms of individual suffering in the age and civilisation to which our prophet belonged, and it was natural, therefore, that when he was describing an Ideal or Representative Sufferer, he should fill in his picture with both of them. If we remember this, we shall feel no incongruity in the sudden change of the here from a sick man to a convict, and back again in Isa 53:10 from a convict to a sick man. Nor, if we remember this, shall we feel disposed to listen to those interpreters who hold that the basis of this prophecy was the account of an actual historical martyrdom. Had such been the case the prophet would surely have held throughout to one or the other of the two forms of suffering. His sufferer would have been either a leper or a convict, hut hardly both. No doubt the details in Isa 53:8-9 are so realistic that they might well be the features of an actual miscarriage of justice; but the like happened too frequently in the Ancient East for such verses to be necessarily any one mans portrait. Perverted justice was the curse of the individuals life-perverted justice and that stolid, fatalistic apathy of Oriental public opinion, which would probably regard such a sufferer as suffering for his sins the just vengeance of heaven, though the minister of this vengeance was a tyrant and its means were perjury and murder. “Who of his generation reflected that for the transgression of my people the stroke was on him!”
V. Isa 53:10-12. We have heard the awful tragedy. The innocent Servant was put to a violent and premature death. Public apathy closed over him and the unmarked earth of a felons grave. It is so utter a perversion of justice, so signal a triumph of wrong over right, so final a disappearance into oblivion of the fairest life that ever lived, that men might be tempted to say, God has forsaken His own. On the contrary-so strophe 5 begins-Gods own will and pleasure have been in this tragedy: “Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him.” The line as it thus stands in our English version has a grim, repulsive sound. But the Hebrew word has no necessary meaning of pleasure or enjoyment.” All it says is, God so willed it. His purpose was in this tragedy. Deus vult! It is the one message which can render any pain tolerable or light up with meaning a mystery so cruel as this: “The Lord” Himself” had purposed to bruise His Servant, “the Lord Himself had laid on him sickness” (the figure of disease is resumed). Gods purpose in putting the Servant to death is explained in the rest of the verse. It was in order that “through his soul making a guilt-offering, he might see a seed, prolong his days, and that the pleasure of the Lord might prosper by his hand.”
What is a guilt-offering? The term originally meant guilt, and is so used by a prophet contemporary to our own. {Jer 51:4} In the legislation, however, both in the Pentateuch and in Ezekiel, it is applied to legal and sacrificial forms of restitution or reparation for guilt. It is only named in Ezekiel along with other sacrifices. {Eze 40:39; Eze 42:13; Eze 44:29; Eze 46:20} Both Numbers and Leviticus define it, but define it differently. In Numbers {Num 5:7-8} it is the payment, which a transgressor has to make to the human person offended, of the amount to Which he has harmed that persons property: it is what we call damages. But in Leviticus it is the ram, exacted over and above damages to the injured party, {Lev 5:14-16; Lev 6:1-7} or in cases where no damages were asked, {Lev 5:17-19} by the priest; the representative of God, for satisfaction to His law; and it was required even where the offender had been an unwitting one. By this guilt-offering “the priest made atonement” for the sinner and “he was forgiven.” It was for this purpose of reparation to the Deity that the plagued Philistines sent a guilt-offering back with the ark of Jehovah, which they had stolen. {1Sa 6:13} But there is another historical passage, which though the term “guilt-offering” is not used in it, admirably illustrates the idea. A famine in Davids time was revealed to be due to the murder of certain Gibeonites by the house of Saul. David asked the Gibeonites what reparation he could make. They said it was not a matter of damages. But both parties felt that before the law of God could be satisfied and the land relieved of its curse, some atonement, some guilt-offering, must be made to the Divine Law. It was a wild kind of satisfaction that was paid. Seven men of Sauls house were hung up before the Lord in Gibeon. But the instinct, though satisfied in so murderous a fashion, was a true and a grand instinct, -the conscience of a law above all human laws and rights, to which homage must be paid before the sinner could come into true relations with God, or the Divine curse be lifted off.
It is in this sense that the word is used of the Servant of Jehovah, the Ideal, Representative Sufferer. Innocent as he is, he gives his life as satisfaction to the Divine law for the guilt of his people. His death was no mere martyrdom or miscarriage of human justice: in Gods intent and purpose, but also by its own, voluntary offering, it was an expiatory sacrifice. By his death the Servant did homage to the law of God. By dying for it He made men feel that the supreme end of man was to own that law and be in a right relation to it, and that the supreme service was to help others to a right relation. As it is said a little farther down, “My Servant, righteous himself, wins righteousness for many, and makes their iniquities his load.”
It surely cannot be difficult for anyone, who knows what sin is, and what a part vicarious suffering plays both in the bearing of the sin and in the redemption of the sinner, to perceive that at this point the Servants service for God and man reaches its crown. Compare his death and its sad meaning, with the brilliant energies of his earlier career. It is a heavy and an honourable thing to come from God to men, laden with Gods truth for your charge and responsibility; but it is a far heavier to stoop and take upon your heart as your business and burden mens suffering and sin. It is a needful and a lovely thing to assist the feeble aspirations of men, to put yourself on the side of whatever in them is upward and living, -to be the shelter, as the Servant was, of the bruised reed and the fading wick; but it is more indispensable, and it is infinitely heavier, to seek to lift the deadness of men, to take their guilt upon your heart, to attempt to rouse them to it, to attempt to deliver them from it. It is a useful and a glorious thing to establish order and justice among men, to create a social conscience, to inspire the exercise of love and the habits of service, and this the Servant did when “he set Law on the Earth, and the Isles waited for his teaching”; but after all mans supreme and controlling relation is his relation to God, and to this their “righteousness” the Servant restored guilty men by his death.
And so it was at this point, according to our prophecy, that the Servant, though brought so low, was nearest his exaltation: though in death, yet nearest life, nearest the highest kind of life, “the seeing of a seed,” the finding of himself in others; though despised, rejected, and forgotten of men, most certain of finding a place among the great and notable forces of life, -“therefore do I divide him a share with the great, and the spoil he shall share with the strong.” Not because as a prophet he was a sharp sword in the hand of the Lord, or a light flashing to the ends of the earth, but in that-as the prophecy concludes, and it is the prophets last and highest word concerning him-in that “he bare the sin of the many, and interposed for the transgressors.”
We have seen that the most striking thing about this prophecy is the spectral appearance of the Servant. He haunts, rather than is present in, the chapter. We hear of him, but he himself does not speak. We see faces that he startles, lips that the sight of him shuts, lips that the memory of him, after he has passed in silence, opens to bitter confession of neglect and misunderstanding; but himself we see not. His aspect and his bearing, his work for God and his influence on men, are shown to us, through the recollection and conscience of the speakers, with a vividness and a truth that draw the consciences of us who hear into the current of the confession, and take our hearts captive. But when we ask, Who was he then? What was his name among men? Where shall we find himself? Has he come, or do you still look for him?-neither the speakers, whose conscience he so smote, nor God, whose chief purpose he was, give us here any answer. In some verses he and his work seem already to have happened upon earth, but again we are made to feel that he is still future to the prophet, and that the voices, which the prophet quotes as speaking of having seen him and found him to be the Saviour, are voices of a day not yet born while the prophet writes.
But about five hundred and fifty years after this prophecy was written, a Man came forward among the sons of men.-among this very nation from whom the prophecy had arisen; and in every essential of consciousness and of experience He was the counterpart, embodiment, and fulfilment of this Suffering Servant and his Service. Jesus Christ answers the questions which the prophecy raises and leaves unanswered. In the prophecy we see one who is only a spectre, a dream, a conscience without a voice, without a name, without a place in history. But in Jesus Christ of Nazareth the dream becomes a reality: He, whom we have seen in this chapter only as the purpose of God, only through the eyes and consciences of a generation yet unborn, -He comes forward in flesh and blood; He speaks, He explains Himself, He accomplishes almost to the last detail the work, the patience, and the death that are here described as Ideal and Representative.
The correspondence of details between Christs life and this prophecy, published five hundred and fifty years before He came, is striking; if we encountered it for the first time, it would be more than striking, it would be staggering. But do not let us do what so many have done-so fondly exaggerate it as to lose in the details of external resemblance the moral and spiritual identity.
For the external correspondence between this prophecy and the life of Jesus Christ is by no means perfect. Every wound that is set down in the fifty-third of Isaiah was not reproduced or fulfilled in the sufferings of Jesus. For instance, Christ was not the sick, plague-stricken man whom the Servant is at first represented to be. The English translators have masked the leprous figure, that stands out so clearly in the original Hebrew.-for “acquainted with grief, bearing our griefs, put him to grief,” we should in each case read “sickness.” Now Christ was no Job. As Matthew points out, the only way He could be said “to bear our sicknesses and to carry our pains” was by healing them, not by sharing them.
And again, exactly as the judicial murder of the Servant, and the entire absence from his contemporaries of any idea that he suffered a vicarious death, suit the case of Christ, the next stage in the Servants fate was not true of the Victim of Pilate and the Pharisees. Christs grave was not with the wicked. He suffered as a felon without the walls on the common place of execution, but friends received the body and gave it an honourable burial in a friends grave. Or take the clause, “with the rich in his death.” It is doubtful whether the word is really “rich,” and ought not to be a closer synonym of “wicked” in the previous clause; but if it be “rich,” it is simply another name for “the wicked,” who in the East, in cases of miscarried justice, are so often coupled with the evildoers. It cannot possibly denote such a man as Joseph of Arimathea; nor, is it to be observed, do the Evangelists in describing Christs burial in that rich and pious mans tomb take any notice of this line about the Suffering Servant.
But the absence of a complete incidental correspondence only renders more striking the moral and spiritual correspondence, the essential likeness between the Service set forth in chapter 53 and the work of our Lord.
The speakers of chapter 53 set the Servant over against themselves, and in solitariness of character and office. They count him alone sinless where all they have sinned, and him alone the agent of salvation and healing where their whole duty is to look on and believe. But this is precisely the relation which Christ assumed between Himself and the nation. He was on one side, all they on the other. Against their strong effort to make Him the First among them, it was, as we have said before, the constant aim of our Lord to assert and to explain Himself as The Only.
And this Onlyness was to be realised in suffering. He said, “I must suffer”; or again, “It behoves the Christ to suffer.” Suffering is the experience in which men feel their oneness with their kind. Christ, too, by suffering felt His oneness with men; but largely in order to assert a singularity beyond. Through suffering He became like unto men, but only that He might effect through suffering a lonely and a singular service for them. For though He suffered in all points as men did, yet He shared none of their universal feelings about suffering. Pain never drew from Him either of those two voices of guilt or of doubt. Pain never reminded Christ of His own past, nor made Him question God.
Nor did He seek pain for any end in itself. There have been men who have done so; fanatics who have gloried in pain; superstitious minds that have fancied it to be meritorious; men whose wounds have been as mouths to feed their pride, or to publish their fidelity to their cause. But our Lord shrank from pain; if it had been possible He would have willed not to bear it: “Father, save Me from this hour; Father, if it be Thy will, let this cup pass from Me.” And when He submitted and was under the agony, it was not in the feeling of it, nor in the impression it made on others, nor in the manner in which it drew mens hearts to Him, nor in the seal it set on the truth, but in something beyond it, that He found His end and satisfaction. Jesus “looked out of the travail of His soul and was satisfied.”
For, firstly, He knew His pain to be Gods will for and outside Himself, -“I have a baptism to be baptised with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished: Father, save Me from this hour, yet for this cause came I to this hour: Father, Thy will be done,”-and all opportunities to escape as temptations.
And, secondly, like the Servant, Jesus “dealt prudently, had insight.” The will of God in His suffering was no mystery to Him. He understood from the first why He was to suffer.
The reasons He gave were the same two and in the same order as are given by our prophet for the sufferings of the Servant, -first, that fidelity to Gods truth could bring with it no other fate in Israel, then that His death was necessary for the sins of men, and as mens ransom from sin. In giving the first of these reasons for His death, Christ likened Himself to the prophets who had gone before Him in Jerusalem; but in the second He matched Himself with no other, and no other has ever been known in this to match himself with Jesus.
When men, then, stand up and tell us that Christ suffered only for the sake of sympathy with His kind, or only for loyalty to the truth, we have to tell them that this was not the whole of Christs own consciousness, this was not the whole of Christs own explanation. Suffering, which leads men into the sense of oneness with their kind, only made Him, as it grew the nearer and weighed the heavier, more emphatic upon His difference from other men. If He Himself, by His pity, by His labours of healing (as Matthew points out), and by all His intercourse with His people, penetrated more deeply into the participation of human suffering, the very days which marked with increasing force His sympathy with men, only laid more bare their want of sympathy with Him, their incapacity to follow into that unique conscience and understanding of a Passion, which He bore not only “with,” but, as He said, “for” His brethren. “Who believed that which we heard, and to whom was the arm of the Lord revealed? As to His generation, who reflected that for the transgression of my people He was stricken?” Again, while Christ indeed brought truth to earth from heaven, and was for truths sake condemned by men to die, the burden which He found waiting Him on earth, mans sin, was ever felt by Him to be a heavier burden and responsibility than the delivery of the truth; and was in fact the thing, which, apart from the things for which men might put Him to death, remained the reason of His death in His own sight and in that of His Father. And He told men why He felt their sin to be so heavy, because it kept them so far from God, and this was His purpose, He said, in bearing it-that He might bring us back to God; not primarily that He might relieve us of the suffering which followed sin, though He did so relieve some when He pardoned them, but that He might restore us to right relations with God, -might, like the Servant, “make many righteous.” Now it was Christs confidence to be able to do this, which distinguished Him from all others, upon whom has most heavily fallen the conscience of their peoples sins, and who have most keenly felt the duty and commission from God of vicarious suffering. If, like Moses, one sometimes dared for loves sake to offer his life for the life of his people, none, under the conscience and pain of their peoples sins, ever expressed any consciousness of thereby making their brethren righteous. On the contrary, even a Jeremiah, whose experience, as we have seen, comes so wonderfully near the picture of the Representative Sufferer in chapter 53, -even a Jeremiah feels, with the increase of his vicarious pain and conscience of guilt, only the more perplexed, only the deeper in despair, only the less able to understand God and the less hopeful to prevail with Him. But Christ was sure of His power to remove mens sins, and was never more emphatic about that power than when He most felt those sins weight.
And “He has seen His seed”; He “has made many righteous.” We found it to be uncertain whether the penitent speakers in chapter 53 understood that the Servant by coming under the physical sufferings, which were the consequences of their sins, relieved them of these consequences; other passages in the prophecy would seem to imply that, while the Servants sufferings were alone valid for righteousness, they did not relieve the rest of the nation from suffering too. And so it would be going beyond what God has given us to know, if we said that God counts the sufferings on the Cross, which were endured for our sins, as an equivalent for, or as sufficient to do away with, the sufferings which these sins bring upon our minds, our bodies, and our social relations. Substitution of this kind is neither affirmed by the penitents who speak in the fifty-third of Isaiah, nor is it an invariable or essential part of the experience of those who have found forgiveness through Christ. Everyday penitents turn to God through Christ, and are assured of forgiveness, who feel no abatement in the rigour of the retribution of those laws of God, which they have offended; like David after his forgiveness, they have to continue to bear the consequences of their sins. But dark as this side of experience undoubtedly is, only the more conspicuously against the darkness does the other side of experience shine. By “believing what they have heard,” reaching this belief through a quicker conscience and a closer study of Christs words about His death, men, upon whom conscience by itself and sore punishment have worked in vain, have been struck into penitence, have been assured of pardon, have been brought into right relations with God, have felt all the melting and the bracing effects of the knowledge that another has suffered in their stead. Nay, let us consider this-the physical consequences of their sins may have been left to be endured by such men, for no other reason than in order to make their new relation to God more sensible to them, while they feel those consequences no longer with the feeling of penalty, but with that of chastisement and discipline. Surely nothing could serve more strongly than this to reveal the new conscience towards God that has been worked within them. This inward “righteousness” is made more plain by the continuance of the physical and social consequences of their sins than it would have been had these consequences been removed.
Thus Christ, like the Servant, became a force in the world, inheriting in the course of Providence a “portion with the great” and “dividing the spoils” of history “with the strong.” As has often been said, His Cross is His Throne, and it is by His death that He has ruled the ages. Yet we must not understand this as if His Power was only or mostly shown in binding men, by gratitude for the salvation He won them, to own Him for their King. His power has been even more conspicuously proved in making His fashion of service the most fruitful and the most honoured among men. If men have ceased to turn from sickness with aversion or from weakness with contempt; if they have learned to see in all pain some law of God, and in vicarious suffering Gods most holy service; if patience and self-sacrifice have come in any way to be a habit of human life, -the power in this change has been Christ. But because these two-to say, “Thy will be done,” and to sacrifice self-are for us men the hardest and the most unnatural of things to do, Jesus Christ, in making these a conscience and a habit upon earth, has indeed shown Himself able to divide the spoil with the strong, has indeed performed the very highest Service for Man of which man can conceive.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
1. God points him out to our notice and regard. Behold! my servant, appointed and commissioned for the work of redemption, and fully qualified for it; he shall deal prudently, with unerring wisdom ordering all his ways: or, he shall prosper in all his undertakings, and accomplish thoroughly the salvation of all the faithful.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
CHRIST REWARDED FOR HIS SERVICES
We might further illustrate his success by enumerating the benefits which his mediation has procured: but as these constituted a part of that reward which was conferred on him, we shall wave the mention of them in this place, and proceed to consider,
The next, and more remote step of his advancement was, the progressive extending of his kingdom throughout the earth. It is true that, in a very short space of time, there were thousands of souls subjected to his dominion; and gradually his empire was enlarged among the Gentile world: multitudes in every place took, as it were, an oath of allegiance to him, and were made willing even to lay down their lives for his sake. But yet his kingdom has hitherto been only partially established: there is a time coming when, in the most literal sense, that prophecy of Daniel shall be accomplished, and there shall be given him dominion and glory, and a kingdom; and all people, nations, and languages shall serve him. This methinks is that prospect, to which our Lord looked forward, with peculiar delight as to the joy set before him. When he shall see the whole human race bowing before his footstool, and hear them extolling and magnifying his name, he will look back upon the travail of his soul with pleasure and satisfaction, and account himself amply recompensed for all that he has done and suffered.
The final step of his advancement will be, when he shall come again to judge the world, and reign over his elect for ever and ever. What he has already received is only a pledge and earnest of what he will hereafter enjoy. At a future period, fixed in the divine counsels, but known to no creature either in heaven or earth, he is to come in his own glory, and in the glory of his Father, surrounded with all the holy angels. He is then to summon the whole universe before him: all, in one vast assembly, will stand at his tribunal, and be judged by him according to their works: those that were his enemies, and would not that he should reign over them, he will cast, together with the fallen angels, into the lake of fire; but his faithful servants he will take, together with the holy angels, to dwell with him, that they may be one fold under one shepherd for evermore. His mediatorial office indeed he will then lay down, as having no more need to exercise it; and in this sense, he will deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father, that God may be all in all. But he will not cease to reign as a king over his people; for the prophet expressly says, that of his kingdom there shall be no end. To all eternity therefore will he be the Head of the church; to all eternity the one source of their joy, the one object of their adoration. As the glorified saints and angels are already singing, so will they never cease to sing, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches, and wisdom and strength, and glory and honour and blessing; therefore blessing and honour, and glory and power be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary