Reflections on Isaiah the Prophet

Today I held my last class on the prophet Isaiah. I regret that we had such a short time to examine the thought of this giant among the servants of the LORD, a recurring feeling each time I teach on the Hebrew prophets.

Here is a another prophet who greatly influenced our Lord Jesus. In fact, Jesus believed that the prophet Isaiah actually forecast his entire career! This is remarkable and requires a bit of unpacking.

There are five passages in the second half of the book of Isaiah displaying a distinct character and seemingly standing apart from their surrounding contexts. Scholars have labeled these passages as "the servant songs" because they feature a person who does the will of the LORD in a unique and unparalleled way. The passages in question are 42:1-9; 49:1-7; 50:4-11; 52:13-53:12; 61:1-3. The climactic song, the Mount Everest of the Old Testament, is without doubt 52:13-53:12. Here we have a sketch of the entire career of this choice servant of the LORD.

The passage begins on a note of triumph and exaltation: "See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted" (52:13). But suddenly the song takes a surprising turn and plunges into descending levels of humiliation and suffering. This exalted figure is now a person at whom many are appalled and "his form is marred beyond human likeness." His background is lowly and unimpressive; he is "like a root out of dry ground" having little prospect, so it would seem, for the success the world craves. He is apparently not from the circles of the movers and shakers of his day. He was certainly not born with a "silver spoon in his mouth."

Beyond that, he "was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering." Popularity and fame are not his game. At this point, something almost inexplicable and unheard of happens. He becomes the scapegoat, the sin offering for "our" iniquities. I pointed out to my students the absolutely unparalleled circumstances that now unfold. "The LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Nowhere else in the Old Testament does an individual serve in this way. To be sure, animals were sacrificed without number during this period as a means of covering over the multitudinous sins of humanity. But nowhere does the LORD ordain that a human being stand in for sinners and actually pay the price for their transgressions--except here.

The mystery deepens. The text speaks of his undergoing a vicarious and substitutionary atonement like a lamb led to slaughter and a sheep before her shearers, yet he uttered not a word in protest or outrage. He willingly endured this punishment. There can be no doubt: he died. "He was cut off from the land of the living." This is confirmed by the following statement that "he was assigned a grave with the wicked." How very tragic and senseless this all seems because "he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth." If ever there was an innocent victim, he was it. Confounding us is this unequivocal judgment: "it was the LORD'S will to crush him and cause him to suffer." How can this be?

Then the greatest mystery of all confronts us. The servant comes back to life! "Yet he will see his offspring and prolong his days . . . after the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities." How else can we describe this than a veritable resurrection from the dead?

The song now takes another dramatic turn. With the word "therefore" (53:12) the song soars and returns to the beginning point of triumph and exaltation: "I will give him a portion among the great and he will divide the spoils with the strong."

Christians, of course, know who this servant is. The Holy Spirit witnesses with our spirits that this is the song of the Savior, our great suffering servant, who "poured out his life unto death" and "bore the sin of many."

The New Testament testifies in numerous places concerning the belief of the earliest Christians about the identity of this servant (John 8:38; Matthew 8:17; Luke 22;37; Acts 8:32-33; 1 Peter 2:22; among others). They were not unaided in this identification. The Lord himself made it quite clear that he was in fact the suffering servant.

The most dramatic instance of this self-identification took place in his home town of Nazareth. On a Sabbath, the local boy came home and his reputation as a teacher and healer led to his being invited to read the Scripture reading for the Sabbath. The text that day was Isaiah 61:1-4. He read most of it and then stopped mid-sentence: "to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor" (Luke 4:19). He then rolled up the scroll and sat down. You can be sure he had everybody's attention! He had stopped reading in mid-sentence, something not to be done. Rather than start over again, he simply said: "Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." (Luke 4:20). Too bad we don't have an audio recording of the congregational response. It must have been one of the most amazing collective gasps you've ever heard! Jesus of Nazareth virtually proclaimed that he was the prophesied servant of the LORD.

What he did next is revealing. The synagogue was doubtless caught up in messianic fervor of a pronounced nationalistic brand. They would have joined a revolutionary movement in a moment behind his leadership. They could taste national liberation from the oppressive rule of Caesar and his minions. Jesus bitterly disappointed them. He spoke instead of two times in the Old Testament, significantly, during the days of Elijah and Elisha respectively, when God showed mercy to Gentiles. This is not what that patriotic Jewish congregation wanted to hear. They didn't want Gentiles in their midst at all. They wanted to rid the land of them! It was painfully and immediately obvious that Jesus' agenda was not compatible with Jewish nationalism. Their admiration turned quickly to hatred and they sought to cast him over the precipice of "Jumping Mountain" that we showed on our blog last time. "But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way" (Luke 4:30). Dr. Luke has just given us in a nutshell the storyline of his Gospel. The Christian reader knows where it goes and ends.

I break off at this point and return to the fourth servant song, Isaiah 52:13-53:12. I pointed out to my students that if you lay out the passage in the form of a parabola, you have a visual representation of what Jesus did for us. The storyline in short is this: From glory to glory. But in between the beginning and ending points of this parabola, you have the deep descent into humiliation and suffering. This pattern, what I called "the divine parabola," is captured precisely in Paul's great hymnic passage in Philippians 2:5-11. It follows the same pattern of moving from glory ("who being in very nature God") to humiliation and suffering ("made himself nothing, taking the very form of a servant . . humbled himself . . . became obedient unto death--even death on a cross!). But just like in Isaiah 53:12, in Philippians 2:11, the word "therefore" signals a dramatic reversal of fortune: "God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name . . Jesus Christ is Lord." The Apostle Paul grasped what the prophet Isaiah was saying and memorably passed it along for the ongoing Christian community.

Yes, Jesus knew he was Isaiah's suffering servant. And just like the servant sketched in Isaiah 50:7, he set his face like flint (Luke 9:51), determined to accomplish his destiny with this assurance: "I know I will not be put to shame." And he was not.